I read Perfect by Rachel Joyce last week, and it was one of those books that left me feeling very emotional and asking myself lots of questions about the characters and themes of the book. The following is my attempt at answering some reading group questions on the book.
Question 1: The attempt to achieve perfection is central to both Diana's and Byron's behaviour. Has the novel changed your perception of what it may mean to be 'perfect'?
Answer: Both Byron and Diana are trying to live up to the ideals of being perfect people, for Byron this is being a first class academic and for Diana this is being a perfect wife and mother. These ideas have been placed on them by somebody else, which increases the pressure on them to live up to them. My perception of 'perfect' changed when I had a nervous breakdown at the age of 29, I believed that I had to have a career at a certain level, earn a certain salary and have married and had a child by 30. When these things started slipping I tried to grab on harder to them, to the detriment of my health. In recovery I have realised that all that matters is happiness, there isnt a certain thing that makes you secure of successful. We are all made different and living a life that makes you happy as an individual is all that matters.
Question 2: Rachel Joyce portrays time as a slippery and un-predictable concept. Has this affected your attitude towards the ways in which we measure the paths of our lives?
Answer: The book makes you consider how time is something that can both break and heal things. Time is unpredictable, as you find out in the book, a split second decision can alter the path of our lives. I think people can become too obsessed with time though and running their lives to schedules. I liked the part in the book where Diana stops using clocks, I have tried in the last year to be a bit freer from doing things when I think I should and it can be very fulfilling to be free from routines.
Question 3: Responsibility is a theme that plays a key part in the novel. Who do you believe holds the greatest responsibility for the accident?
Answer: If the accident really happened then of course Byron was responsible for distracting his mother and his mother was responsible for taking her eyes off the road. The question is though, did the accident actually take place or did Byron imagine it? or did Beverley just take the opportunity to con and manipulate Diana?
Question 4: Is Jim's mental illness the inevitable result of the events of his childhood??
Answer: We find out early on in the book that he is an anxious child, the idea of time changing scares him. A lot of the issues with his mental health would have come from the pressure to live up to ideals placed on him by a father who was absent mostly from his life but still expected him to live and behave to his standards. He is also very responsible for his mother who is struggling with life, so that coupled with the burden of the accident would have of course pushed him over the edge later in life.
Question 5: Diana says: 'I'm beginning to think chaos is underrated' do you agree?
Answer: Yes I do agree, Its a great thing to throw caution to the wind and be spontaneous, when we live our lives ridgidly and to routines then we miss out on a lot of the joy of life.
Question 6: Byron identifies the moment at which he no longer considers himself to be a child. How does the novel question traditional definitions of childhood and parenthood?
Answer: In the book Byron strikes me as a character who was born old and Diana comes accross as somebody who was forced to become an adult too quickly and still has a childlike nature. I think in life we just expect parents to be the responsible ones who have it all figured out but sometimes I think children can end up having to guide and be responsible for their parents. Its comes back to the point of does time really exist as we think it does? Just because we are in adult or child human bodies, does it necessarily determine the intelligence or wisdom we have, the roles we are here to play or the journeys or souls have been on?
Question 7: What is the significance of class in the relationship between Beverley and Diana?
Answer: Class is what ultimately causes Diana to have to confront herself and a lot of the demons she is holding inside. She is living this wealthy lifestyle, but really inside she is a free and very natural person and meeting Beveley lets her unleash that side of her nature. I think both Beverley and Diana use class as a power over each other but in subtle ways, Diana has the money to buy and do what Beverley would like to do but Bevereley has the freedom in her lifestyle to obtain the happiness that Diana craves.
Question 8: Diana believes that the course of her life is determined by destiny. What part does spiritual belief play in the novel and do you agree that our actions cannot influence our own fates?
Answer: In the novel Byron believes that you can control things and he has a deep need for that, its part of the reason why time being altered scares him so much because it is something that is unnatural and out of his control. It is a grey area, but I believe that I think we are all destined to fulfill a certain role or to experience certain things. Acting in a certain way cannot control that but sometimes actions we perceive to be bad really end up leading us to our ultimate purpose.
Question 9: Seymour and Andrea Lowe express strong views about feminism. How does Rachel Joyce represent the role of women in the novel?
Answer: I think the way that women are represented in the novel is very significant and relative to the time period that the book was set in. In the 1970's most women did aspire to be at home living off men and rasing children and were told mostly by men that it was their place to be at home. However there was a new breed of women like Diana emerging who challenged sexism and believed there was more to life than just keeping a house. As the novel moves on to present day, we see that the women working with Jim in the cafe are stronger fiestier characters and this represents the change in our culture.
Question 10: Diana is lonely despite having a family and friends; Jim experiences intense loneliness. What do you think makes people feel connected to each other, and what creates fulfilling relationships?
Answer: I think the feeling that we are understood and accepted is what makes us feel connected to people. With Diana she was represseing her true nature to live a so called perfect life so she wasn't meeting people similar to her or developing deep connections. I think we create fulfilling relationships by being true to ourselves and by being accepting of other people.
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