This reading group guide for The Gin Closet includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Leslie Jamison . The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book. Introduction The Gin Closet recounts the story of a family stricken by grief, loss, and addictions. Told from the perspective of two narrators--Stella, a young cosmopolite searching for meaning, and Tilly, her estranged alcoholic aunt--the story follows what happens when Stella and Tilly meet after decades of separation, and tracks the unlikely friendship that forms between them. Both women struggle with addictions--Tilly abuses alcohol and Stella is a recovering anorexic. In the midst of their hardships they come to understand what it means to love the family you''re given, no matter the cost. Questions for Discussion 1.
The novel opens with the decline and eventual death of Grandma Lucy, as told from Stella''s point of view. Stella describes her Grandmother''s declining quality of life: "You couldn''t yearn like this unless you''d been lonely for years, practicing" (5). Consider how the sickness and death of Lucy illuminates the yearning for love and understanding in Lucy, Stella, Dora, and Tilly. Do you think Tilly is the character most in need of love? How so? If not Tilly, who? 2. Do you forgive Lucy for not taking Tilly back? Why or why not? Turn to pages 65-67 and discuss. Would you have done something differently? 3. Compare Stella and Tilly. How are they alike? How are they different? Do you sympathize with one more than the other? Who needs whom the most: Does Tilly need Stella or does Stella need Tilly? 4.
Names play an interesting role in the story. The word "mom" is not often used--Abe calls Tilly by her first name and both Dora and Tilly refer to Lucy as "Lucy." Why do you think the author chose to have her characters refrain from using the word mother? What does it suggest about the nature of relationships in this family? 5. Tilly says: "People were always hidden behind their faces. I knew I never was" (p. 175). In light of this quote, think about the ways in which the characters in the story hide behind different ''faces.'' Consider Stella, Tom, Dora, & Abe.
Do you agree with Tilly that she could never hide behind her face? Why or why not? 6. Almost every character has an addiction of some sort that they struggle with in the novel. Stella has an eating disorder, Tilly has alcohol and Dora and Abe have work. What role do you think addictions play in the novel? Do you see these addictions as a cause or effect of the problems in the story? Does one character''s addiction lead to the other character''s addictions? Why or why not? 7. How would you describe Abe''s character? Do you see him as sympathetic? Do you like him? Do you hate him? How does Stella see him? How does Tilly? Consider these questions in light of the fact that we never get Abe''s point of view directly, and only come to know him through his relationship with Stella. 8. Tilly describes a bird that got caught in the trailer she shared with Fiona, saying "I felt sorry for it, I couldn''t understand why it was stupid enough to stay" (77). Like the bird, Tilly decides to continue living in a place where she feels trapped--trapped by Fiona and trapped by her addiction and prostitution.
Why do you think Tilly stayed? Do you think she had a choice? 9. Consider the structure of the story. What effect do the dual narrators have on the story? Why do you think the author used two narrators? Was it successful? Stella begins and ends the story. To what extent does the story become Stella''s? 10. Discuss Tilly''s relationship with Fiona. Their bond is protective and claustrophobic at once, intertwining elements of sisterly, maternal, and sexual love. Is Fiona filling a void for Tilly? What do you make of their eventual correspondence, once Fiona is in prison? 11. Turn to the epigraph and read aloud the excerpt from the Sylvia Plath poem "Nick and the Candlestick.
" In light of this poem, discuss how you think pregnancy acts as a catalyst in the story. Consider Tilly, Stella, and Dora in your response. 12. Revisit the Thanksgiving scene and Tilly''s relapse on pages 190-197. Why do you think Tilly begins to drink again? Were you surprised? Why do you think the dinner party acted as a catalyst for her to binge? 13. Were you surprised by Abe and Stella''s relationship, and their reaction to it? Turn to pages 222-224 and discuss. 14. Stella returns home to her mother after her physical relationship with Abe ends.
She crawls into her mother''s bed and falls asleep with her hand on her shoulder, "feeling the rise and fall of her chest" (249). Did this moment give you the feeling that Stella''s journey has been resolved? Has she found what she has been searching for? Why or why not? 15. Discuss the ending of the story. Did it surprise you? Were you surprised at Tilly''s suicide? At the continuation of Abe and Stella''s relationship? Enhancing Your Book Club 1. The Gin Closet lets readers glimpse into the world of a troubled family struggling with addictions, abandonment, and death. Explore this topic further by having each member of your book club read a copy of The Visibles (Free Press, 2008) by Sara Shepard. Can you find any comparisons between Summer Davis and Stella? Between Summer and Tilly? How does Summer deal with a difficult home life, as compared with Tilly? To Stella? To Dora? 2. "It was one of the moments I loved her most.
I wasn''t sure why--because I was safe, because I was home, because I looked like I was doing alright even though I''d been away, or because I didn''t look alright, I looked wrong" (55). The Gin Closet ultimately explores the idea that love is an extremely complicated notion, and that this life and this family is all we really have. Have a show-and-tell with your reading group. Have each member bring in photos, keepsakes, books or any other objects associated with their family. Share a time that your family grew closer in the wake of a difficult situation or tragedy. 3. Have a movie night with your book club and rent "21 Grams" (2003). Discuss how the characters in the movie learn the same harsh lessons as the characters in The Gin Closet .
What parallels can you find between the two stories? What are the differences between the book and the film? 4. Abe and Tilly discover a dying baby dolphin washed up on shore. The discovery disturbs them both, and acts as an omen for Tilly''s eventual demise. Reread this section aloud with your group. Then, read the poem "The Wellfleet Whale" by Stanley Kunitz. Compare the two. Do Tilly and Abe feel similar to the speaker of the poem? What effect does a dying dolphin and whale have on the characters in the book and the poem? A Conversation with Leslie Jamison 1. This is your debut novel.
Describe how you came to write this story, and why you think it is important. What inspired you? Were any of the characters based on people you know in real life? On yourself? When I was a 23-year-old living in New York, trying to temp enough to pay my West Village rent, most of my writing happened in early-morning sessions at mid-town coffee shops. I was plugging away at an ambitiously (misguidedly) conceptual novel about a museum. It was full of intricate ideas about aesthetics and imagination, but I couldn''t have told you what the characters wanted from their lives, or what they ate for breakfast. The novel was going nowhere. And I wasn''t happy writing it in chunks of time scraped from the edges of my cubicle life. When I finally decided to move back to Los Angeles so I could devote myself more fully to writing, I felt like I had failed at the test of young urbanity. I moved back to the house where I''d grown up and spent my days tutoring students from my former high school and trying to help care for my ailing grandmother and generally feeling lonely.
I realized that I couldn''t bring myself to write about anything but the gravity and fear of living with a dying woman I loved. When my grandmother died, I realized the only novel I wanted to write would be a novel that sprung from her death. I have an aunt, like Tilly, who has been estranged from my family for many years. I wanted to explore what that kind of rupture can do to a family, and to probe my own sense of loss at my aunt''s absence. I abandoned my museum novel and spent several months doing little but writing the first draft of this one. As for Tilly and Stella, the boundary between myself and these women is a porous one. My life looks more like Stella''s, we''ve both experienced disenchantment with the terms and rules of young urban posturing, but in many ways I identify more with Tilly. Sometimes I think I made her life "exotic," removed from mine by age and money, in order to shield myself from our psychic common ground.
There was a kind of deluded geographic logic in this refuge: she felt too close, so I banished her to a trailer far away.