READERS GUIDE

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. The title story gives no real answer to what the difference between women and men really is. What, then, may be truly at stake for the wife in this story, now that she has decided not to listen when her “strange and loud” husband tries to explain to her that difference? What may be the significance of the armoire itself and its contents, and the fact that she can lift it now with “a miraculous ease”?

2. Throughout the collection, there are instances of what may
be termed “magical suburban realism” (the armoire and its
seeming weightlessness in the title story, the children residing
inside an Igloo cooler in “Family,” the husband slowly becoming
invisible in “A Way Through This”). What was your reaction
as a reader when you encountered these strange elements
of the stories? How might this alternate world, in which the
unbelievable is a part of everyday life, allow the characters involved
to understand more deeply their own situations?

3. In “An Evening on the Cusp of the Apocalypse,” a man
encounters every worst-case scenario one can imagine, from
losing his job to having his home repossessed to his wife ’s infidelity.
And yet, at the story’s end, he finds himself absolutely
content with his life, but only once that life has been
restored intact (and in some ways improved upon). How
does this speak to the tenuous nature of our lives as consumers,
as parents, as husbands and wives? What do you fear
most when you consider the possibility of losing the routine
of your everyday life? What do you value most about that
routine, and why?

4. Read the classic short story “A Rose for Emily” by
William Faulkner. (This is his most famous short story, and
you can find it in almost any anthology of American short
stories, as well as in the Vintage paperback edition of The
Collected Stories of William Faulkner.) How does Bret Lott’s
Miss Emily in “Rose” compare to Miss Emily as understood
by the townspeople in Faulkner’s story? What is the significance
of the child being buried beneath the floorboards in
Bret Lott’s version?

5. In “The Train, the Lake, the Bridge,” why does the fact
that there are no ghosts involved in this “ghost story” make
this a story they tell one another only on those nights when
they know they cannot dig out from the snow? Why is it easier
for them to tell ghost stories than it is to tell the truth of
what happened that night of the storm?

6. “Everything Cut Will Come Back” seems to be about the
narrator’s brother trying to tend to his neighbor’s yard after
the death of his neighbor’s wife. But the story turns, finally, to
the brothers themselves, and their shared sense of loss at the
death of their parents many years before. Why does the work
Timmy performs on the yard signal the narrator that indeed
the two brothers are talking about their own loss? How is it
that the narrator, who feels that his words of comfort to his
brother about his work on the yard are meaningless, knows
exactly what Timmy means when he says, “I miss them”?

7. One of the shortest stories in the collection, “History”
seems almost a fragment. But how does this momentary
snapshot of an anonymous traveler illuminate the narrator’s
life? Is there in this instant of recognition and memory a
sense of grief, or is there a sense of fulfillment?

8. “Nostalgia” differs from nearly every other work in the
collection in that it tells the story of two children, and does so
from a point of view that does not place itself as an adult
looking back on his life (as with the narrator in “The Train,
the Lake, the Bridge”). Yet the word nostalgia itself means
a sense of longing or a mixture of happiness and sadness
when recalling the past. Given the brutal facts of the story—
pelting the babysitter into submission with tomatoes, the horrific
death of the babysitter’s brother, and the insensitivity of
the children toward that tragedy—why might this indeed be
an appropriate title for the story?

9. The last story in the collection, “Postscript” employs by
far the greatest role of “magical suburban realism” in the
book: here a lifetime passes by, the family moves to other
homes, their children grow up and have their own children,
all in the span of a single day, and all while the main character,
a writer, tries to put words in an order that will tell a story
all by themselves. What is the irony of his trying so desperately
to tell a story while his life passes him by? And why is
the story a fitting close to this collection?