The Blessings
Elise Juska, 2014
Grand Central Publishing
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781455574032
Summary
Elise Juska's The Blessings is an extraordinary novel about an ordinary family.
The Blessings rally around one another in times of celebration and those of sorrow, coming together for departures and arrivals, while its members harbor private struggles and moments of personal joy.
College student Abby ponders homesickness in her first semester away from her Philadelphia home, while her cousin Stephen commits a petty act of violence that takes a surprising turn, and their aunt Lauren faces a crisis in her storybook marriage she could never have foreseen.
Through the lens of one unforgettable family, this beautifully moving novel explores how our families define us and how we shape them in return. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Universityof New Hammpshire
• Awards—Tom Williams Memorial Award; Charait Award
• Currently—lives in Maine and Philadelphia
Elise Juska's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Ploughshares, Gettysburg Review, Missouri Review, Good Housekeeping, Hudson Review, Harvard Review, and many other publications. She is the recipient of the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction from Ploughshares, and her work has been cited in The Best American Short Stories.
She is the author of several novels—The Blessings (2014); One for Sorrow, Two for Joy (2007); The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (2004); and Getting Over Jack Wagner (2003).
Elise earned her Master’s in Fiction Writing at the University of New Hampshire, where she received the Tom Williams Memorial for fiction writing and the Charait Award for best short story. She has since taught fiction writing at The New School in NYC, in the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire, and at numerous summer writing conferences.
Elise now spends summers writing on an island in Maine and the rest of the year teaching at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she directs the undergraduate Creative Writing Program and is the recipient of the 2014 Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] bighearted novel.... Juska's moving, multifaceted portrait of the Blessing family gleams like a jewel (A 2014 Best Book).
Philadelphia Inquirer
Takes us into the heart of one of Philadelphia's large Irish-Catholic families.... [T]he storytelling is confident and Juska writes movingly about the emotional life of individuals within a close social unit.
Toronto Star
There's no shortage of novels about the quirks and tragedies of large families, but The Blessings is a uniquely poignant, prismatic look at an Irish-Catholic clan as it rallies after losing one of its own.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review.) Several generations of the Blessings, a Philadelphia-based, Irish-American family, come beautifully to life in a deceptively simple tale that examines the foibles, disappointments and passions that tie family members together.... [T]he reader leaves feeling lucky to have spent some time in their presence.
Publishers Weekly
[Juska] is a shrewd observer of human nature and has an outstanding ability to bring her characters to life on the page.... This wonderfully readable work about family life will have you eagerly turning pages to find out what happens to characters about whom you really care. —Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA
Library Journal
With each chapter, Juska takes readers into the life of a different family member, honoring the individuality that blossoms even amid the strong bonds of a family's deep love. She draws intimate and detailed sketches of each of these characters, but the ultimate portrait is of the Blessing family as a whole.
Booklist
Juska’s story is like leafing through an old family photo album, where typically unremarkable moments are captured in black and white. What makes the album unique isn’t its contents but the way each photo abuts or overlays the next.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
(The following questions were written by Rachelle Nocito from the Haverford Township Free Library in Havertown, Pennsylvania. Thank you, Rachelle!)
1. Do you think it is symbolic that the author used the surname Blessings? Does the name reflect any aspects of the story?
2. Do you think John Blessings death was significant? How would the story have evolved if another character had died instead?
3. Why does the author jump back and forth in time? How does this narrative device impact your experience of the story?
4. Are there equally strong female and male characters among the Blessings?
5. Dave has a meltdown during his turn with the Town Watch group. What caused this meltdown and why did the author put this scene in the novel? Does Ann understand the depth of Dave’s meltdown?
6. Did Helen’s move to the Senior Living Community make things easier like the kids thought it would? Did Helen have regrets over the move?
7. For her school project Megan asks her grandmother to remember events in her life and tell her story. What do you think of Helen’s life assessment? Do you agree that she has little to offer her granddaughter with her memories?
8. How would you describe the relationship and the family lifestyle of Margie and Joe? Are they living the family life that John Blessing may have had if he lived? Where did Margie and Joe go wrong in their marriage and how do you think their secret affected their lives?
9. Over the course of the book, the story transitions from grandparents to parents and then grandchildren. How does the passing of time and the sense of growing up and getting older evolve among the Blessings grandchildren—Elena, Abby, Stevie, Megan and their peers?
(Questions courtesy of Rachelle Nocito, Haverford Township Free Library, Havertown, PA. .)