Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [100]
Everyone at Knopf who has championed my book and made it better with each step: Sonny Mehta, Chris Gillespie, Pat Johnson, Paul Bogaards, Ruth Liebmann, Julie Kurland, Abby Weintraub, Molly Erman, and Andrea Robinson. I am so lucky that my book found a home with all of you.
My incredible editor, Jenny Jackson, who understood the Girls immediately, got this book into shape, and was able to see what I wanted to do before I even knew. I am so thankful to have you as an editor and friend!
And finally, all my thanks and love to Tim Hartz, who cheered me on and calmed me down in all the right places, listened to me read sentences out loud with a great amount of patience, and always believed. You are truly my favorite.
A Note About the Author
Jennifer Close was born and raised on the North Shore of Chicago. She is a graduate of Boston College and received her MFA in fiction writing from the New School in 2005. She worked in New York in magazines for many years and then in Washington, D.C., as a bookseller. Girls in White Dresses is her first book.
Girls in White Dresses
By Jennifer Close
Reading Group Guide
ABOUT THIS READING GROUP GUIDE
The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Girls in White Dresses, Jennifer Close’s rollicking, irreverent, and poignant debut.
ABOUT THE BOOK
“Girls in White Dresses is about a group of smart, funny, unapologetically grouchy, always-hungover female friends who kvetch their way through one another’s weddings and showers, stare blearily at one another’s offspring, sometimes barely tolerate one another’s men but nonetheless have one another’s backs through thick and thin. Jennifer Close has written an unsentimental, frank novel about female friendship—its permanent, lifelong loyalties and unconditional love.”—Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author of The Great Man and The Astral
Wry, hilarious, and utterly recognizable, Girls in White Dresses tells the story of three young women grappling with heartbreak and career change, family pressure and new love—all while suffering through an endless round of weddings and bridal showers.
Isabella, Mary, and Lauren are going to be bridesmaids in Kristi’s wedding. On Sunday after Sunday, at bridal shower after bridal shower, they coo over toasters, eat tiny sandwiches, and drink mimosas. They’re all happy for Kristi, but they do have the ups and downs of their own lives to cope with. Isabella is working at a mailing-list company, where she’s extremely successful, and wildly unhappy. Mary is in love with a man who may never love any woman as much as he loves his mother. And Lauren, a waitress at a midtown bar, finds herself drawn to a man she’s pretty sure she hates.
With blind dates and ski vacations, boozy lunches and family holidays, relationships lost to politics and relationships found in pet stores, Girls in White Dresses pulls us deep inside the circle of these friends, perfectly capturing the wild frustrations and soaring joys of modern life.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Which character did you relate to most closely, and why?
How does Close use humor to convey character? Are the women themselves funny, or the situations they find themselves in?
Ambivalence—toward jobs, men, apartments, and children—is a recurring theme in Girls in White Dresses. Why do you think that is?
What did Isabella learn from JonBenét?
Several of the characters keep some pretty big secrets, such as the way Abby keeps her friends away from her hippy parents. How does this affect Abby’s life? How do the book’s other secrets affect the characters?
What is the metaphor of the peahen?
On this page, Isabella thinks about her young nephew, Connor, “All he wanted was to know what to expect. His world didn’t look like he’d thought it would, and she understood. How could he keep calm if he couldn’t see?” Who else does this describe?
Why does “the ham” become so significant for Lauren?
Mary wonders why nobody warned her that during her first