Juno's: Associations and Extensions

If your book club(s) have been anything like my past book club, most of the interesting conversation is only tangentially associated with the book. We found ourselves discussing travel, other books and memories the book triggered.
Here's the place to post thoughts triggered by Juno's Daughters but not actually about Juno's Daughters.
JD reminded my mother and me of A Valley in Italy because of similar parenting styles. However, A Valley in Italy was memoir (note to SalSis-- JD is not!) and the author had not suffered the consequences of her laissez faire parenting, or grown, as Jenny had (or at least she did not think that her daughter running off to Paris and getting married at 17 while she [the mother] was pregnant in her 3rd or 4th child-producing relationship was suffering a consequence of her parenting style).
One friend was reminded of a multi-day party we attend every summer with a band and a gathering of wanna-be-hippie types (note to Mom and Prairie Quilter-- we do not run around naked at such party, nor do we indulge in toothpicked brownies [but we are aging enough that the food is typically excellent]).
I was reminded of Prospero's Books (based on The Tempest), Feast of Love (based on A Midsummer's Night Dream, but I did not know MSND well enough to recognize it), 10 Things I Hate About You (the Heath Ledger movie, based on Taming of the Shrew), Snow Falling on Cedars (takes place in the same part of the world, but in a very very different time and under very very different circumstances) and various travels to islands (in Puget Sound and in Scotland).

Juno's Questions for Other Readers

E-mail me the questions you'd like to ask the other readers of Juno's Daughters and I will add them here.

1. Do you think your response to the book would be different if you had a different set of familial relationships? (e.g. I have no sisters, am the mother of 2 boys, and both my parents [married to each other] have been a stable and positive force in my life. Some aspects of the book just felt bizzaro to me, but might not have if I had a trying relationship with a sister or my mother was younger and struggling alone as I was growing up).
   

Juno's Questions FOR the Author

E-mail me your questions for Lise Saffran, author of Juno's Daughters, and I will post them here.

1. What was your relationship with The Tempest before you started Juno's Daughters? Had you been wanting to work with Shakespeare or The Tempest in particular? [SpSq note: this is partially already answered in a comment on the "Overall Impressions" post].
2. In novels about novelists there is always this moment when the characters take on lives of their own, outside of the writer's control. Is this a reality for you? As you were writing JD were there times when you felt you were just recording actions of characters rather than manipulating words?
3. Did you consider making Lilly 18 so there would have been less of an "ick" factor?
4. My cover blurb mentions that Juno's daughter is part "Led Zeppelin" anthem. I'm not a big Zeppelin fan, so I missed the references. Can you elucidate?
   
5. How do you balance your other job, writing at the creation stage, writing at the editing, revising and promoting stage, being part of your family and being "yourself" (i.e. someone neither defined by her occupations or family roles).

Juno's "Final Reflection" Questions from the Author

Comment on the questions posed by author Lise Saffran's after completing Juno's Daughters:

1) What was your first impression of Jenny and Lilly's "competition" over Trinculo? Did your feelings about it change as the book progressed and the stakes became higher?

2) Do you think Jenny was right to go see Monroe without Lilly? Do you think she had closure after meeting with him? Do you think he'd changed from the monster he was when she left him? (What about their meeting hinted at his maturation, or his lack of maturation?)

3) Were you satisfied with the end of the novel? Discuss in particular the significance of Jenny and Frankie's conversation about Monroe, and Frankie's quotation of Love's Labour's Lost. How is the last paragraph especially relevant to the theme or themes of the book?

4) How did you feel about the elements of "artifice" in the novel (the middle-chapter-as-play, the previously-mentioned changing character names) by the time you got to the end? What effect did you think those elements had on your reading of the novel?

Juno's "While Reading" Questions From the Author

Comment with answers to Lise Saffran's questions to be considered while reading Juno's Daughters:
) How much do you believe that Jenny's own relationship with her sister and her mother play into her parenting? Similarly, what do you think of Jenny's approach to parenting and does your opinion change as you move through the book?

2) Think about the depiction of small-town, hippie life on San Juan Island—what about the dynamic of its residents do you find endearing? Do anything about their life seem claustrophobic or limiting? Would you wish to live in a place like this?

3) How do you find yourself reacting to the fact that the visiting actors are known (at least until the end) by the names of the roles they play in The Tempest? Do you find it distracting, or does it serve to underscore the insider/outsider dynamic of island life?

4) If you were unfamiliar with The Tempest, are you finding that the novel gives you enough of the play as you go along to understand the interplay between the two stories? If you were familiar with The Tempest, were you expecting Juno's Daughter's to more directly echo the plot of the play?

Juno's Overall Impressions

Comment on any general thoughts on Juno's Daughters here.

Final STIR Books of the Year

Many of you are involved in the Juno's Daughter read-a-long. I'll be posting the questions from the author and you can respond in the comments. I'll also be compiling questions you have for either Lise Saffran or the other readers (there are now 16 of us, including what I think is a nice touch: my mother, my mother-in-law and my ex-boyfriend's mother).
Lindsey and I have not yet figured out how to discuss The Reluctant Fundamentalist but will soon. The short novel builds tension really well and it is a highly recommended, slightly disturbing, thought-provoking read.
The November selections is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot which is the best popular science made personal I've read in a long time (and I've actually read quite a bit of it recently). Highly recommended for my many biologist friends, but I'll also be recommending it for both of my parents.
For another group I'm involved with, I'm coordinating the discussion of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, which I am also happy to recommend.