Her Last Death: A Memoir

1.Her Last Deathopens with the report of Daphne's car accident in Barbados and the author's decision not to go to her. Readers have the rest of the book to contemplate Susanna's choice while learning about the family history behind it. Near the book's end Sonnenberg writes, "What kind of person doesn't go to her mother's deathbed?....I didn't go because I couldn't. That's what had become of us" (p. 268). Did you agree with Sonnenberg's decision? Did your more >>

1.Her Last Deathopens with the report of Daphne's car accident in Barbados and the author's decision not to go to her. Readers have the rest of the book to contemplate Susanna's choice while learning about the family history behind it. Near the book's end Sonnenberg writes, "What kind of person doesn't go to her mother's deathbed?....I didn't go because I couldn't. That's what had become of us" (p. 268). Did you agree with Sonnenberg's decision? Did your feeling about her choice change after she unfolded the story of her childhood and adolescence with her mother?

2. When Susanna meets her English teacher Wyatt for the first time Daphne tells her, "He adores you....Trust me...[t]he world is about sex" (p. 112). Susanna loses her virginity to Wyatt when she is sixteen and engages in a lengthy affair with him. She subsequently spends many years having sex "with everybody." "I used to court oblivion, cancel everything, forget trouble. That was sex's delicious point, the glittering instruction of lust and its momentum" (p. 189). How do Daphne's promiscuity and lack of boundaries influence Susanna's attitude toward sex and her choice of sexual partners? Discuss the theme of sex in the book and the various ways it is used.

3. Sonnenberg can be self critical. She writes openly about what she sees as her own flaws. When she learns her boyfriend Gordon has left her for a friend of theirs she writes, "She'd been to our parties. She'd asked how Gordon was inbed....I was supposed to be in that role, the late-arriving seductress, the snake of a friend" (p. 185). Why does Susanna describe herself this way? What other elements make up her identity and how do they evolve from her adolescence into her thirties? Did you find yourself feeling judgmental and if so, why? How does her mother evolve?

4. Daphne abuses illegal and prescription drugs, is hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, physically assaults Susanna and lies compulsively. Sonnenberg never diagnoses Daphne's behavior; instead she describes the outcomes that arise from "the tangle of being with her" (p.6). How is her omission unusual?

5. Aside from leading to an estrangement with her mother, in what other ways did Sonnenberg's decision to stay in Montana after Daphne's accident change her life? Consider her various family relationships, her sense of self, her history with her mother, and her aspirations for her own children.

6. How might you say that Sonnenberg's relationship with her mother is in some ways a heightened version of any typical mother-daughter relationship? What qualities of their relationship are most distorted?

7. Writing is important to Susanna's life. What role do writing and reading play in Sonnenberg's telling of this story? What is the effect of the diary entries in the book?

8. Although Sonnenberg's father could be critical and distant, and did nothing to protect his daughters from Daphne's harm, Sonnenberg has a good relationship with him as an adult. "He could hurt my feelings, still exasperate me with his self-absorption, but we enjoyed each other" (p. 272). Why is Susanna able to forgive her father and get along with him?

9. Discuss the complicated relationship between Daphne's expectations for Susanna's life and Susanna's own expectations and perception of herself. How is this a common and difficult issue for all parents and children?

10. Sonnenberg provides a note at the beginning of the book: "This is a work of memoir and subject to the imperfections of memory. I have been faithful to what I remember, and people in my family may remember shared experiences differently...I have changed all names but my own to emphasize that this story could only be mine." What doesHer Last Deathshow about the nature of memory, especially in families? How else is the story only Susanna's, and not her mother's or her family's?

11. Susanna arrives in Montana ready to start fresh and live a simpler life, << less