The Ghost at the Table: A Novel (33 page)

A dangerous but absorbing confusion began forming in my mind as I wandered through Mark Twain’s house, peering at his wallpaper and admiring his carved Venetian four-poster bed. The more I discovered about Mark Twain’s daughters, the more I felt I already knew. Their father had been hot-tempered and humorous; so had mine. They had lived in a big beautiful house, which was later lost to them; so had I. It hardly mattered that the differences between our families were far more numerous than the similarities; that there were similarities at all between my family and Mark Twain’s seemed heady enough.

Ten years after visiting his house, I began a novel about Mark Twain’s daughters. It would be a historical novel, I decided, set in Hartford during the Gilded Age. I could already visualize the Merchant Ivory movie that would follow—three decorative little Victorian girls in white pinafores bowling hoops on a green lawn while their fierce-looking father smoked his corncob pipe in the background. But after three years of trying, I found that I could not do it.

I sat down and listed various theories to account for my failure: Mark Twain would have resented such an intrusion into his family life. I had done too much research and become musclebound with facts. I identified too much with the daughters. No plot that I could devise did justice to the girls’ complexity, plus my motives for writing about them were murky and contaminated by self-regard. All true.

Yet it was at this painful moment that the book I was eventually to write came into being. What really interested me, I finally understood, were the ways in which we claim to understand other people’s lives based on our own. Misconceptions and wishful thinking are as much a part of what we know about other people as any “truthful” details about them. As the narrator of my book says about her father, whose version of her childhood does not agree with her own: “That was the story he put together from all those details, a story that, like most stories people tell themselves about other people, was mostly about him.”

This character, who writes historical novels for girls and happens to be writing about Mark Twain’s daughters, has finally figured it all out. Then again, the minute you think you’ve got the last word on someone—well, that’s exactly when he gets away from you, isn’t it?

1. In the first few pages, Cynthia freely admits that she and Frances have a strained relationship, though she also says that “of all the people in the world I probably love Frances best” (
page 1
). Now, however, after many years of refusing Frances’s invitations to come visit during the holidays, Cynthia decides to fly back east for Thanksgiving. What do you think changes her mind? Why is it so important to Frances to have Cynthia come to her house for the holiday?

2. In addition to Frances’s family, Arlen, Wen-Yi, the Fareeds, and Frances’s assistant, Mary Ellen, come to Frances’s house for Thanksgiving. With such a guest list, Jane goes so far as to call it “Thanksgiving at the UN” (
page 30
). How have all these outsiders to the family come to the table, and what impact do they have on shaping the events of the evening?

3. At the Thanksgiving table, Frances’s daughter Sarah proposes that they take turns describing what they are most proud of having done for someone else (
pages 207
– 11). Compare the answers of each sister. Why does Cynthia find Frances’s answer so difficult to hear?

4.
The Ghost at the Table
opens with a quotation from
The Autobiography of Mark Twain
, “a person’s memory has no more sense than his conscience.” How does this statement pertain to each sister? To what degree does it explain Cynthia’s and Frances’s different recollections of the past?

5. Both Cynthia and Frances have very different views of their childhood. More specifically, they have opposing accounts of what happened to their mother. Whose version is more credible,
and why? Discuss the possibility that
both
sisters’ recollections are accurate.

6. Frances is an interior decorator; Cynthia writes inspiring history books for girls about domestic life. Why do you think they’ve chosen those professions? How do their jobs provide a comment on who they are or aren’t?

7. What role do you think Mrs. Jordan plays in the story?

8. At one point, Cynthia remembers her sister Helen asking their mother what the mother looked like when she was a girl. Instead of listening to her mother’s answer, Cynthia is struck “by an appalling, fascinating thought: What if you looked into the future and didn’t recognize yourself? What if you saw someone else looking back at you instead?” (
page 131
– 32). Do you think Cynthia the child would recognize Cynthia the adult? Would your childhood self be able to identify the adult you’ve become?

9. In Cynthia’s mind, Frances’s daughters, Sarah and Jane, roughly correspond with Frances and herself when they were younger. Is Cynthia simply projecting? In what ways does the past continue to influence the characters’ perceptions of the present?

10. Soon after her mother’s death, Cynthia implies that her father played a hand in it. She then goes on to tell Frances that Frances unknowingly helped him (
pages 155
– 57). A few days later, though, she retracts the accusation. Do you think she was being honest or dishonest in either case?

11. The day after Thanksgiving, Frances insists that she and Cynthia visit Mark Twain’s house in Hartford, with their father
in tow. When they discover that the Mark Twain House is closed, they proceed to visit the house they grew up in. What do they find at these houses? What are they hoping to find?

12. Who, or what, does the ghost of the title refer to, and why?

13. Who are Sarah and Arlen really discussing when Cynthia overhears them on the baby monitor (
page 240
)? How do your feelings about Cynthia begin to shift at this point?

14. When Cynthia wakes up after falling asleep alone in the living room, she sees a pillar candle overflowing with wax. As the organ catches fire, she sits silently watching (
page 242
). Why, at first, does she do nothing to stop it?

15. Although Cynthia and Frances’s father is unable to speak, he makes his presence known in the house. Discuss each sister’s behavior toward him and his reaction to both.

16. What motivates Cynthia to check in on her father when everyone is asleep (
pages 287
– 91)? Do you think she should have called Frances when she discovered he was having trouble breathing? Why didn’t she? In the end, how would you describe what happens between Cynthia and her father?

17. Cynthia says, “It has been mostly for Jane’s benefit that I have set down this record of what happened over Thanksgiving” so that “my version of those few days in November will stand as an argument for the unreliability of memory” (
page 293
). How do you think Jane would respond to this record? Although this is Cynthia’s story, did you find yourself identifying with one sister over the other? Who in the story did you have the most empathy for, and why?

SUZANNE BERNE’S first novel,
A Crime in the Neighborhood
, won Great Britain’s Orange Prize and was a finalist for both the
Los Angeles Times
and the Edgar Allen Poe first fiction awards. Her work has appeared in the
New York Times, Allure
, and the
Washington Post
, among other publications. Both
A Crime in the Neighborhood
and her second novel,
A Perfect Arrangement
, were named
New York Times
Notable Books.

Also by S
UZANNE
B
ERNE

A Crime in the Neighborhood,
a novel
A Perfect Arrangement,
a novel
Missing Lucile,
a memoir

Praise for
The Ghost at the Table

“[A] compelling tale about the struggles families go through to understand each other.”

—
MSNBC.com

“A witty, moving and psychologically astute story about siblings and the disparate ways they remember common experiences from childhood. … Wholly engaging, the perfect spark for launching a rich conversation around your own table once the dishes have been cleared.”

—
The Washington Post Book World

“
The Ghost at the Table
will haunt you long after you have read the final page. … Berne is masterful.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“Berne’s novel is perfect reading. … Perfect if you like compelling characters, acerbic insights and a gimlet-eyed look at the intense bonds between siblings. Berne explores how memory shapes family members in very different ways.”

—
USA Today

“Delicious. … Berne turns a witty tale of holiday dysfunction into a transfixing borderline gothic, her appealing heroine into an unreliable narrator seething with decades-old resentment. … A.”

—
Entertainment Weekly

“From its emotionally intricate first paragraph, Suzanne Berne’s
The Ghost at the Table
is a crash course in sibling rivalry, with its cutthroat dueling for dominance and parental love. … The intersection of memory and morality is where this compelling novel makes its home.”

—
O: The Oprah Magazine

“In Berne’s complex emotional minuet, no one is blameless. … Fixing on Cynthia and Frances with ferocious focus and narrative drive, Berne lets that gate swing wide open.”

—
Elle

“Intellectually and emotionally stimulating. … Berne, winner of the Orange Prize, has a flair for domestic drama, recalling the work of Joyce Carol Oates or of Anne Tyler. … Berne creates striking characters and brisk scenes. … Fresh and intriguing.”

—
San Francisco Chronicle

“Ominous crimes, family squabbles, implosions. In Berne’s universe, ‘dysfunctional family’ is a redundancy. … In
The Ghost at the Table,
Suzanne Berne continues to apply dark colors to her expanding universe of the American family. But evident, too—at the edges, even at the center—are streaks of light, images of hope.”

—
The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Even more than the satisfyingly delivered family revelations, it’s the barbed, spot-on evocation of these sisters’ relationship that makes this book a must-read.”

—
More
magazine

“As the turkey is carved and the pies get passed, Orange Prize winner Berne shows how family members can live through the same events and yet end up with radically different impressions. … A disquieting novel that avoids pat answers.”

—
The Christian Science Monitor

“Suzanne Berne has a gift for creating unreliable narrators. … In
The Ghost at the Table,
Berne masterfully explores the parallel realities that can endure after a great sadness.”

—The Boston Globe

“The writing is lovely. The descriptions of Concord are so effective that you can almost smell the late fall and approaching winter. … The ghost at the table is neither constant nor defined. It can be a long dead mother, a still living father who no longer functions very well, a childhood friend or simply a memory that has rearranged itself into an invisible presence. To all of these: set a place, light some candles. Perhaps even Mark Twain will show up.”

—
Chicago Sun-Times

“Suzanne Berne solidifies her claim in the land of the literary domestic drama. … Berne’s writing is sure-footed. She captures the New England gloom and quiet bitterness of the characters in deft strokes.”

—
The Charlotte Observer

“A psychologically sophisticated, gimlet-eyed look at a family triangle. It’s also a three-cornered story, with eerie echoes at every turn. … Berne is an elegant writer.”

—
The Kansas City Star

“A brooding, emotionally potent novel about the myths and misunderstandings that form crucial chapters of our family histories. Suzanne Berne is an immensely talented writer.”

—Tom Perrotta

“Suzanne Berne has written a novel as nuanced and illuminating as it is gripping.”

—Elizabeth Graver