READERS GUIDE

Questions and Topics for Discussion

INTRODUCTION

It is the summer of 1972, and Katie has just turned eighteen. Katie and her town, Elephant Beach, are both on the verge: Katie of adulthood, and Elephant Beach of gentrification. But not yet: Elephant Beach is still gritty, working-class, close-knit. And Katie spends her time smoking and drinking with her friends, dreaming about a boy just back from Vietnam who’s still fighting a battle Katie can’t understand.

In this poignant, evocative debut collection, Judy Chicurel creates a haunting, vivid world, where conflicts between mothers and daughters, men and women, soldiers and civilians and haves and have-nots reverberate to our own time. She captures not only a time and place, but the universal experience of being poised between the past and the future.

Judy Chicurel’s work has appeared in national, regional, and international publications, including The New York Times, Newsday, and Granta. Her plays have been produced and performed in Manhattan. Chicurel currently lives by the water in Brooklyn.

1. From the title, what did you think the book was going to be about? Were you surprised that this line applied to Katie’s birth mother?


2. Although Katie is clearly curious about her birth mother, she makes no plans to try to find her. Why not, do you think? What societal frailties contribute to the physical images Katie has of her mother, and her ideas that, for instance, the Starlight Hotel would be a perfect place to look for her?


3.  How would you describe Katie’s relationship with her adoptive mother? She  claims to want the best for Katie, but she often appears angry, impatient, dissatisfied. What effect does this have on Katie?


4. In some ways, Luke is a main character in the book; in others, he is a shadow figure lurking in Katie’s mind. She says at one point that loving him was “like loving a ghost.” Why would she say that? In what ways does it add to the story?


5. Veterans of the Vietnam War, Luke and Mitch never knew each other before meeting at The Starlight Hotel. In what ways are they similar? In what ways are they different?


6. The book is set in a fictionalized seaside town on the skids more than forty years ago. How do the setting and the town of Elephant Beach reflect political and economic issues of the 1970s?


7. The Trunk, where Katie and her friends hang out, is a run-down, seedy part of town whose faded glamour has all but disappeared. Why, then, is Katie so desperate to belong? How does her outsider status contribute to her relationship with others and her role in the book? Would it have been a different read if she had felt she belonged more?


8. In chapter 10, “For Catholic Girls Who Have Considered Going to Hell When the Guilt Was Not Enough,” Katie accompanies Liz to an illegal abortion in another town. Both girls are startled and unsettled instead of relieved by the beauty and cleanliness of the doctor’s house. What does this say about women’s perception of abortion during that time period? What does the doctor mean when she tells Katie, “And we wonder why men treat us like dirt”?


9. In chapter 7, “Running with Ramone,” Ramone’s childhood feels rife with promise, as if his gift of swiftness will lift him to a better future. Yet by the time Katie runs into him at Lips in a Hole, his life seems illustrative of Katie’s old babysitter’s words, “That’s just how it is with the spics. It’s not like you can expect things to work out for them.” Might things have worked out differently for Ramone today?


10. The theme of escape is evident for Katie and her friends; many of them talk of leaving Elephant Beach and several actually do. What are the primary reasons Katie’s friends and family want to leave? Of the characters who do leave, who do you think will be most successful in forging a new life in a new environment? Why?


11. In chapter 15, “Conversations with my Father,” Katie describes the fathers of her friends—and includes her own—as distant, removed from their families even when at home. Why is this so, and what does it say about gender roles during a time when social change was supposedly sweeping the country? Are circumstances different today? Are fathers stronger presences in their children’s lives and, if so, why?


12.   What is the significance of the last line of the book, “I knew then that it was over, and I chose, instead of him I chose the part of me that was trapped forever inside The Starlight Hotel, along with all the dreams that never came true, and some that did?” If The Starlight Hotel represents a receptacle of lost dreams, why would Katie relinquish a part of herself to that place and time? What dreams did come true, for Katie or for any of the other characters?