Talking Points for Maureen
F. McHugh's Mothers & Other Monsters
from the Reading Group
Guide (PDF Download)
Some things to
talk about. There are no right answers.
1. What is your
take on the title of this collection -- Mothers & Other Monsters?
Is it that mothers are monstrous? How about the mothers in this
collection? Who are the Other Monsters?
2. Science-fiction
stories may be set in places real or imaginary, in real or imaginary
times. Even so, they are usually about the here and now. Do you
feel McHugh is able to address contemporary issues in a more --
or a less -- effective way through the use of her imaginary settings?
What contemporary issues seem to interest her most?
3. Advances in
technology allow parents to monitor their children in ways that
were impossible a generation ago. What along these lines has already
changed since you were a teenager? Would you prefer to be a teenager
now? Would you prefer to have been a parent then?
4. How much oversight
is too much?
5. Does McHugh's
treatment of stepmothers seem accurate? What are some of the difficulties
stepmothers face here? Why are stepmothers traditionally seen as
wicked? With more families being headed by single parents, will
the stereotype of the wicked stepmother lose popularity?
6. McHugh works
within a number of literary traditions including realism ("Eight-Legged
Story"), ghost stories ("In the Air"), science fiction ("The
Cost to Be Wise"), fantasy ("Ancestor
Money"), fairy tales ("The Beast"), and narrative nonfiction
("Interview: On Any Given Day"). Science fiction has been characterized
as a literature of exploration and therefore seen as especially
appropriate for teenagers. Are these stories you would give to a
teenager to read? What aspects of these stories would you have enjoyed
as a teenager?
7. One of the effects
of Alzheimer's Disease is that life decisions for an individual
have to be made by someone else. Do the reactions of the Alzheimer's
sufferer's families in these stories seem realistic to you? How
about the treatment of and the treatments for the disease?
8. What would you
do if your partner were cured of Alzheimer's but was not quite the
person they had once been? (As in "Presence")
9. In "Laika Comes
Back Safe," is Tye a werewolf or a kid who thinks he's a werewolf?
Which is scarier?
10. In "Ancestor
Money," a woman burns an offering for her grandmother. In China,
these offerings include paper money called 'Hell Money' and elaborate
paper models of houses, cars and even things like paper model fax
machines and paper model cell phones. The idea is that when they
are burned, the ancestors receive them as goods and money. What
would you send your ancestors?
11. McHugh's protagonists
are frequently trapped in some way -- by love, by law, by history,
by illness. How do you feel about reading stories in which the narrator
has little power and few choices? How well do you think McHugh's
narrators do in the circumstances in which they find themselves?
12. When it's possible
to rejuvenate your body, will you?
13. Would you describe
these as love stories?
14. Did this collection
remind you of any other books? What did these stories gain by being
collected together? What differences do you experience between reading
stories separately in magazines as compared to reading them in a
collection or anthology?
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