A Map of the World

Insult added to trauma piled upon tragedy…and yet there is hope. First published in 1994, A Map of the World follows the journey of a counterculture couple, Alice and Howard Goodwin, through a cruel and life-altering year of their marriage.
Existence on Howard’s beloved 400-acre dairy farm in rural Wisconsin is insular enough, but the Goodwins are also shut out by the mistrust and misunderstanding of the small community around them. Except, that is, for Dan and Theresa, a couple with whom they have developed a comfortable friendship.
The book begins during a typically-hectic morning at home. Emma, one of the two Goodwin daughters, is having a tantrum at breakfast. In the midst of this, Theresa stops by to leave her own two daughters show more with Alice for the morning and departs. Distracted by Emma’s demands and the chance finding of her own childhood drawing of a peaceful world, Alice makes a fatal mistake that carries unbearable consequences for both families.
In the midst of dealing with one tragedy, and the loss of her only friend, Alice is soon dogged by the added burden of unfounded accusations from the mother of a neglected boy she often deals with (and dislikes) in her part-time job as the local school nurse.
Told first through Alice’s rich inner dialog, and then Howard’s, the story traces an unrelenting path through unthinkable circumstances before it ends in Alice’s voice once again. In the end almost everything has changed.
But be warned: the prose doesn’t just dog Alice and Howard’s footsteps; it deposits you straight into hearts and minds stripped raw as the pen of Jane Hamilton dips deftly again and again into the inkpot of pain and remorse. Yet, despite all, she has drawn characters illuminated with determination and hope amid the calligraphy of chaos. show less

Alice, the central character in Jane Hamilton's great 1994 novel “A Map of the World,” takes a one-two punch that could knock any of us flat, if not out cold. First this school nurse and wife of a Wisconsin dairy farmer is still looking for her swimsuit when the two-year-old daughter of Teresa, her best friend, drowns in the farm pond. Numb with grief and guilt, Alice is then arrested, charged with sexual molestation of a boy in her school. She's jailed for months, while virtually the entire community thinks the very worst of her.

Most of the story is told from Alice's point of view, but in the middle third of the novel Hamilton gives us the perspective of Howard, her silent, handsome husband, for whom a dairy farm is a dream come show more true. Yet a lawyer, not to mention bail, costs money.

A third main character is Teresa, a devout Catholic woman who despite her daughter's death, perhaps because of Alice's carelessness, cannot turn against her friend. At least not until she spends a night in Howard's arms, albeit the two of them consumed more with grief than passion. Still she and Howard now have their own reason for feeling guilt.

Alice is clearly not guilty of the criminal charges against her, yet her trial proves dramatic anyway, mainly because we see it through her eyes and can read her compassionate thoughts about not just those who testify against her but also about those women with whom she lived with so long in jail.

As for the book's title, it refers to a map of an ideal country in an ideal world that Alice had drawn when she was a girl. She finds the map, in fact, while she is looking for that elusive swimsuit, and the image pops up here and there throughout the novel. Alice's own story shows us that such a perfect world is impossible, yet by the end we see that the only chance we have is for the people of our own world to accept, forgive and even love one another. The story is really all about grace. show less

The beginning of A Map of the World finds hapless housewife Alice Goodwin waking up on her Wisconsin farm for the last normal morning before tragedy strikes. Within the first few chapters, her neighbor and friend Theresa's daughter has wandered off to the farm's pond and drowns in the few minutes it takes Alice to hunt down a swimsuit and discover that one of her charges is missing. I thought this incident would be the crux of the book, but as it turns out, the drowning is just the tip of the tragic iceberg that strikes the Goodwin family that year and changes their lives forever. Admittedly, A Map of the World is a bleak book, however Hamilton is a wizard with words, bringing forth two equally compelling narrators in Alice and her show more husband Howard, expertly depicting the tumble-down farm and the daily struggle it takes to keep it going. A Map of the World is a dense and introspective account of a family temporarily torn asunder that explores big themes like guilt and forgiveness while at the same time contemplating human connections that are strikingly universal but too easily threaten to give way under pressure. A Map of the World takes a little extra time to dig into, but for readers who appreciate a good character study with a plot to back it up, it's definitely worth the effort. show less

I had heard of this novel without knowing too much about it. I only knew that something happened in the beginning that changes the lives of the characters. I almost didn't want to know as I began reading and came to the realization that Alice, the main character and co narrator is responsible for the death by drowning of her best friend's 2 year old daughter. As if this isn't bad enough, Alice, while still unraveling over the tragedy, becomes accused of sexually abusing several students in the Elementary School where she works as the nurse. It is almost as if the accusation and eventual time spent in a women prison has more to do with the accidental death than it does with the 6year old boy's accusation. Alice's guilt over the first show more event makes her seem okay with the time spent away from her family. I found the novel at first a little melodramatic, but started liking it more when the husband took a turn at the narration. I found the courtroom proceedings and the eventual reality of what a trial of this nature can be like to be very interesting, that and the change that took hold of Alice as she dealt with the events. This seemed almost Kafkaesque as Alice is in jail for something she did not do, yet is guilty for not supervising the little girl. Other scenes of interest in the novel include the amazingly forgiving attitude of Theresa, the mourning mother, the life inside a women’s prison, the resiliency of the children who become more independent as their life goes more awry, and the way the local townspeople so willingly jump on the bandwagon of accusation. I would be interested the author’s first book which won a Pen/Faulkner Award. show less

I’m not sure just exactly what was so compelling about Jane Hamilton’s A Map of the World, but I found it very difficult to put down. Perhaps it was the all too possible nightmare of taking care of a friend’s child and having a fatal accident occur in a split second of negligence. Or maybe it was the experience of having a colleague falsely and ridiculously accused of child abuse. The reactions of the characters in this novel to the chain reaction of events in this story, as well as their responses to one another, are beautifully portrayed. Despite the difficult subject matter, I enjoyed reading this book.

I reckon Jane Hamilton is a great writer, and this book is a good example of her work. She can see things from a different perspective, and yet, when she presents that vision, the reader understands it. Here's a couple of examples:

In the first, her narrator is contemplating the state of her marriage relationship:

"Because I couldn't make out the blur of the next week, or month, I tried to see though to the end.I would die, and if I was still married to Howard I would be buried next to him. Where would we rest our useless bodies? We might not be allowed a plot in Prairie Center Cemetery, but it would be of little matter, save for our hurt feelings, because Howard would want to be buried with his relatives in Minnesota. ...In the end maybe show more what marriage offered was the determination of one's burial site. "

In the second example, the same woman is on trial, and she describes one of the witnesses, a psychologist, called to speak against her:

"It wasn't difficult to understand why Dr Bailey could speak to the horror of the body, when his own form - his sunken chest, his slim waist that required a belt for which he likely had to make extra holes - might alone have caused him plenty of trauma and subsequent neurosis. I liked Dr Bailey, felt his sensitivity, his probable fondness for moss and lichens, wild flowers, Debussy."

I laughed out loud at that last sentence...and wondered what Claude Debussy himself would make of it. Only two days ago I had been on the roof of my house and noticed how lichens were covering all the tiles, and some of the lichens were quite wonderfully complex, and perhaps even beautiful. And yes, I've put extra holes in my belt when I was younger and slimmer!

The whole book is full of fascinating observations of things and people. Her photo on the dust jacket shows a very contemplative and thoughtful person - and yet she is obviously not without humor.

I was very interested in this book from the point of view of its exploration of forgiveness. The book doesn't have a neat and complete set of answers, but it does pose lots of questions and offer a variety of forgiveness experience. I guess that's the best you can hope for? show less

Achingly like life, Hamilton writes of pain with beauty. While depressed by the tragedy Alice unwittingly generates for herself and her family, I kept reading; I admit I wanted closure, am slightly compulsive about finishing what I've started, but also found the prose fluid. The story unfolds in a way that allows readers to feel many of the surprises and shocks as the characters themselves do.