Forever, Interrupted(86)
When it got to be 11:00 a.m., I turned to him and lightly shook him awake.
“Wake up, baby,” I said. “We have to get up soon.”
Ben barely woke from his stupor. He put his arm around me and buried his face in his pillow.
“Come on, Husband,” I said to him. “You gotta get up.”
He opened his eyes and smiled at me. He lifted his mouth off the pillow and said, “What’s the rush, honey? We have all the time in the world.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a great deal of thanks to my agent, Carly Watters, and my editor, Greer Hendricks. You both saw what I was trying to do, you believed in this story, and you made it better, brighter, and more heartbreaking. Thank you. And thank you to Sarah Cantin at Atria for your faith in this book. You are the gatekeeper and it’s you who let me through.
I also want to thank the friends who cheered me on along the way: Erin Cox, Julia Furlan, Jesse Hill, Andy Bauch, Jess Reynoso, Colin and Ashley Rodger, Emily Giorgio, Bea Arthur, Caitlin Doyle, Tim Pavlik, Kate Sullivan, Phillip Jordan, Tamara Hunter, and Sara Arrington. Your collective faith in me made me stupid enough to think I could do this.
It’s crucial that I acknowledge the bosses and teachers who believed in me: Frank Calore, Andrew Crick, Edith Hill, Sarah Finn, and Randi Hiller. I am so grateful to have had you all as mentors in my life.
Thank you to the Beverly Hills Public Library for giving me a quiet place to write that sells delicious fudge and strong iced tea, and to the community at Polytechnic School for being so supportive.
I cannot let this opportunity go by without mentioning the man who lost the love of his life and posted about it on Craigslist. You, sir, are a far more beautiful writer than I and the tenderness with which you speak brings me to tears every time I read your post. And I’ve read it a lot.
To the Reid and Hanes families, thank you for embracing me with the warmth you have.
To Martha Steeves, you will always be in my heart.
I have endless gratitude for the Jenkins and Morris families. To my mother, Mindy, my brother, Jake, and my grandmother, Linda: Your belief that I can do anything I set my mind to is why I believe it. I can’t think of a greater gift to give a person.
And lastly, to Alex Reid, the man who taught me how a perfectly sane woman can fall madly in love and get married in a matter of months: Thank you for being the inspiration for every love story I find myself writing.
FOREVER, INTERRUPTED
Taylor Jenkins Reid
A Readers Club Guide
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. The plot of Forever, Interrupted isn’t strictly linear and, instead, alternates between Ben and Elsie’s courtship and Elsie’s mourning. How did this affect your reading experience? Why do you think the author made this narrative choice?
2. At various points throughout the novel, Elsie and Ben voice the concern that perhaps their relationship is progressing too quickly. Before reading this, would you have thought that two people could be ready to marry after six months of dating? Did Forever, Interrupted affect your opinion one way or another?
3. Romantic love may seem like the driving force behind Forever, Interrupted, but in what ways does friendship also shape the novel? In particular, how does seeing Elsie in the role of a friend—and not just as Ben’s girlfriend and wife—add to our understanding of her? What do her interactions with Ana, as well as with Mr. Callahan, reveal about her as a character?
4. Elsie is furious with Ana when she tries to give her a copy of The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion’s memoir about losing her husband, and laments, “My job is books, information. I based my career on the idea that words on pages bound and packaged help people. That they make people grow, they show people lives they’ve never seen. They teach people about themselves, and here I am, at my lowest point, rejecting help from the one place I always believed it would be”. Do you share Elsie’s perspective about the power of books? Why might this belief system be so painful for her to embrace immediately after Ben’s death?
5. Do you understand why Ben never told his mother about his relationship with Elsie? Why do you think Elsie didn’t push him harder on this?
6. Why is it important to Elsie that she and Ben were legally married? What do you think about Susan’s point of view, that, “It means nothing. You think that some ten minutes you spent with Ben in a room defines what you meant to each other? It doesn’t. You define that. What you feel defines that. You loved him. He loved you . . . It doesn’t matter whether it’s labeled a husband or a boyfriend. You lost the person you love. You lost the future you thought you had”?
7. Turn to the scene where Ben and Elsie are driving to Las Vegas and, as a group, read aloud the argument that they get into. Could you see each point of view, or did you side more with Elsie or Ben? Should one of them have handled the conversation differently?
8. When Elsie first arrives at Susan’s house, she realizes: “I can’t help but think that maybe because it’s okay to cry, I can’t”. Can you find some other concrete examples of the grieving process that are illustrated in the book? Were there particular moments of Elsie’s (or Susan’s) mourning that especially resonated with you?
9. Ana and Mr. Callahan each try to offer Elsie words of comfort and wisdom after Ben dies. At the time, she mostly rejects what they have to say. How has Elsie’s point of view changed by the end of the novel—and have Ana’s and Mr. Callahan’s perspectives shifted as well?