Casebook
Mona Simpson, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385351416
Summary
A powerful new novel about a young boy’s quest to uncover the mysteries of his unraveling family. What he discovers turns out to be what he least wants to know: the inner workings of his parents’ lives. And even then he can’t stop searching.
Miles Adler-Hart starts eavesdropping to find out what his mother is planning for his life. When he learns instead that his parents are separating, his investigation deepens, and he enlists his best friend, Hector, to help. Both boys are in thrall to Miles’s unsuspecting mother, Irene, who is “pretty for a mathematician.” They rifle through her dresser drawers, bug her telephone lines, and strip-mine her computer, only to find that all clues lead them to her bedroom, and put them on the trail of a mysterious stranger from Washington, D.C.
Their amateur detective work starts innocently but quickly takes them to the far reaches of adult privacy as they acquire knowledge that will affect the family’s well-being, prosperity, and sanity. Burdened with this powerful information, the boys struggle to deal with the existence of evil and concoct modes of revenge on their villains that are both hilarious and naïve. Eventually, haltingly, they learn to offer animal comfort to those harmed and to create an imaginative path to their own salvation.
Casebook brilliantly reveals an American family both both coming apart at the seams and, simultaneously, miraculously reconstituting itself to sustain its members through their ultimate trial. Mona Simpson, once again, demonstrates her stunning mastery, giving us a boy hero for our times whose story remains with us long after the novel is over and we’ve read the novel’s final page. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 14, 1957
• Where—Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California, Berkeley; M.F.A.,
Columbia University
• Awards— Whiting Award (more below)
• Currently—lives in Santa Monica, California
Mona E. Simpson (born Mona Jandali) is an American author. She is a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature at Bard College. She won the Whiting Prize for her first novel, Anywhere but Here (1986). It was a popular success and adapted as a film by the same name, released in 1999. She then wrote a sequel for it, The Lost Father in 1992. Her novel Off Keck Road (2000) won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.
She is also the biological younger sister of the late Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, whom she did not meet until she was 25 years old.
Early life
Mona Jandali was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Her father Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, originally from Homs, Syria, was a cousin of composer and pianist Malek Jandali. Abdulfattah taught at the University of Wisconsin and later made a career in the food and beverage industry. Her mother, Joanne Carole Schieble, was his student; however, they were the same age because Jandali had received his PhD at a young age. Schieble became a speech language pathologist. They divorced in 1962 and Joanne lost touch with Jandali. Joanne remarried and Mona was given the last name of her stepfather, Simpson.
Career
Simpson received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and her M.F.A. from Columbia University. After graduating from Columbia, she worked as an editor for Paris Review. In 1994, she returned to Los Angeles with her husband. In 2001, she started teaching creative writing at UCLA, and also has an appointment at Bard College in New York.
Simpson's novels are a mixture of events from her life and pure fiction.[1][7][8] Her first novel, Anywhere But Here (1986), was a critical and popular success, winning the Whiting Prize. In describing her intentions for the novel, Simpson stated:
I wanted to write about American mythologies, American yearnings that might be responses, delayed or exaggerated but in some way typical, to the political and social truths of our part of the world in our century. But I wrote very personally about one family. I think it takes a long time before a crisis—like AIDS—enters the culture to a point where responses exist in a character, where personal gestures are both individual and resonant in a larger way.
It was adapted as the 1999 film Anywhere But Here, starring Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman. A Regular Guy (1996) explores the strained relationship of a Silicon Valley tycoon with a daughter born out of wedlock, whom he did not acknowledge. Off Keck Road (2000), portraying decades in the lives of three women in the Midwest, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. Stacey D'Erasmo states that "Off Keck Road marks the place where origin leaves off and improvisation begins."
Simpson's most recent novel, My Hollywood, was published in 2011. It explores the complex relationships, issues of class, and perspectives of two women, a European-American composer and mother in her 30s, and her immigrant nanny from the Philippines, who cares for her son and has five of her own in the Philippines whom she is supporting. The novel alternates between the voices of the two women, contrasting their worlds. Liesl Schillinger suggests that the novel is a "compassionate fictional exploration of this complicated global relationship, Simpson assesses the human cost that the child-care bargain exacts on the amah, on her employer and on the children of both." Ron Charles further argues that:
What really invigorates this novel, though, is the way it alternates between Claire's chapters and chapters narrated by Lola, her 50-year-old Filipino nanny. I was worried early on that Lola would be a Southeast Asian version of the Magical Negro, who exists merely to help some self-absorbed white person reach enlightenment. But she's entirely her own wonderful, troubled character, and her relationship with Claire remains complex and unresolved.
Finding family
Abdulfattah "John" Jandali and Joanne Carole Schieble had a baby boy in 1955 prior to both their marriage and Mona's birth, but gave him up for adoption. The boy, computer pioneer Steve Jobs, was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. In the 1980s, Jobs found his birth mother, by then Joanne Simpson, who told him that Mona was his biological sister. The siblings met for the first time in 1985 and developed a close friendship. They kept their relationship secret until 1986, when Simpson introduced Jobs as her brother at her book party for her first novel, Anywhere But Here. The two forged a relationship and he regularly visited her in Manhattan. Simpson said, "My brother and I are very close; I admire him enormously." Jobs said, "We're family. She's one of my best friends in the world. I call her and talk to her every couple of days."
Simpson had already been looking for their father and found him, then managing a coffee shop. When she reached Jandali, he said, "I wish you could have seen me when I was running a bigger restaurant." Jandali told Simpson that he had once managed a popular Mediterranean restaurant in Silicon Valley. "Everybody used to come there," the Jobs biographer, Walter Isaacson, says Jandali told Simpson. "Even Steve Jobs used to eat there. Yeah, he was a great tipper."
In a taped interview aired on 60 Minutes, Jobs said: "When I was looking for my biological mother, obviously, you know, I was looking for my biological father at the same time, and I learned a little bit about him and I didn't like what I learned. I asked her (Mona) to not tell him that we ever met...not tell him anything about me."
In her eulogy to Jobs (New York Times, October 30, 2011), Simpson wrote:
I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people. Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.
Marriage and family
In 1993, Simpson married the television writer and producer Richard Appel, and they had two children together, Gabriel and Grace. Appel, a writer for The Simpsons, used his wife's name for Homer Simpson's mother, beginning with the episode "Mother Simpson." They later divorced and Simpson currently lives in Santa Monica with her two children.
Awards
• 1986, Whiting Prize
• 1987, Hodder Fellowship (Princeton University)
• 1988, Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1995, Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fellowship
• 2001, Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize
• 2001, Finalist: PEN/Faulkner award
• 2008, Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
(Author bio from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/03/2014.)
See New York Times article on Mona Simpson.
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) From an early age, Miles senses the vulnerability of his mother, a recently divorced mathematician, and throughout his childhood and adolescence feels the need to look out for her. When Irene falls in love with Eli Lee, Miles is highly suspicious.... Ultimately, this is a story about a son’s love for his mother, and Simpson’s portrayal of utter loyalty is infectious.
Publishers Weekly
Having won honors ranging from a Whiting Writer's Award to an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts, the beloved Simpson shows up with a young protagonist named Miles Adler-Rich, who's compelled by the recent separation of his parents to spy on them with the help of friend Hector.... The scary secrets they learn give the boys their first real lesson in good and evil.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Ensnaring, witty, and perceptive.... This exceptionally incisive, fine–tuned and charming novel unfolds gracefully as [Simpson] brings fresh understanding and keen humor to the complexities intrinsic to each stage of life and love. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
A child of divorce turns private eye in the latest well-observed study of domestic dysfunction.... Simpson's sixth novel...features a teenage narrator struggling to comprehend a parental split. But the new book is...framed as a detective story about discovering the deceptions that can swirl around relationships.... [Simpson's] command of the story is rock-solid. A clever twist on a shopworn theme by a top-shelf novelist.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In the opening note from Hershel Geschwind of Neverland Comics, Hershel writes that Hector and Miles will continue to go back and forth with this manuscript “until they get their story straight or until they grow up, whichever comes last, or never.” How different do you think the boys’ accounts are of what happened, and what role do Hector’s footnotes play throughout the manuscript? What exactly do you think Herschel means by “grow up”?
2. This book is in many ways a coming-of age -story, but Miles learns many of his life lessons by spying on his mother, not through his own actual experience. Why do you think the author has chosen to focus so extensively on the effects of adult lives—the secret lives of parents—on their children?
3. How the motto of Miles’s and Hector’s school—motto, "is it true, is it kind, is it necessary? Will it improve on the silence?”shape their view of the world? What impact does Eli have on this view?
4. Did Miles’s extensive involvement with his mother’s personal life have a negative impact on his ability to focus on his own experiences, or did he gain greater insight into what it means to love than he might have otherwise?
5. What do we learn about Irene and about her relationships with Carey and Eli—and about adult lives in general—that we might not find out about were the novel not told through Miles’s perspective? What do we gain? Do you think most teenagers are as fascinated by the lives of their parents as Miles and Hector are?
6. Miles mentions that when Eli promises to put up Christmas lights, it was the “first feeling I had for Eli. We could be men who did that shit. I liked the idea of putting up lights ourselves” (page 28). What do the Christmas lights represent to Miles?
7. Why is Hector just as invested in uncovering the truth about Eli as Miles is? Or is he even more invested?
8. What is the significance of the notes on the kitchen blackboard? How do the quotes act as a reflection of what is going on in the story, whether or not Irene is aware of it at the time? For example, on page 41, what is the significance of the quote “benighted: in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance.” Do you think Eli ever found Irene’s lack of awareness of his own deceit contemptible?
9. Several times throughout the novel Eli mentions his love for animals. The only stories he tells that Miles never doubts involve this deep love. Miles says at one point that he saw Eli holding the dead kittens, and he knew how to do it. Do you think the story about the sick cat, Coco, was true? Eli seems to be able to care for animals and not people. What does this say about who he is?
10. Does Eli ever really love Irene, Miles, and the Boops? What were his motives for stringing them along, and, do you think he ever believed the outcome would be different than it was?
11. On page 104 Miles describes romance as seeming like “friendship, but with a fleck of sparkle.” How do Miles’s feelings about romantic and platonic love change over the course of the novel? What does he learn from his parents’ relationship, from Eli and the Mims’ relationship, and from his friendship with Hector? Do you think Miles ever really questions his own sexuality?
12. On page 108, Miles says that when he “thinks of [his] life as a boy, it ended there that night, while the Mims stared out at the Pacific Ocean with its barreling waves, the world indifferent to our losses.” What causes this turning point?
13. What role does Ben Orion play? Why does he help Miles and Hector without asking for payment?
14. How does hearing directly from an older Hector through his comments in footnotes to the text alter or inform your impression of him as a character? What, if anything, does it bring to light about his relationship with Miles? Did it surprise you that he got into drugs when he went off to school? Do you think one of them needed the other more, and if so, why?
15. Why do you think Irene puts up with all of Eli’s broken promises? What is it about him that keeps drawing her back, despite never seeing where he lives, never meeting his child or his brother, and the fact that he never follows through on any of the futures he proposes, even with things as small as the buying of silverware?
16. On page 181, at Irene’s forty-fifth birthday party, Eli makes this speech: “All of you love Reen for many reasons.... But I, I love her, I love her because I, I can’t help loving her. No matter what ever happens, I am and I will always be in love with Irene Adler.” What does he mean, and what is it about Irene that makes Eli love her, or at least claim to love her, so much?
17. Who is “C” in Jean’s book dedication? Why do you think she tolerates Eli’s transgressions, and how much do you think she actually knows about them? Do you think she discovered Irene on her own? Do you think that Eli would eventually have told her?
18. What leads Miles to say that “hope for happiness is happiness” (page 229)? Do you think this statement is true?
19. Why do you think Miles lies to Eli about his mother dying in the arms of a man she loved when he runs into him years later?
20. Mona Simpson is known as an author of voice. How do you think the voice of Miles stacks up? Does he feel real?
21. What do you think Irene got out of her relationship with Eli? Does she, and do we, learn anything about her through her sexual experiences with him that give insight into who she is, or into what may have gone wrong with her marriage? Do you think she ultimately found happiness?
22. Bonus question 1: Did you notice parallels to Sherlock Holmes? Which boy is Holmes and which is Watson? Did their identities keep shifting, as they disguise their real details, change their appearances and hair colors?
23. Bonus question 2: Why do you think the heroine is called Irene Adler?
24. Bonus recipe: OLIVE OIL BUNDT CAKE (This is adapted from the pastry chef at Maialino—imagine Marge barging into Danny Meyer’s Gramercy Park Hotel restaurant and getting the men in aprons to scribble this on a napkin)
CAKE
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 cup whole milk
• 3 large eggs
• 2 tablespoons grated orange zest
• 1/4 cup Grand Marnier
1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Spray a 10-inch cake pan with cooking spray and line the bottom with parchment paper. In a bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and powder. In another bowl, whisk the olive oil, milk, eggs, orange zest and Grand Marnier. Add the dry ingredients; whisk until just combined.
2. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 1 hour, until the top is golden and a cake tester comes out clean. Transfer the cake to a rack and let cool for 30 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the pan, invert the cake onto the rack and let cool completely, 2 hours.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)