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Overview
Faith eventually turns to violence for retribution, forcing her to flee home in search of the only friend she has — a troubled but caring busboy who is the lover of a sideshow performer — and to tumble into the colorful, transient world of the circus. But as she dives headfirst into a world of adult passions and dreams, mercurial allegiances, and exhilarating self-discovery, Faith must also face some disturbing truths about herself and the world around her.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780060534264 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 03/16/2004 |
| Series: | Harper Perennial |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.18(w) x 7.92(h) x 0.67(d) |
| Age Range: | 14 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Wonder When You'll Miss Me
A Novel
Chapter One
At school I was careful not to look like I watched everything, but I did. The fat girl fell into step beside me. She had a handful of gumdrops and sugar on her chin.
"There are all kinds of anger," she said. "Some kinds are just more useful than others."
A locker slammed behind us. I tried not to speak too loudly, because no one except me saw her. "I'm not angry," I whispered.
"Saying you're not angry is one kind," she said. "Not very useful at all, though."
I ignored her and brushed hair out of my eyes. There were days when she was a comfort and days when she was a nightmare. I had yet to determine what kind of day this would be.
We made our way outside. The fat girl had stringy brown hair and wore a blue blouse that was spotted and stained. She sucked on a Fudgsicle as though the autumn day was blissful and warm, but I was freezing. We pressed ourselves against the courtyard wall to watch the crowd file by. When I turned my head she followed my gaze and patted my shoulder.
"Don't get your hopes up, Faith," she said. "Sweetie, I'm telling you, that is never going to work out."
She was talking about Tony Giobambera, who had dark curly hair all over his body and smiled with his mouth but not with his eyes; who walked slowly, like a man with a secret.
I said, "You never know."
She said, "Actually, I do know." Then she sucked off a big piece of chocolate.
Tony Giobambera settled on his rock and lit a cigarette. I followed the fat girl to a place where we could watch him. He smoked like the cigarette was an extension of his ropey arm and rough hand. When he leaned back and blew a stream into the sky, I watched the pout of his lips, the black curl that fell over one eye. Then Tony Giobambera smiled in our direction and I wanted to disappear.
"Nothing like a little attention to send you over the edge," the fat girl said.
"What would you do?" I said. "I mean I don't think you'd do anything different."
"I'd think about getting even," she said. "I'd think about making something happen."
Instead I found a better place on the grass where I could see him but pretend to stare off into space, thinking about more important things than how much I would give up just to have Tony Giobambera run his finger along my cheek and my throat again.
- - -
It was after what I did, the long summer after I'd shed myself completely and was prepared to come back to school like a whole new person, only inside it was still me. It was at an end-of-the-summer party a week before school started. I'd walked there from my house and the Carolina night was humid and heavy. I sang softly to myself, thinking of how different I looked, of what it would be like to walk into a party in normal-person clothes bought from a normal store.
I smoothed the front of my new sleeveless green blouse. I could hear the party behind the big white door. I took a deep breath and rang the bell, but nothing happened.
I leaned over a little and through the windows I saw people draped over couches and moving in the dark. I rang the bell again, then tried the door. It was open.
Inside, Led Zeppelin blasted from the stereo. A guy and a girl curled up together in the corner of the foyer. In the living room, people stood in clumps along the wall or splayed themselves over couches and chairs. The house rang with noise. I walked down a hallway. I put my hands in my pockets, then took them out again.
In the kitchen I found a beer but didn't open it. The smell of pot drifted up the stairs from the basement. A few muscled guys and a pale, fragile-looking girl sat around the kitchen table flipping quarters into a glass. They slurred their words, laughing loudly and hitting each other in the back of the head when a quarter missed the cup. Drink, drink, drink! they chanted. The girl smoked a cigarette with a glazed smile. One guy glanced up at me, but looked away quickly. I blushed anyway.
I wandered downstairs to the basement, where I recognized a few people from last year's English class. They sat in a circle around a reedy guy with long blond hair and a red bong, hanging on every word he had to say. He told a complicated story, something involving a car and the police, but I couldn't follow it. Every so often one of the girls shook her head. "Fuck," she said, and ran her tongue over her braces. "Holy fuck."
I went back upstairs and walked from room to room waiting for someone to notice the new me, but no one seemed to. Disappointment pushed me outside. I tripped my way down wooden stairs, away from the bright lights of the house toward the small latticed huddle of a gazebo. Inside there was a bench and I sat, slapping away mosquitoes, with a tightness in my chest that made me want to scream. How could everything change so much and stay exactly the same?
I'd lost forty-eight pounds and my skin had mostly cleared up. I'd missed a whole semester of school and disappeared for seven months. It seemed like no one had even noticed I was gone.
I pulled my knees to my chest and picked at the vines that climbed the trellis overhead, ripping off leaves and stripping them down to their veins. I was wondering how I would possibly survive the whole next year, when Andrea Dutton came stumbling out of the trees.
Wonder When You'll Miss MeA Novel. Copyright © by Amanda Davis. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Reading Group Guide
Introduction
At fifteen, Faith Duckle is socially awkward, overweight, and shunned by her high school classmates. After committing a violent act of revenge, she runs away from home, accompanied by the ghost of her formerly fat self. She sets off in search of her one friend, Charlie. Her quest takes her to Nashville, to Atlanta, and eventually to the circus where she soon finds herself enmeshed in a fun, frenetic, new world and its colorful cast of characters. As she navigates the complex adult world of shifting allegiances, entrenched hierarchies, and demanding jobs (cleaning up after the elephants), Faith gains confidence, and fashions a new identity for herself. As the circus wends its way towards a performance in her hometown, Faith must face her deepest fears and decide how she is going to live with her past and forge a new future.
Written with a vividness and emotional intensity rare in contemporary fiction, Wonder When You'll Miss Me is a compelling and original coming-of-age story. It gives readers a fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of the circus and the mind and heart of an extraordinary young woman.
Discussion Questions
- The epigraph for the book is by James Baldwin: "And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky." Why did the author choose this quote? Does it take on different meaning after you've read the book?
- Why do you think Davis chose Wonder When You'll Miss Me as the title? To whom is this statement addressed?
- Why do you think Davis named her narrator Faith? How isthe name significant? What about other characters' names?
- When Faith decides to join the circus, the fat girl tells her she's coming along. "You need me like you wouldn't believe." Why does Faith need the fat girl? What does the fat girl give her? How does Faith's relationship to the fat girl change over the course of the novel?
- Faith agonizes about whether or not to exact revenge. Does she do the right thing in attacking Tony Giobambera? In what ways does this single act change her life forever?
- Why does Faith leave home? What is she looking for? What does she tell herself she's looking for? Why?
- What does the circus give Faith that her life back home could not? How is she treated by those who work in the circus? What do they demand of her? What enables her to succeed in this strange environment? In what ways is the circus a saner and safer environment than her home and her high school?
- Why is it so hard for Faith to trust people? In what ways has her trust been shattered? How is she able to regain her ability to trust others?
- When Faith finally calls home, her mother asks, "How could you do this to me?" What does this question suggest about her mother's feelings for Faith? What kind of woman is her mother? In what ways has she failed Faith?
- When Elaine rehires Charlie and Marco, she tells Faith: "I believe in second chances ... I believe people can change and I believe that people deserve to redeem themselves." Do you think Charlie and Marco will redeem themselves? Has Faith redeemed herself? Is Elaine right in thinking people should be given a second chance? Should someone like Tony Giobambera be given a second chance?
- Charlie counsels Faith: "Live a round life and you have no place to hide from yourself and nothing to run from." What does he mean? Why is the idea particularly resonant with Faith? At the end of the book, is she moving towards living a round life?
- In what ways is Faith's story extraordinary? In what ways is it typical? What does it tells us about the struggles of teenage girls in America today? What does it tell us about the often abusive treatment of kids who are overweight or otherwise different in American high schools?
- At one point Faith asserts that it was the fat girl who committed the crime. Does she later take responsibility for all of her actions?
- How is Faith different at the end of the novel? In what important ways has she grown up? What experiences have most changed her?
- At the end of the novel, Faith says: "I'm going to climb up there fly ... I'm going to flip and twist ... If I fall, someone is going to catch me." Why does Faith have this newfound confidence? Who will catch her?
About the Author
Amanda Davis was raised in Durham, North Carolina and attended Wesleyan University and Brooklyn College. Davis resided in Oakland, California where she taught in the MFA program at Mills College. She received fiction fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the Wesleyan Writers' Conference, and residency fellowships from The Blue Mountain Center, the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, the Tyrone Guthrie Center, The MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo.
Davis also authored Circling the Drain, a collection of short stories. Her fiction, nonfiction and reviews have been published in Esquire, Bookforum, Black Book, McSweeney's, Poets and Writers, Story, Seventeen, and Best New American Voices 2001. She was awarded The New York Public Library Young Lions Honorary Award. Wonder When You'll Miss Me is her first novel. She died in a plane crash in 2003.