Featured Reading Guide
Rachel Simon
On a stormy night in small-town America, a couple, desperate and soaked to the skin, knock on a stranger’s door. When Martha, a retired schoolteacher living a safe and conventional life, answers their knock, her world changes forever.
For they are fugitives. Lynnie, a young woman with an intellectual disability, and Homan, a deaf man with only sign language to guide him, have escaped together from The School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, a brutal institution where people with disabilities are left to languish, shuttered away from the world.
In a moment of despair, they reveal that Lynnie…
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Rachel Simon is an award-winning author, renowned public speaker, and sister of a woman with an intellectual disability. She is best known for her critically acclaimed, bestselling memoir Riding the Bus with My Sister, which was adapted for a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie and is a much-beloved selection of book clubs and secondary school reading lists. She lives in Delaware.
topAbout the Book
On a stormy night in small-town America, a couple, desperate and soaked to the skin, knock on a stranger’s door. When Martha, a retired schoolteacher living a safe and conventional life, answers their knock, her world changes forever.
For they are fugitives. Lynnie, a young woman with an intellectual disability, and Homan, a deaf man with only sign language to guide him, have escaped together from The School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, a brutal institution where people with disabilities are left to languish, shuttered away from the world.
In a moment of despair, they reveal that Lynnie has a newborn baby. But, moments later, the police bang on the door. Homan escapes into the darkness, Lynnie is captured. But just before she is returned to The School, bound and tied, she utters two words to Martha: ‘Hide her.’ And so begins the unforgettable story of Lynnie, Homan, Martha, and baby Julia – lives divided by seemingly insurmountable obstacles, yet drawn together by a secret pact and extraordinary love.
Devastatingly powerful and richly compelling, The Story of Beautiful Girl is a mesmerising novel which will captivate readers everywhere.
topRachel Simon interview/review
A note from the author:
A few years ago, I wrote a memoir about my close relationship with my sister, who has a developmental disability. The book, Riding the Bus with My Sister, led to speaking engagements across the country.
On one of those trips, I came across a book that told the true story of a deaf, African American teenager found wandering the streets of Illinois in 1945. No one could identify him because no one understood his sign language. A judge declared him ‘feebleminded’ and sent him to an institution, where he remained until he died fifty years later.
The man they called John Doe Number 24 haunted me for years. Then one day I sat down, and The Story of Beautiful Girl burst out of me like nothing I’ve written before.
That’s what I know about where The Story of Beautiful Girl came from. But a psychic friend of mine is sure it came from the real John Doe himself. ‘He handed it to you so he could live the life he’d been denied.’
I don’t know if she’s right. But I do know my sister has a life of love, hope, and freedom. And if it takes a little writerlymystery to give those same things to my characters as well, then I’m fine with that explanation.
topStarting Points for Discussion
- The Story of Beautiful Girl is ultimately a story about love –romantic love, familial love, the love between friends. In what ways are the characters of the novel transformed by love, both given and received?
- What did you learn about the treatment of people with disabilities in the past, and do you think society and attitudes have changed now?
- Why do you think Martha took on the incredible responsibility of raising another woman’s child instead of contacting the proper authorities? What would you have done in her place?
- Think about the different ways Lynnie’sfamily treat her and the ways they deal with their feelings of guilt and loss.
- Lynnierelates a lot of her thoughts and experiences through her drawings. What do you think this brings to the story?
- Each character has his or her relationship to spirituality. Discuss if and how each changes over time. What do you think Rachel Simon is trying to say by including this aspect in all the characters’ lives?
- How do you think the subject of institutionalised abuse is explored in the book? And in what ways are the different characters responsible?
- Discuss the ways that race, impairment , illiteracy and institutionalisation play a part in how Homan interacts with the world and how the world reacts to him.
Suggested Further Reading
- Tinkers ~ Paul Harding
- The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake ~ Aimee Bender
- Every Last One ~ Anna Quindlen
- The Ghost of Lily Painter ~ Caitlin Davis. Out 2 June 2011
- Who is Mr Satoshi ~ Jonathan Lee. Out 7July 2011
Additional Online Resources
Visit Rachel Simon’s website
Online questionnaire for The Story of Beautiful Girl Reading Group Feedback
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