White Oleander - Janet Fitch [189]
11. Discuss Astrid’s view of men. How did Ray compare to Ron? Did Astrid blame men for the bad things that happen to women?
12. Why do you think Astrid so often found herself in the posi-tion of caregiver — to Starr’s children, to Marvel’s children, and to Claire — when she was so deeply in need of care herself?
13. What was the ultimate life lesson Astrid learned in this coming-of-age journey? How did she triumph? Why would Astrid consider, and desire, a new life with her mother, yet not return to her in the end?
A Reading Group Guide to White Oleander is also available on www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com
About the Author
Janet Fitch is a third-generation resident of Los Angeles, where her novels Paint It Black and White Oleander are set. White Oleander was a selection of Oprah’s Book Club and a #1 national bestseller, from which a feature film starring Michelle Pfeiffer was adapted. It has been translated into twenty-four languages. Fitch teaches fiction writing at USC’s School of Professional Writing.
. . . and her most recent novel
In September 2006, Little, Brown and Company published Paint It Black.
Following is a preview from the novel’s opening pages.
1
OPEN
COLD NUMBED the tip of Josie Tyrell’s nose and her ass, just outside the reach of the studio space heater. Her leg had fallen asleep. She twisted her slight torso, enough to release tension, but not enough to disturb the painter working across the room in his paint-spotted Mao suit, his hair in a waist-length braid. Henry Ko wasn’t painting well today. He stopped every few minutes to wipe his eyes on the back of his hand, while Double Fantasy circled around on the studio stereo. Everyone was playing it now. John Lennon had just been shot in New York, and wherever Josie went, people played the same fucking Beatles songs until you wanted to throw up. At least Double Fantasy had Yoko Ono.
On the cover that leaned against the dirty couch, John and Yoko pressed together for a kiss they would never finish. People were always trashing Yoko Ono, blaming her for breaking up the Beatles, but Josie knew they were just jealous that John preferred Yoko to some bloated megaband. Nobody ever really loved a lover. Because love was a private party, and nobody got on the guest list. She liked the pictures of Yoko and John in their white bed, their frizzy hippie hair. They’d retreated to the country with two passports only. From the outside it looked like death. People could pound the walls all they wanted, but they’d never find the door. Nobody could guess at the gardens inside.
Out the long windows of Henry Ko’s studio, the hills and shacks of Echo Park tumbled toward Sunset Boulevard like a child’s bedspread scattered with toys. Bare winter jacarandas broke the view with their angular arms, round pods hanging from their branch wrists like castanets. Henry kept crying about John Lennon. Josie felt worse about Darby Crash. Darby had just killed himself in an act of desperate theater the day before, a gesture swamped by the Beatle ’s death like a raft in the backwash of a battleship. But at least she knew him. With his shyness, his broken-toothed smile. She’d hung with him at the Masque, at the Fuckhouse, and on Carondelet. He hadn’t been a natural performer, he had to get wasted, cramming anything he could swallow into his mouth, then played shows so intense that they hurt you to watch, made you feel like a creepy voyeur. Darby needed people to notice him, someone to care. All their friends had gone to the funeral, everybody but her. His death was so horribly unnecessary, such a stupid stunt, acted out by someone so sad and fucked up he would kill himself out of a need to be noticed. Josie thought it was repulsive to treat it like a party. And then the Beatle took it all away anyway.
“But he wanted it that way,” Pen said. She’d covered it for Puke magazine, saying who’d been there, like it was an afterparty.
At least they’d known him. Whereas look at Henry. Getting all teary-eyed