Map drawn by the author of Aldrich, Missouri and the places featured in the novel.
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS FOR ALDRICH, MO POP. 199
1. The novel is divided into three parts: before Aldrich, the year in Aldrich, and visits back to Aldrich. What is the time span of each part? How old is Janet in the beginning? In the end? Janet, the adult, narrates the story, intervening throughout the action. In which part is she least present? Most present?
2. Who is the antagonist of the novel? Are you at all sympathetic to that character? Janet is called "irresolute." Why might that be? Do you think people who try hard to be different from a parent succeed?
3. Describe the main characters of the book and the degree to which they affect Janet. How is Betty Sue both a double and a foil of Janet?
4. What is the basis of the contention between Marge and Oneita? Does one or both have a "hillbilly" complex? In an angry retort to Janet at the cemetery, Oneita hints at a buried truth about the past that involves Marge. What does she imply? How is this confirmed in the Ladies Room scene in the third part of the book?
5. As a coming-of-age story, the novel deals with the loss of childhood illusion. With what adult reality must Janet struggle? Do you believe she makes the right decision at the end of Part Two? How might her life have differed had she decided otherwise?
6. A sequence of dreams is used in the story to express Janet's fears (see pp. 7, 22, 37, 152). What are her main fears? Noah and the ark is the subject of the Sunday School lesson. Where else in the novel does a flood occur? Does Janet fear drowning?
7. Do you agree with the sentiments regarding memory which are expressed in the two epigraphs of the novel? What do you make of Janet's husband's remark, "What is memory, if not family?" Is Janet too sentimental, too attached to the past? Do you consider yourself to be nostalgic? How common is the idealization of the past?
8. The book deals with the concept of inevitability. Do you believe that fate is predetermined, self-determined, or completely random? Marge quotes Seneca on the subject of fate. How is Seneca's viewpoint different from Uncle Matt's?
9. The novel expresses both the fear of being trapped in a "one-horse town" and the yearning to return to a more untrammeled place - that is, both the desire to escape and the longing to return. How do you explain this contradiction?
10. The end of Janet's childhood coincides with the decline of the town of Aldrich. Does this geographical backdrop, the virtual disappearance of a place, suggest a larger loss of innocence in terms of our country - the America of yesteryear? What do you make of the allusions to Longfellow's Evangeline and the displacement of the people of Acadia?
