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The Author on Her Work
When I was growing up, my family traveled back and forth between North
Carolina and France every year. My mother, a French physicist, taught at the
University of North Carolina and in the summer ran a physics institute in
the Alps. It was the early 60s, and when my sisters and I arrived in Paris
every June—stumbling out of a Whisper Jumbo Jet full of air-hostesses
in pill-box hats, and into the gray, wet dawn—it seemed we were entering
another universe. Forty years ago, France was poorer, still stunned by two
world wars, and its culture was old and uniform: all families ate the same
meals, all schools followed the same curriculum, all children wore navy blue.
From September to May, I wore flip-flops and orange flowered bell-bottoms; I
ate peanut butter and jelly twice a day. In the taxi from the Paris airport
to my grandfather's apartment, I looked out at the beautiful, narrow streets,
the dark shop grates being rolled up, and longed for bright, hot sidewalks
and the looseness of American voices.
My grandfather was horrified by us; our clothes were garish and our French
mangled. In his darkly furnished drawing room with its dozens of porcelain
figurines, he greeted us with dismay. So brightly colored, so sleepy, so
apt to confuse our articles, we were a disappointment to many of our
relatives.
But I had a great aunt, a tiny, fierce, chain-smoking woman who taught
history and had a severely retarded son, who adored us and we her. She ate
canned food and she never corrected our grammar. Before we arrived, she
would search everywhere for ketchup so that we would have something familiar
to eat and the first time she saw my orange-flowered bell-bottoms, she
exclaimed with delight, "A gypsy!"
She was frightening, too, her voice so rough from smoking that she often
sounded angry, her arguments with her husband loud enough for all to hear.
And like all old people, she seemed unfathomable. I could not imagine what
in the world she might think about, or if she felt the things I did:
loneliness, excitement, longing.
Still, I was fascinated by her, and I never ceased trying to imagine her
emotional life. Lili is a fictional character, but she is the result of
those years of fascination, of the desire to know another as I know myself.
Discussion
Questions
1. How does the novel's opening scene introduce the main themes of the book?
2. In what ways is Lili's childhood epiphany ("then it came to her for the
first time that she was alive") a religious experience? In what ways is it
not?
3. Discuss the role of hunger in the novel. In what ways are hunger and
faith repeatedly linked?
4. Why do you think Pierre could not talk about his fiancée?
5. When Lili decides to have Claude sleep between her and Pierre, she
notices that the child serves as a barrier against Pierre. Find and discuss
other passages in which De Witt gives metaphorical significance to the
physical aspects of domestic life.
6. Compare Lili's two experiences at Mont Blanc: the childhood sunrise and
the evening many years later.
7. During one of the nights when she and Paule lie together naked but cannot
touch each other, Lili thinks how "there was no difference between her [own]
longing for Pierre and Paule's for God. Each was a kind of infidelity and
each was hopeless." What does she mean by that?
8. What is so significant to Lili about the butcher?
9. What do you make of the fact that Lili is abandoned by everyone except
her family, those "eternal, elastic arms" she so desperately wants to
escape?
10. Why does Lili stay with Pierre?
11. What is the difference between Paule's faith and Lili's? How does that
difference play itself out in the novel's ending, with Paule admitting that
"I haven't seen God in years" and Lili buoyed by a sense of rejuvenation?
12. After the deaths of Claude-Francois and André, Lili obsessively
visits Claude-Francois's memorial. It is André's death, however, that
proves harder for her to deal with. Why?
13. At one point, Lili, speaking to Claude, describes her love for him as
"pure" because "I expect nothing from you—no answer." What does she mean
by this? What is the significance of purity for her?
14. In a similar vein, discuss the novel's last paragraph in light of the
Colette epigraph.
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