Comments on: Scene Revision: Liz vs. Mom

By: Jenny

Jenny — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:20:05 +0000

Thank you, Joanna, and all the other booksellers here. Believe me, authors know how important you are.

By: Joanna

Joanna — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:39:47 +0000

Jenny, I work in a used book store (it really helps to support my habit) and I recommend your books to absolutely everyone who walks in, male or female. I usually start them off with WTT or Agnes even though my personal favorites are (usually) Bet Me and Fast Women. And I lurk on your blog all the time. I can’t seem to get enough Crusie!

By: Kelly S

Kelly S — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:27:55 +0000

Happy to hear it!

By: Jenny

Jenny — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 03:32:26 +0000

Oh, that was thirty years ago. Technically I’m in remission, but I’m feeling fairly secure.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 03:31:47 +0000

In my defense, my mother did once collect teddy bears, so that’s where it comes from. She never had anywhere near 600, although her bedroom was pretty full. Also, she’s not nuts. The bears in Wild Ride were bears because that’s what they gave as prizes at the Whack-A-Mole. I know they have other stuff as prized, but we already had a lot of detail there and we wanted to simple things up as much as possible.

By: Kelly S

Kelly S — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:57:14 +0000

The cancer is what I zoned in on. I’m assuming that is all gone and over with?

By: Kelly S

Kelly S — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:52:40 +0000

Wow! I so didn’t get that. Totally thought the Mom was overbearing and ridiculous in her expectations. Who waits up for a 33 year old woman. Jenny makes excellent points – both in the regression around parents (yep, I do it) and that parents should let their kids grow up which the mom hasn’t done.

By: Kelly S

Kelly S — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:49:57 +0000

I think the beady eyed bears attacking comes as a left over from Wild Ride.

By: Kelly S

Kelly S — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:49:11 +0000

At 40, I’m with CrankyOtter. I visit my folks once a year – Christmas or Thanksgiving depending on odd or even year. (At the in-laws during the opposite) Now they visit me about 4 times a year and I call weekly. I know they’d love to hear from me daily or at least more frequently and I get nagged oh so subtly about visiting, “so any chance we’ll see you hear before the holidays” “what are your vacation plans” – 3 weekends in a row, same answer each time (none). I pray my parents will hold their own until they die as I’d likely kill them if they tried to move in with me.

By: AB

AB — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:57:52 +0000

I really liked the scene, I thought the interaction between Liz and her mum felt really realistic. The paragraph where Liz notes that her mum just misses the idea of her rang true to me as well. With the bears it felt to me like her mum was proud of the collection, but that the one Liz brought didn’t fit for some reason (she doesn’t like purple? Or doesn’t like non-traditional coloured bears?) and was symptamatic of Liz not understanding. Her having the bear mail box leans towards this as well, I would have thought.

I was going to ask a totally tangential question about the Wonderfalls hoodie, but don’t want to hijack, so shall wander back to Lucy’s place…

By: Micki

Micki — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 04:08:26 +0000

What I picked up from the bears is that Liz is buying a bear that she hopes will impress her mom, but she doesn’t actually take the time and do the research to know what bear will *please* her mom. This is a strong Crusie theme, I think. In Bet Me, the jerk buys Min “a snow globe” — which doesn’t fit the collection. Oh, and somewhere (book? blog?), Jenny talks about how a guy buys a bouquet of flowers, and expects sex and handstands . . . whereas for the woman, it’s just a token gesture. If he really *got* her, he’d bring (gerbera daisies?) a specific sort of flower that has meaning for them or for her or even just for him. (Was this Cinderella Deal? I’ve only read the book once so far, so I might be wrong.) Liz doesn’t have a clue about the bear thing; she’s just presenting a token of her affection, not her real affection.

Anyway, I like Liz; I like her mom too (but I hate Mary Lou! probably in the way I should hate Mary Lou). I’m assuming that this is the beginning, and there’s going to be growth here.

By: Micki

Micki — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 03:57:34 +0000

I loved that bit; I *am* that woman (-:. Insight into MB’s character, and also, the love Liz really feels for her mom (because she’s defending the word choice).

By: Polly

Polly — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 23:05:37 +0000

Ok, so I just looked over it again, and all the parts that you’re mentioning are not the parts where I had a problem. Where the mom says things that are essentially, “my life is screwy because you’re [fill in the blank]” and Liz refuses to play that game–that’s all fine. And there, it would be a character violation for Liz to give in. I think it really is just the very beginning, where she’s mocking the guilt bear she’s giving and commenting on her mother’s pronunciation of coup (which fits, and is such an evocative description, but added to the context of the bears, is somehow inexpressibly tragic to me). I end up seeing this whole interaction through this tragic lens, and that’s not really fair to Liz, but I’m only noticing that as I’m taking the piece apart to read it against your comments. And you’re right, the mom is being really manipulative, but I was reading it as sad, then manipulative, rather than in conjunction or manipulative via sad. Given what you’ve just said, though, it might not need to be fixed; if Liz has already commented on her mom’s general approach to life, then that framing might be enough intro to this so that I as the reader don’t primarily note Liz’s actually very few mocking comments, but rather the heavy guilting that her mom is doing. Coming to this cold, or even backwards (since we already had the scene with the aunt) might be part of why I read it as I did–and of course I’m sure most of us are reading this through the haze of our own mother-daughter issues, so it might just be my stuff.

On an unrelated note, is the mom proud of her teddy bear collection? I can’t tell if she actually likes them, or is just committed to them. I was kind of expecting her to be a little more excited about the gigantic purple bear. Or, if she’s not, for Liz to notice that she doesn’t seem to be all that excited about the gigantic purple bear. And would a five foot tall bear really balance on a kitchen chair? I’d think the size of the base would require it to be on the floor (not really important, but my sister had a four foot tall stuffed horse when she was little, and it was the unwieldiest thing imaginable).

By: Mariah

Mariah — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:53:40 +0000

I didn’t get the mother throwing Vince at the daughter. I married young, but I still can’t imagine my mother (who is much like Liz’s mother, sans bears) telling me to marry someone I spent 3 minutes talking to earlier in the day. Well, not unless he was independently wealthy. Then she totally would (and did, before I was married). Male and single wouldn’t be quite enough.

What I got from the bears is this: Liz’s mother doesn’t like them. I suspect what happened to her happened to a mother of a friend of mine. She bought some cute cat sculptures for a shelf. A family member noticed them, and bought her some more. A friend noticed those and it just snow balled. She was knee deep in cat figurines and doesn’t have the heart to tell everyone to just quite it! It feels to me like a similar thing happened to Liz’s mom, but she uses them as a mask to hide behind now, in a “all you people who bought me bears for every celebration possible didn’t see me so now you won’t see me” sort of way. So the big bear says to her, “my daughter has no idea of who I really am”. I hope by book 4 she gets out from under the shadow of her sister’s house, gets rid of all the bears, comes out of hiding, and LIVES. But this might be because my own mom won’t. A little false hope would be good for me.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:28:17 +0000

Yes, but sadness is also a way to manipulate guilt. She does respond when her mother cries, but she also knows it’s not going to last, that her mother’s going to start in on her hair again. In the first scene, Liz says she hates the idea of coming home because of her mother’s “I’ll just sit here alone in the dark” approach to life and this is the example of it. The truth is that Liz cannot make her mother happy and she knows it. No matter what she does, she’s still going to be Liz and her mother’s still going to carp at her. I think Liz giving into that kind of emotional blackmail wouldn’t just be weak, it’d be out of character.

By: CrankyOtter

CrankyOtter — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:15:15 +0000

I didn’t get that. Maybe I didn’t read hard enough, but if your daughter living elsewhere caused one to hoard bears… my parents would be out of room. I didn’t go home for 5 years because of the cat allergy being increasingly intolerable – had to wait for the cat to die at age 22 (22!!).

Most kids do not live at home. In America, many don’t live in their hometown. You can’t put the bears/drinking/malfunction on Liz and Liz alone. What a horrible thing to do to a kid. Even a 33 yr old kid. There has to be something else going on. Even if Liz still lived at home that thing would still be wrong, to my way of thinking.

Go figure, I identify with the 30 something who hasn’t lived within 1500 miles of the ‘rents since I was 17. Except for that 5 month experiment that nearly killed all of us. My brother can live with them an co-exist. Not so much for me. I really can’t have sympathy for someone if their sole complaint is that their adult child lives elsewhere and visits (to whichever place) once a year. It’s been my reality, and my parents reality with their folks, for 2 generations.

By: Polly

Polly — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:13:10 +0000

I think the problem, for me, is that the picture of her mother that Liz is describing is incredibly pathetic, and Liz doesn’t seem all that aware of the pathos. She’s so busy feeling angry and guilty and proud of herself for not ripping into her mother, that she doesn’t seem to note how sad the whole thing is. Maybe that’s your intention–to create some dramatic irony with the reader seeing this pathetic mother figure and Liz still stuck in guilt and anger–but the first person POV makes it difficult for me to accept that Liz sees this and doesn’t pick up on it. So when she notes all this and then just mocks, it feels cruel. Being home might make her revert to 18, but she’s still a 33 year old reverting to 18, not an 18 year old being 18. I know you’re saying you don’t want her to be understanding at this point, but can’t she be mature enough to pick up on the sadness, even if she doesn’t know what to do with it, or how to process it in conjunction with her anger and guilt? To me, that would explain in part why she’s running so hard–it’s just so much easier not to deal with it if she’s not there, and to forget the conflicting parts if they’re not in her face all the time. It’s a lot easier to be angry and guilty without throwing compassion into the mix.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:57:08 +0000

Liz is supposed to be flawed so she has room to grow (over at least four books). But if she’s so flawed you don’t like her, that’s a problem.
I don’t want Liz to be understanding, but she can’t be a bitch (at least not as a permanent part of her character. But she’s also not under any compulsion to be a Crusie heroine, since they pretty much come in all flavors.
So I don’t know.

By: robena grant

robena grant — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:50:58 +0000

I like both Liz and Mama. But then, I don’t think there’s been a Crusie character ever that I don’t like. I just hope Mama gets some help. : )
I don’t blame Liz at all for being jaded about family. If she’s been criticized all her life of course she would be, or she’d be a doormat and would never have left home in the first place. I have a thirty year old daughter and believe me I’d never tell her how to dress or wear her hair. We shared a hotel room a couple of weeks ago, first time in a long time, and at breakfast she was really grumpy.
“So, what’s with the snoring?” she finally asked.
“Oh, that. Sorry.”
“Yeah, I was going to throw something at you–”
“Why didn’t you? Anyway, if you hadn’t fed me all of that red wine last night–”
“Yeah.” Snort. “Like I held your head to the trough.”
Love that girl.

By: Cheri

Cheri — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:29:43 +0000

She carried my two suitcases up the walk while I lugged the bear and my laptop bag; when we were still a good six feet away the door opened, and there was my mother…

She led the way with my two suitcases while I lugged the bear and my laptop bag, and when we were still a good six feet away, the door opened. There was my mother…

She carried my two suitcases up the walk; behind her, I lugged the bear and my laptop. When we were still a good six feet away the door opened and there was my mother…

Just messing around with possibilities for something that felt a little awkward to me. But what do I know?