DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
FOR
One Stop West of Hinsdale: Love Derailed in a Sixties Suburb
1) A memoir is a book of memory. How reliable is this narrator? Did you trust Valerie? How or why did she gain your confidence. Were there ever points in the book where you questioned her veracity?
2) How much of what Valerie describes in her home do you view as abnormal, and how much of it do you regard as rather normal family dynamics and teenaged hurdles? She has written “… don’t look for shock value or a sob story. It’s all too familiar.” Do you agree?
3) How aware were you of your parents’ relationship as a child? Discuss aspects that worried or comforted you about that relationship.
4) The culture we grow up in can’t help but shape us. How did the sixties culture affect Valerie and her parents? How did yours affect you? If it was the same era, compare and contrast the impact.
5) Valerie states emphatically that her father started hating her when she became a teenager, a year or so before he left home. Yet she later states that she knows he never stopped loving her. How do you explain this?
6) Did you side with one of Valerie’s parents over the other? And did this change over the course of the book? Do you agree with her final assessment that it was “no one’s fault?”
7) What scenes were most memorable to you and why?
8) Did you learn anything about yourself and your family through reading this book? Did you draw any connections, or gain any new perspectives/epiphanies/understandings of your own family dynamics along the way?
9) Could you relate to Valerie and her first “true love” Ed? Do you believe young love can be real?
10) Would you and your siblings have the exact same truth about your family life? Do you hold the same or differing opinions about one or the other of your parents?
11) One of Valerie’s hopes was to present people with mental health issues with compassion and understanding, and impress upon the reader how people who suffer are so much more than their suffering. Do you think she succeeded?
12) Did you learn anything new about eating disorders?
13) In her search for what her mother “had against her father” Valerie concludes that it was Verna’s third pregnancy, although it’s a theory she cannot prove. How do you feel about this theory?
14) What did you make of the added lock to Valerie and Audrey’s bedroom door?
15) Valerie mentions the political chasm between her parents during an era of great conflict, and sites it as a possible factor in her father’s growing antagonism towards her mother. How much do you judge this rift could have impacted Ed’s feelings towards Verna (and vice versa)?
16) In her effort to dig deep, Valerie reveals unpleasant and embarrassing things about both her parents and herself. But one of her main goals was to honor her parents. Did she?
