Story Circle Network
Austin Chapter
Reader's Guide

October 1998
A Match to the Heart

A Match to the Heart
by Gretel Ehrlich

  1. Construct the chronology of this story, with dates. What happens when? Where?

  2. Find a passage you would like to read aloud to the group. Why did you choose this passage? How does it connect ot other parts of the book?

  3. Think about the structure of this book. How much of it is personal narrative? What else is embedded within this narrative? (Identify the chapters in which you find this "extra-narrative" material.) What ties all this together?

  4. Focus for a moment on the personal narrative itself. Does Ehrlich's experience seem to have changed her? In what ways? How is her experience of being struck by lightning connected to other in-progress changes in her life? If writing about a painful experience is somehow therapeutic, in what sense is Ehrlich healed? Were you satisfied with this dimension of the narrative?

  5. A Match to the Heart belongs to the sub-genre of memoir that is sometimes called a crisis narrative or survivor's memoir. In fact, one writer has said that "every autobiography is a story of crisis, in that it recounts change, turning points, conversions, critical lettings-go and breaks with the past." Think back on the other books we have read. Do you think this is true?

  6. In Living to Tell the Tale, June Taylor McDonnell writes: "The best examples of [survivor's narrative] are more than just private. They are also deeply spiritual and historical accounts that bear witness to some universal trauma experienced on a personal level." Ehrlich's experience isn't one that many of us share, however. Do you think she makes an effort to see her personal trauma in "universal" terms? If so, where do you find this in the narrative?

  7. Have you ever had a life-changing experience -- something like "a bolt from the blue"? How did it alter your life? If you were writing about it as Ehrlich does, what would your book look like? What shape would it take? What sort of extra-narrative material would you include? How would you attempt to raise your personal experience to the level of "universal trauma"?