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The Author on Her Work
The Perfect Age is a novel that has been percolating inside me since I was a fifteen-year-old lifeguard at the Dunes Hotel pool in Las Vegas, Nevada. I didn't know it at the time, but the experiences of that summer were so intensely imprinted on my mind's eye that they became the inspiration for my first novel.
Las Vegas is my birthplace, and I spent the first eighteen years of my life there. My mother is still a resident and has been since the 1950's. Our roots are deep for such a transient place. It is a city that always seemed fairly ordinary to me, like any other city in America, until I left to attend school in the Midwest. Then the questions from new friends began—Isn't prostitution legal there? Did you live in a hotel? Are your parents blackjack dealers?—and I began to recognize the uniqueness of my upbringing.
The Perfect Age is set in workaday Las Vegas, and follows the life of a local family—particularly the teenage daughter, Helen, and her mother, Kathy—through three summers. Helen begins her first job and begins having sex with her first boyfriend, and Kathy begins her first affair, with Helen's boss. With these two dueling sexual awakenings occurring under one roof, the family begins to unravel.
This is a story that could happen anywhere, but it happens in a city where women's bare asses are seen on highway billboards, where people marry at drive-through wedding chapels, where escort services are advertised alongside 99-cent shrimp cocktails. However, The Perfect Age also unveils a Las Vegas different than the one usually portrayed. We follow the novel's characters into Las Vegas homes and schools, clock shops and record stores, the lukewarm waters of Lake Mead and the semicool of the surrounding mountains. Of course casinos are present too, along with the occasional showgirl sighting or passing Elvis impersonator, and all of these elements are puzzled together to portray the feeling of what growing up in Las Vegas is really like.
Discussion
Questions
1. Adultery is a major theme in this novel. Does the book portray adultery as an act that is definitely wrong? If not, at what sort of moral decision does the novel arrive regarding marital betrayal?
2. What are your own views on adultery? Would you consider it acceptable behavior under certain circumstances?
3. Teenage sexuality is also a major issue explored in The Perfect Age. Does Helen seem damaged or enriched by her decision to have sex at such a young age?
4. Teenagers get such mixed signals regarding sexuality in our society. On the one hand, most parents preach abstinence; on the other hand, images of sex are everywhere. If you are a teenager, what are your views on having sex while still in high school? If you are a parent, how will you help your children navigate these murky waters?
5. The notion of female beauty is explored in this novel primarily through the characters of Kathy and Helen. Does either of these characters' physical beauty impact upon the decisions they make in the novel? Does their beauty give them power or diminish their power? Or neither?
6. Feminine beauty is a complex issue in our society. We celebrate and reward beauty, yet feel shallow for placing so much value on the physical. Why do you think we have such a love/hate relationship with beauty? Where does "trying to look our best" leave off and vanity begin? What do you think are acceptable methods of achieving beauty (makeup? a great haircut?) and what do you consider unacceptable (plastic surgery?)?
7. Even after Edward discovers Kathy's affair, he decides to stay with her. Kathy also stays with Edward despite his past affairs. If your mate strayed, would you leave or stay?
8. Las Vegas is a unique setting for a novel about a regular family. Would you consider raising kids in Las Vegas? Why or why not?
9. Do you think the setting of Las Vegas was essential to the novel, or could it have worked in another city? What would be lost if this story took place in, say, Tucson, Arizona?
10. Who was your favorite character and why? Which character did you relate to the most?
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