The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying Book Club Guide1 Quotes + General Plot Points “There are so many things that are worse than death: old grudges, a lack of selfawareness, severe constipation, no sense of humor, the grimace on your husband’s face as he empties your surgical drain into the measuring cup.” Pg 1 At age 37, Nina is diagnosed with breast cancer: “It becomes a chant, a rallying cry. One small spot is fixable. One small spot is a year of your life. No one dies from one small spot.” Pg 8 “Which makes my thinking go like this: When you fall in love with your kids, you fall in love forever.” Pg 30 “All the warfare jargon around cancer the battling, the surviving, the winning/losing, the kicking its ass hasn’t been ringing true for me. But I’m good with not letting it crack me.” Pg 33 “Cancer removes whatever weird barriers we sometimes have with others. A mastectomy of bullshit, my mother suggests. All the ohyeseverythingisgreat stuff eventually gets carted off in a bag of medical waste.” Pg 37 Nina’s relative was Ralph Waldo Emerson. She quotes one of her favorite essays, Circles: “The universe is fluid and volatile.” She compares this passage to her experience with cancer: “I try to hold both of these ideas like two little magnets in my hand: his and mine. One small spot and the universe is fluid and volatile. They push against each other: “one small spot” requires the constant energy to keep things contained. The “universe is fluid and volatile” is scary but allows for the idea that there are things that cannot be contained.” Pg 45 Nina writes out her last will: “It says: I was here right here look at this ink, the curl of the N and now I am gone, and I leave these things to you: my spouse, JOHN A. DUBERSTEIN, because you have survived me.” Pg 55 At sixteen weeks pregnant, Nina has her first ultrasound: “But they’re taking too many pictures. Too many measurements. His feet. His legs. His brain. His heart. His feet again. No one is talking at all, until suddenly someone says, “Well, I guess by now you know something is not quite right.” … Talipes equinovarus, they tell us after the scan club foot.” Pg 68
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The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying Nina Riggs Published by Simon and
Schuster January 16th 2018 336 Pages
“When the surgeon enters the exam room, he says, “You’ve sure thrown us a curveball here, young lady.” The new tumor is malignant, and surgeons love to blame the patient.” Pg 70 “Tita and I followed the exact path the other morning. The neighborhood was fierce: blossoms and sunshine and fragrant mulch and my blood coursing with steroids. Our pace was the babble of second opinions, counseling for kids, the possibilities of meditation, single or double mastectomy, disfigurement of the female form and the horror of mirrors, reconstruction: to build again or not.” Pg 83 Nina’s mother has been battling cancer as well for nine years. Nina hears good news about a lymph node and her mother responds with: “Phew… I couldn’t bear checking out of this life without knowing you were going to be okay.” Pg 99 “My remaining breast looks as ridiculous there as I imagined it would. Vesuvius rumbling over burned Pompeii. “Death everywhere mingles with and is blended into our lives,” Montaigne writes in his forties. “Decline foreshadows its hour and intrudes into our onward course itself. I have portraits of my appearance at twentyfive and thirtyfive; if I compare them with the present what a difference! How much farther is my present image from these than from dying.”” Pg 104 Nina’s mom goes into hospice care: “It’s strange, because hospice is one of those words when you say it people’s faces fall. It is a word that evokes last breaths and hushed voices. But the more I think about it, the more I’m struck by what a beautiful word it is hospice. It is hushed, especially at the end. But it’s comfortable and competent sounding, too.” Pg 105 “John hates change, and cancer is change run amok.” pg 110 “'Just tell me where I’m allowed to put my hands so I don’t hurt you,' he says during sex. 'Nowhere,' I say.” Pg 110 “It’s not in my own nature to be conspicuous. As a bald woman, I noted stricken looks from other moms at PTA meetings and grocery store lots. I noted our mailman hurrying to avoid me on the stoop. Discomfort from waiters and shop attendants. The worried brow of the guy who hands me my locker key at the gym.” Pg 120 Nina’s friend Gina also has breast cancer. They discuss a tattoo artist who focuses on nipple tattooing. According to his website, “ Many things have changed over the past few years and now I spend most of my time tattooing nipple areola tattoos on breast cancer warriors.” Pg 124 “My mom left conflicting instructions on the subject of her funeral. Do anything. Do whatever you want. Do nothing. It’s not like I’m going to be there.” Pg 137
Nina’s mother passes away, and she goes to visit her dad: “One afternoon, I stop by my parent’s house to drop off some papers for my dad, who has gone back to work. My mom’s Prius is in the driveway. Her purse is hanging on the chair in the kitchen. Oh good, I have to stop myself from thinking, she’s home.” Pg 150 “The kids are deeply annoyed that I’m headed back into chemo. They hate it when I’m not there to pick them up from school, to schlep to piano lessons and swimming, to pack their snacks, help plan their class parties. And I appreciate that their enormous selfcenteredness is still intact.” Pg 152 “Right before all your hair falls out, it aches. Like a ponytail pulled back for too long. And even after it’s all gone, the ache resurfaces. You run your hands through the air, but assuage nothing.” Pg 162 Nina quotes Montaigne: “Let us make good use of our time… We still have so much of it that remains idle and illused.” He would not approve of how I have taken to sleeping in, how I spend the evening browsing seventytwo pages of ankle boots on Zappos, how I obsess over hair styles in magazines my spouts and I are years from achieving.” Pg 191 “A bus. A cough. A rusty nail: Death sits near each one of us at every turn. Sometimes we are too aware, but mostly we push it away.” Pg 197 Nina quotes Emerson: “I am cheered with the moist, warm, glittering, budding and melodious hour that takes down the narrow walls of my soul and extends its pulsation and life to the very horizon. That is morning; to cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this sickly body, and to become as large as the World.” Pg 208 “It’s a complicated calculus. On the one hand, a basic costbenefit analysis: How much money do I want to spend on something I may not be around to really enjoy? On the other hand: Isn’t buying an expensive couch a kind of lovely expression of hopefulness?… Then again o darkest demons! maybe I should buy something hideous and uncomfortable, something the woman John remarries will be forced to keep because his dead wife bought it.” Pg 212213 “We will figure how what to do about them [her boys] soon enough. They probably already know what’s up and are waiting for us to figure out how to say it. Their very existence is the one dark piece I cannot get right within all this. I can let go of a lot of things: plans, friends, career goals, places in the world I want to see, maybe even the love of my life. But I cannot figure out how to let go of mothering them.” Pg 215 “Everywhere I look, everyone is headed somewhere… No one else looks to be wandering in the street with a time bomb strapped to her body, thinking of saying to those she loves most: I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry for what I am about to do to you.” Pg 227
“I can imagine that sort of letting go: warm, dangerous, seductive. What if this is what death is: The engine beneath you steady; those that hold you strong; the sun warm? I think maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to fall into that, to loosen the grip at the waist, let gravity and fate take over like a thought so good you can’t stop having it.” Pg 236 “John is a superstar bad, but now I keep a running list on my phone of the things I’m worried no one will teach my kids: table manners, how to play Scrabble without getting in a fight, long division, how to pack light, how to find the orange juice in the refrigerator.” Pg 256 “Qualifying for a clinical trial produces some ecstatic feelings not unlike what I imagine qualifying for an Olympic trial feels like: You did it! Congratulations! All your fortitude has paid off! Gold medal in lab draws. Gold medal in initials at the bottom of the page… It’s a very odd balance: You’re sick enough to get in, not sick enough to be disqualified, and you possess some special trait worth studying.” Pg 279 With the clinical trial, Nina’s doctors stress the importance of birth control. She offers to get an IUD: “You’re not getting a vasectomy… You have not idea what you might want after.” Pg 280 “No sound that feels farther away to me these days than a beingborn sound. Here in our waning thirties, some of the closest contemporaries are having babies. My best friend from high school is about to give birth to her fourth. Bonnie and her girlfriend have hatched a plan to conceive. My mom was pregnant with Charlie when she was exactly as old as I am now. It feels impossible, as my days are filled imagining how to wind these things down, that someone my age is winding things up, preparing new life, getting ready to scrummle.” Pg 304 Nina’s Reading Guide Ralph Waldo Emerson Montaigne Atul Gawande Being Mortal Paul Kalanithi When Breath Becomes Air
Discussion Questions Provided by publisher Simon & Schuster 1. Discuss the book’s epigraph. Nina has included quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson throughout The Bright Hour . Why do you think she chose this passage as the epigraph? How does it frame your reading of The Bright Hour ? Do you think that growing up as a descendant of Emerson affected Nina’s worldview? If so, in what ways? 2. When Freddy is back home from the hospital, he tells Nina, “Sometimes I miss the hospital so much I could cry” (p. 28). Why do you think Freddy misses being in the hospital? How was it a place of comfort to him? Both Nina and Freddy remember his hospital stay very differently. Describe how each of them experienced it. 3. One of the members of Nina’s book club says, “The beautiful, heavy [books] have a way of shutting us all up” (p. 60). Why might the “heavy” books stop conversation? Is this true of your book club? Discuss your past selections. Which books led to your best conversations? 4. Nina and her mother both employ gallows humor throughout their illnesses. Can you think of some examples from The Bright Hour ? Were there any that you found particularly funny? If so, what were they? What’s the effect of gallows humor on others within their orbit? How do you think that it allows the women to cope? 5. What is the effect of having this book broken up into sections designated as stages? Does it help you better understand the progression of Nina’s cancer? If so, how? Did you like the chapter headings? Explain your answer. 6. How does Nina react when John tells her that he cannot wait for things to return to normal? Why is Nina surprised by her reaction? Were you? Why or why not? What do you think Nina means when she tells John that she has to “love these days in the same way I love any other” (p. 73). Explain the rationale behind Nina’s assertion. 7. Describe the effect that going shopping for a breast prosthesis has on Nina. What prompts her to seek out the experience? Were you surprised to learn from Nina that “sometimes I prefer the onesidedness” (p. 180). Why does she feel this way? 8. After consulting her oncologist, who is a mother of a small boy, Nina takes her sons to see the hospital’s linear accelerator. Why does Nina want her children to see the machine? Describe their visit. How does seeing the machine affect them? What effect does seeing the machine through her sons’ eyes have on Nina? Do you agree with the doctor that it’s a good idea for Nina’s boys to see it? Why or why not? 10. Nina quotes Montaigne (“We have to learn that what cannot be cured must be endured”), saying, “You see why I talk to him all day” (p. 122). Discuss the use of Montaigne’s writings throughout The Bright Hour . How does reading Montaigne help Nina? Did you find any of the passages she quotes particularly moving? Which ones and why?
11. Were you surprised by Nina’s decision spend a few days at Well of Mercy after she’s received a terminal diagnosis? What motivates Nina to go to the retreat? How did doing so help her mother? Discuss Nina’s experience there. How, if at all, does this help Nina come to terms with her illness? 12. Nina writes that “Cancer removes whatever weird barriers we sometimes have with others” (p. 37). Do you agree? If so, what is it about a cancer diagnosis that leads to this? Can you think of some examples of this happening in The Bright Hour ? 13. One of Nina’s doctors tells her that she should “Listen to what [Nurse Jon] has to say. What he has to offer you is way more valuable than anything I have” (p. 204). Discuss the effect this nurse has on the hospital staff and on Nina. What does he teach them? Do you agree with the doctor’s statement? If so, why? 14. While Nina is back in the emergency room toward the end of her illness, the attending physician tells her, “It’s probably time to put your affairs in order and make a bucket list, as hard as that is to hear” (p. 209). Explain Nina’s reaction. Why is putting together a bucket list something that stumps Nina? What did you think of John’s suggestion? What would you include on a bucket list? 15. John describes having Nina’s essay, “When a Couch is More than a Couch,” published in the New York Times as “a dream publication and one that led directly to this book” (p. 309). Read that essay at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/fashion/modernlovewhenacouchismorethanacouch.html and discuss it with your book club. How did Nina elaborate on the themes in this essay in The Bright Hour ? 16. While Nina is in college, she works at a camp for gifted kids, teaching them creative writing. She recounts taking her class to a nearby graveyard and giving them prompts, including “ Write the first paragraph of a love story that begins in [a] cemetery ” (p. 35). Try this exercise with your book club and share your opening paragraphs. Are there any stories you’re interested in hearing more of? 17. When Nina’s son notices that she’s bingewatching Chasing Life , he says “So, you’re watching a cancer show. Why would you do that?” (p. 91). Watch Chasing Life or another “cancer show” with your book club. Why might Nina or other people battling cancer watch these shows? Are there any television shows or movies that deal with the subject of cancer that you find particularly cathartic? Which ones and why? 18. Nina writes that her children think she’s obsessed with the word please . In response, she makes “them a list one night. A list they won’t possibly understand for twenty to thirty years, but I am trying to write things down” (p. 75). Discuss Nina’s list. Do you agree with Nina’s reasons? Come up with your own extension of Nina’s list and share it with your book club. 19. Many reviewers have compared The Bright Hour to the 2015 posthumous memoir When Breath Becomes Air by neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi. Have your book club read When Breath Becomes Air and discuss how the perspective of a physician versus a poet changes the message in the memoirs. What common themes come up in both books?
Related Links Washington Post “The Bright Hour”: This Year’s “When Breath Becomes Air” Slate Famous Last Words Nina’s Blog Suspicious Country Cup of Jo An Update on My Twin Sister Cup of Jo Nina Rigg’s Widower on Coping with His Grief