The Houseguest
Agnes Rossi, 2000
Penguin Group USA
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780452281974
Summary
The year is 1934 and Edward Devlin, recently widowed and a disillusioned veteran of Ireland's struggle for independence, leaves his small daughter, Maura, behind in Ireland and heads for America with not much more than his memories and a lingering desire for his beautiful dead wife. His one tenuous connection is to a man named Fitzgibbon, owner of a silk-dyeing mill in Paterson, New Jersey. Fitz greets his fellow Irishman with hospitality, inviting Edward into his home and, ultimately, setting up a chain of events that will cause Fitz to lose everything and Edward to gain all he dared not hope for.
Moving from a small town in the north of Ireland to Depression-era Paterson to the New Jersey Shore, The Houseguest is an eloquent and morally complex novel that perfectly captures the rhythms of grief, hope, and humor that are indelible parts of the Irish-American experience. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1959
• Where—Paterson, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Rutgers University; M.F.A., New York
University
• Currently—N/A
Agnes Rossi is the author of the 1992 story collection, The Quick, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and the 1994 novel, Split Skirt. She was a finalist for the 1996 Granta Best of Young Novelists Award. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[T]he book's moral sensibility has been dragged by the facts into [an] impasse, and we are left with a lingering distaste for the supposedly romantic characters on whom we have expended our interest. Rossi...is to be praised for her vivid descriptions and creation of at least one achingly real character, but her novel's moral and historical compasses waver too often to bring us to the heart of its story.
Lucy Ferriss - New York Times Book Review
Rossi, a compelling stylist...looks at how tragedies can sever our connection to life.
New York Daily News
A rich novel of Irish immigration and personal loss.... Discursive, quiet, thoughtful, lovely at times, and delicately put together, like a whispered conversation in a church, at a high requiem, when mourning and longing come together to color the world with a vibrant brand of melancholy, that Irish sadness that never resides far from beauty.
Elle
Based loosely on pivotal events in the life of author Rossi's mother, this tale of loss, displacement and new beginnings is set in 1930s Ireland and Paterson, N.J. The novel opens with a tragic scene in Ireland: young Maura learns that her mother has died of tuberculosis, and that her father is leaving her with Irish relatives who don't want her, while he returns to America, where Maura grew up. Edward Devlin, shattered ex-revolutionary, deposits his daughter in the care of two ill-tempered aunts, Sadie and Bell, and settles into Paterson, hoping that an old acquaintance, "Fitz" Fitzgibbon, can help him find work in a woefully depressed economy. Fitz, now a silk tycoon and local celebrity, finds an engineering job for Edward, and invites him to live in the home he shares with his young wife, Sylvia. Edward ends up staying with the Fitzgibbons for nearly a year, moving into his own apartment only after he has an affair with Sylvia. Back in Ireland, Maura is sent to a strict Catholic boarding school where she is allowed to speak only Irish. Rossi interpolates updates on Maura's world into the larger drama of Edward's relations with the Fitzgibbons, as all of their lives head for a drastic change. Despite Rossi's (Split Skirt; The Quick) skillful prose and heartrending plot, this is a surprisingly dispassionate tale, with the cast of characters kept at arm's distance even as their flaws and hopes are rendered with painstaking care. Edward's mostly selfish actions alternate with his hazy regrets and a grief made even more vague with drink; and Maura's chilly ambivalence seems fitting, as she's living in limbo, hoping to be reunited with her father. The main characters' desperate hearts are all the more melancholy for their detachment. The author's decision to tell this story with such uneasy restraint makes for challenging, unsentimental reading.
Publishers Weekly
As Rossi explores the narcissism of both love and grief, and the way lovers become a circle of two—with no place for a pathetic, precocious child—she reveals herself a gifted storyteller. Judging from this elegant, searing novel, seen from several viewpoints, this author has a million tales in her mind burning to be told. — Emily White
Amazon Editorial Reviews
From Granta-award finalist and acclaimed story writer Rossi, a well-orchestrated second novel, consistently probing and upbeat, in which three people get their hearts' desires by willfully transcending suffering and doubt. The Depression-struck factory town of Paterson, New Jersey, is perhaps an unlikely place to find fulfillment, but that's where engineer Edward Devlin decides to go in 1934 after burying his young wife, Agnes, in Ireland. He gives their daughter, Maura, into the care of his spinster sisters, since in his wild grief he can think only of leaving everything behind. Paterson for Edward means Fitzgibbon, a successful Irish factory owner who may help him make a fresh start. Sure enough, Fitz welcomes Edward with open arms after hearing his story and soon finds him a good job. But as Edward begins his new life in the home of his benefactor, he slowly discovers that he's attracted to Fitz's wife, Sylvia, and that the feeling is mutual. Frustrated by a childless marriage and unsatisfied by charity work, Sylvia has dreamed of a release; she and Edward share a neediness, it seems, that Fitz in all his self-sufficiency could never imagine. The pairs happiness together is undermined by the burden of their deceit, even after Edward finds his own apartment and they can become lovers at their leisure. But when Fitz, who recognizes the affair as the ticket to his own freedom, begins divorce proceedings, all are well on their way to having exactly what they want. On the periphery of this equation is Maura, who languishes in a convent school back in Ireland but remains unshakeable in her conviction that her father will come to get her. She too is ultimately triumphant. In lesser hands this would be the stuff of melodrama, but here its transformed into a story remarkable for its fluidity and grace. A rare accomplishment.
Kirkus Reviews
Book Club Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Houseguest:
1. What kind of man is Edward Devlin? What do you think of his decision to leave his daughter Maura behind in Ireland after his wife died? Is he correct in doing so—is his decision in the best interests of himself...or Maura...or both?
2. What about Sylvia—what kind of woman is she? What are her dreams...and why is her life unfulfilling to her?
3. Consider Sylvia's marriage to Fitzgibbon: is it possible to justify her affair with Edward? Do you have sympathy for the couple...Edward and Sylvia? For Edward—is his infatuation with Sylvia a betrayal of his deceased wife? Or is it earned: a feeling that "all the dreariness of the last months [was] working its way out of his system"?
4. Fitzgibbon thinks of Sylvia and Edward thus: ''He could not imagine spending the rest of his life with Sylvia.... Men like Devlin needed wives. They hardly existed without them. They hardly existed with them." Is this a fair assessment or not? Is Fitzgibbon overly self-sufficient—without normal human needs? Or is his independence admirable—what do you think?
5. Then, of course, there is Maura, left by her father in the care of two bitter aunts—Bell and Sadie. How well does Maura manage her grief and loneliness? In the end, she passes a sort of judgment on her father...is she right?
6. What is the moral predicament at the heart of this novel? Is there one...or more than one?
7. Are you satisfied by the novel's end? Do you feel the moral dilemmas have been resolved...or put aside?
8. Agnes Rossi tells her story from differing points of view. Why might she have decided to structure her narrative in that manner, rather than use a single narrator? How do these varying viewpoints affect your understanding of the novel?
9. Which character in this story did you sympathsize with most? Which one, the least?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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