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Overview
A smart young woman making her way through the privileged terrain of northeastern prep-school land, Alice McGuire is certain of her world and her future—until the summer her best friend and soul mate, Matthew Swan, vanishes on a trip to Mexico. Stunned, Alice and the rest of the close-knit town that adored Matthew search for answers. For Alice, the journey of heartbreak leads from everything that is familiar to forbidden places and forgotten people who will teach her about kindness and forgiveness: lessons that will open her to new possibilities and unexpected hope.
Vividly wrought, deeply resonant, and told in a remarkable voice that sparkles with wit and wisdom, Stone Garden is a splendid triumph from an accomplished writer.
“Alice McGuire, the narrator of Stone Garden, is just as smart and funny as Holden Caulfield.” —Trenton Times
“Molly Moynahan’s second novel is about grief. It is also fun to read.” —The New York Times Book Review
“A wonderful and wise novel, a story told with unflinching courage and honesty.” —Ken Wells, author of Meely LeBauve
“I found myself missing Alice’s voice after I finished the book.” —Chicago Tribune
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780061865961 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 12/15/2023 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 306 |
| Sales rank: | 1,000,410 |
| File size: | 538 KB |
About the Author
Molly Moynahan is a high school English teacher and has taught creative writing at various colleges. She lives in Chicago.
Read an Excerpt
Stone Garden
A Novel
Chapter One
The poets had come before. We listened to their poems politely, wondering how it must seem to them, being bused out of prison to visit a bunch of high school students to tell them about poetry. Except it wasn't like that. You never heard any of these guys discussing nuance or meter or any of those terms our English teachers try to make us remember even though they're boring and useless.
The prisoners never talked about poetry at all. They talked about prison. They talked about how it felt once you heard all the doors locking behind you, how it no longer mattered who you were or what you'd done or whether your lawyer was some big shot. They said fuck. They said shit and asshole and butt-fucked. It was like all the rules were suspended when the poets came. Our headmaster, Duncan Farley, stood at the side of the stage and smiled. Smiled and smiled in his white duck pants, brown deck shoes, and paisley bow ties. His face was the same face he had when the little boys from the American Boys Choir came at Christmas and sang "Ave Maria," their voices so high and sweet they made your teeth hurt. He scanned the auditorium searching for kids who weren't paying attention. As soon as he caught their eyes he'd gesture toward the poets and wink. Duncan Farley was a major winker.
The poets said stuff like "Listen, you spoiled motherfuckers -- don't do anything stupid. You'll end up like us -- locked up, fucked up, somebody's bitch with nothin'to look forward to but your momma comin' to visit and you sittin' there crying till you can't take it anymore and you cut your throat." They paced back and forth like the fake wrestlers on the WWF, trying to convince us we were about to lose everything.
But kids like us didn't end up in jail. There was rehab, loony bins, and special schools for anyone who might get violent. We were tutored, braced, immunized, counseled, and medicated. Our counselors would write notes for us describing our symptoms in the most glowing terms, convincing everyone that our lack of direction and respect for authority and our general laziness were the result of adolescent angst and unrecognized brilliance. If we performed poorly on standardized tests, special academic support was just a phone call away. Many of my friends had personal trainers and their own private therapists. We took SAT prep classes, we consulted nutritionists, we gave ourselves Myers-Briggs personality quizzes and told our teachers the reason we couldn't meet deadlines was that we were wired in a unique way. The stuff the prisoners told us didn't register. We were spoiled rotten and didn't have a clue.
And then they read their poems. Poems about sunsets, rainy days, and kittens. Bad poems our teachers would have marked up with "cliché," "mixed metaphor," "stale image," "???."
Really corny rhymes about their mothers. But mainly it was food. Endless stanzas about food: mangoes, grapes, fatback, steak, peas, corn, cucumbers, lemons, spaghetti, ham, apple pie, turkey. There weren't even metaphors in these poems, just point-blank descriptions of favorite meals. They could have published a cookbook.
Some of the poets seemed proud of how they ended up in jail. One guy read a poem about cutting someone's throat, and then he looked up at us and said: "I did that."
Since I'd started high school, I had seen these poets five times. Christmas vacation was over and the poets were back. Some of the parents decided the poets were a bad thing. A petition to stop their program was circulated that had the following statement attached:
Prison poets would be a wonderful asset to a nonprivate, less selective institution than Millstone Country Day. The life experiences these individuals describe, while inspiring, are irrelevant to the experiences of MCD's population. The school would be far better served by a series of lectures given by CEOs, successful entrepreneurs, and famous artists, all of whom exist in the current alumni pool.
My mother found the petition hilarious. "What about Leopold and Loeb?" she asked my father. "What about Graham Steadforth's son being arrested for running a gambling and prostitution club? And Lizzie Macklin's daughter who sold drugs?"
My father looked over his bifocals and frowned. "You can't argue that students from Millstone frequently end up in the slammer."
My mother looked disgusted. "Of course they don't," she said. "Their parents hire famous criminal lawyers to dispute speeding tickets and pay off judges. It's black and Hispanic children that end up doing time."
This was their normal routine. Mom was "down with the people" and Dad pretended to be a snob.
"Nevertheless," my father said, removing his glasses slowly. "While Leopold and Loeb introduced the concept of Ivy League psychopaths, most senseless murders are committed by southern drifters. Mainly men in their twenties who hail from Texas."
Sometimes I wonder whether people realize how stupid their habits are. Take the glasses thing. My father had twenty different ways to take them off.
"And live in trailer parks," I added.
"And have three names," my father said, winking at me. "Joe Bob Billy."
"Danny Lou Ray," I shouted.
"Bobby Will Paul."
"Tammy Sue Louise," Mom said. "They can be girls, too."
She leaned over to push my bangs off my forehead, staring at that part of me as if it contained the answer to world peace.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing," she said, sighing. "You have such a wonderful forehead."
This was her habit. Forehead worshiping.
The petition didn't work and the poets kept coming.
Matthew Swan was still missing. The police at the Texas border were no longer searching for him, and the private detective told the Swans to give up ...
Stone GardenA Novel. Copyright © by Molly Moynahan. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
What People are Saying About This
“Wonderful and wise...with keen insight into the most universal of all conditions, the struggle of the human heart.”
“Stone Garden is tender and touching and casts a spell over the reader from the very first page.”
“Moynahan can read the geography of grief with her fingertips and it shouts from every page.”
Reading Group Guide
About the Novel
By turns poignant and wry, Molly Moynahan's Stone Garden introduces a candid, young narrator struggling to cope with the sudden and violent death of her lifelong friend, Matthew Swan. From the novel's arresting first chapter, Alice gives us a provocative portrait of her life without Matthew, a loss that coincides with her senior year in high school. Though Alice had known him since childhood and fallen in love with him as a teenager, certain aspects of Matthew could only be discovered once he was gone. She seeks solace in talks with his unconventional mother, while her own parents make awkward attempts to help her grieve. She befriends a classmate who witnessed a frightening crime. And Alice begins volunteering at a writing program for prison inmates, which takes her perception of the world in a startling new direction. With each of these small, healing doses, Alice learns to embrace life again.
Wrought with sensitivity and sparkling wit, Stone Garden captures the transition from innocence to understanding that we all must make. We hope that the following questions will enhance your discussion of this mesmerizing novel.
Discussion Topics
- The stone referred to in the title evokes many metaphors, including the heavy weight of grief and the starkness of tombstones. Where are the novel's gardens? Where does Alice encounter the vitality and new growth associated with conventional gardens?
- Matthew's character is crafted through memories and artifacts. What were your impressions of him throughout the novel? In what way did your image of him change?
- What does theloss of Matthew represent to each of the book's primary characters? What distinctions are made between Matthew's status as missing and the eventual confirmation of his murder? Which of the characters most closely mirrors your own responses to grief?
- What do the various women in Alice's world -- especially her mother, her teachers, and Catherine -- teach her about womanhood? Was Matthew typical of the men in Stone Garden?
- With the exception of Howard, the Rahway inmates come from socioeconomic backgrounds far removed from that of Alice and her friends. Discuss the impact of money on the various characters' lives. Do you consider any of the characters to be fortunate? How do you define good fortune?
- Alice is savvy enough to recognize what she represents to the prisoners -- purity of heart, a princess on prom night. But what is her own ideal? In what way does Matthew's death shape her aspirations?
- What does sexuality mean to Alice at various points in the novel? Why might Molly Moynahan have chosen to portray Alice's relationship with Matthew as unconsummated?
- How does Alice's coming-of-age experience, including rites of passage such as prom night, compare to your own? What are your observations about contemporary adolescence in America?
- Does the novel's depiction of rage and forgiveness match your impressions of society? Have you been subjected to an act whose perpetrator you could not forgive?
- What is the significance of Alice's experiences (sexual as well as platonic) with Hal? How does he compare to Morgan? What do you predict for her relationship with Morgan?
- Consider the form and settings chosen for Stone Garden. The novel unfolds in first person, in the voice of a highly perceptive teen. The setting varies between an upper class East Coast suburb and the Spartan locale of a prison. How do these details enhance the overall storytelling?
- What was your reaction to the curriculum at Alice's school? Do you think it would benefit public school students?
- In chapter five, Alice explains why she chose the Rahway writing class for her senior project. How does it help her gain power over her trauma? How is the balance of power divided among Hal, Alice, and the inmates?
- What is the nature of Alice's friendship with Sigrid? In what ways do they lead parallel lives? In what way is Sigrid's experience the opposite of Alice's?
- How might the novel have changed had it been told from Matthew's point of view?
- Are Catherine and her classmates the only graduates at the end of the novel? Do you imagine that the prisoners experience any sort of new chapter in their lives after participating in the writing class? How might the other adults' lives unfold after that semester?
- What do you predict for Alice's road trip with Catherine?
About the Author
Molly Moynahan is a high school English teacher in Chicago, Illinois. She is also the author of the novel Parting Is All We Know of Heaven.
