Introduction

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Excerpt

Mushrooms

The woods behind our house in Hesse were darker than any I have seen since, through eighty-two years of life. The dirt was black and soft, like crumbled velvet, and the tops of the trees were knit together so tightly that even in the middle of the day, after just a few steps, I could hardly see anything at all. The spruce trees were fat, with thick dark green needles, and amongst them grew elms and ash, with heavy leaves that would tear free, one at a time, and fall silently to the ground. It seemed to me, as a child, that there must have been some rule in the forest. Things happened singly, all alone. That is how I remember it. The ominous caw of a crow. Then silence. Then the rapid terrified scuttle of a small animal, a rodent of some kind. Silence. An owl hoots. A wolf howls. Silence. The rat a tat of a woodpecker. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. We Are Gathered is set at a wedding, but you never hear directly from the bride and groom? Why would the author make that choice and what are your memories of weddings you have attended?

2. There are several unlikeable characters in this novel. Why would the author include their perspectives and did you become more sympathetic to them as the novel progressed? It is possible that one character is the actual narrator of the book?

3. Annette, the mother of the bride, reflects after the wedding that the title of the Salvador Dali painting, The Persistence of Memory, is wrong.
"The persistence of memory. I think that is a title of a painting Jack Chandler showed me once when he took Elizabeth and me on a tour of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I can’t remember the painting, but I know now, looking at Elizabeth’s wedding dress - what am I supposed to do with this wedding dress? - that the title was wrong. The persistence of things, of wedding dresses that will never be worn again, of forks and spoons trampled into the dirt, of this planet once all the people and their dogs have died, things maybe, but not memory. Memories die with us."
Which is more persistent, memories or objects, and in what was do works of art - paintings and poems and symphonies- change that equation.

4. Jack Chandler, the bride's father's college roommate, is the only non Jewish guest to have a role in the novel. He is an outsider, but he plays key parts both in the bride's life and in the life of her mother, Annette. Why would it be easier to reveal your thoughts to a stranger than to someone from your own community?

5. In the last chapter two characters come together in a magical realist story that differs from the other chapters. Why do you think those authors chose those two characters to meet in the final chapter - Steven Shapiro, who is mentally ill - and Rachel Rosenblatt, a Holocaust survivor- when they clearly did not actually know each other and why did she title it True Love?

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