The Wrong Family(80)
Nigel is clearly unhappy in his marriage. Why do you think he stays?
While Juno isn’t perfect, her situation is created by a lot of systemic inequality regarding mental health, physical health, housing needs, and the prison system. How do you think real people are disenfranchised by these systems? Do you think everyone who might be disempowered by these systems is disempowered in the same ways? How difficult would it be for someone like Juno to get back on her feet?
Why do you think the Straub family denied to themselves that Dakota needed some serious mental health assistance? Why do you think that this kind of issue goes undiagnosed? What advantages does Dakota have that others who struggle with mental health might not have? Discuss the mental health struggles that Dakota, Juno, and Josalyn have, respectively. How differently did their situations turn out, and why do you think that is?
Juno has some definitive thoughts about Winnie and the Crouches’ marriage. Do you agree with the opinions she has formed? Why or why not?
Why do you think Juno chooses to stay in the crawl space? What options do you think she has, if any?
Discuss the ways in which privilege functions for the characters in this novel.
In many ways, Winnie is performing the perfect family life she wants to have, even though her performance is designed to hide a terrible secret. In what ways do we perform in our own lives, and in what ways does society pressure and prompt us to do that?
The Wrong Family Author Q & A
What was your inspiration for The Wrong Family? Did it start with the idea of a troubled marriage, or did it start with the crawl space?
When I was fifteen, my aunt Marlene, who was visiting from South Africa at the time, told me a story about a couple in her city. In short: they’d found a squatter living in their closet, and the squatter had been there for months. I was less mortified than I was intrigued. What a great idea! Sneak into someone’s house and live there without them knowing! I wanted to be the squatter; I wanted to spy on the couple. I wanted to know what she saw and how involved she was in their lives. The story stuck with me and over the next twenty years I’d find myself revisiting the couple and their squatter until I decided to sit down and meet them. I did so in my mind, and I did not get what I was expecting.
What draws you to write about a complicated—maybe even doomed—marriage? Or family dynamics more generally?
I’m an introspective person. When I began writing seriously in my early twenties, I was exploring myself and my personality in a fictional world. I took my issues and my questions and my trauma to stories where I dressed them in characters and scenes. When I ran out of personal issues to write about, I began exploring human issues in general. Why do we do the things we do? Some authors write to beautify the world; I write to expose things in the crumbling of it.
How did you develop the character of Juno?
When I first moved to Seattle, I’d often write in coffee shops downtown. I befriended a handful of homeless men in the area who’d come sit at my table and chat with me. I met a homeless engineer, a homeless mechanic, a homeless musician, and a homeless vet during the three years I spent in the area. Their stories were told with painful remorse as they would recount the one mistake that derailed their lives. Juno mostly developed herself from those stories. I could hear those men in my head as I wrote about her. I knew she had to be desperate and I knew she wanted to make things right.
Juno’s and Winnie’s voices are so different, and yet they struggle with some of the same issues. Did one of them come more easily to you? Was one more of a challenge? What similarities do you see between Winnie and Juno? Might we say that they represent two directions stemming from the same forked path?
Winnie and Juno: different voices, same issues. They were separated by age and economics and yet they shared so many similarities. Juno was hiding in a crawl space; Winnie was hiding in her pretty house. One wanted to make amends for what she’d done and the other one wanted to forget what she’d done entirely. In the end, both were seeking peace, and they were both too dishonest about themselves to ever find it.
What comes first for you—the overall idea for the book or a character?
I ask what-if questions about myself and then seek to answer them. What if your husband had two other wives...? What if you were homeless...? What if you snapped and became a serial killer...? What if someone kidnapped you and locked you in a cabin? I’ve written all those stories because I wanted to read them. The characters show up at their leisure and I don’t always like them. But I always listen and tell their truth.
One of the great ironies of this story is that Winnie works in mental health but can’t see how deep her own brother’s struggles are, and Juno also worked in mental health but can’t see her own diagnosis. Was that irony deliberate, something you wove in from the beginning, or was it something that developed organically and perhaps even unconsciously as you wrote?
I think that it is a human issue. We see what we are comfortable seeing and shade our eyes to the rest. Winnie and Juno are both very selfish and self-involved individuals. They might work in an occupation that aids people, but they look to help themselves first. I think they’re both addicted to how doing good makes them feel, but in the end it’s still about their feelings.