Like Tommy Gutpill, Patty Nicely is concerned with her appearance, her reputation, and the perception of her family members and students. She becomes obsessed with Lila Lane’s harsh words, reciting “Fatty Patty” to herself even in the privacy and loneliness of her own home. But the real link here seems to be a continued obsession with Lucy Barton. She’s written a memoir, one that we know little about other than its apparent darkness and sadness, which we could’ve gleaned from “The Sign.” I want to believe that Patty is so taken by the story because Lucy should have been more unhappy, given her circumstances, but emerges with love for her parents, love they may not have deserved. Her experience with Lucy’s writing is described as the sweetness “of having yellow-colored piece of candy, maybe butterscotch, tucked in the back crevices of her mouth.” There’s a strangeness in the way that Strout explains this sensation but its specificity makes that feeling familiar. It is particular to Patty and yet I can taste the butterscotch and the happiness, contentment, or maybe satisfaction she might have felt.

I’ll admit when I put this story down I wasn’t sure where to begin or what to say. There is so much darkness in Sebastian, Charlie, Lila, and Patty. Even the smallest characters have some inner life made available to us through town gossip or rumors. Charlie Macauley, for example, appears only briefly in the first story but we are told that he was in Vietnam and returned a different man. His wife, Marilyn, was once pretty and cheery and is now a much thinner, more “pinched” version of herself. It is made clear that Charlie suffers from PTSD but I began to wonder if perhaps all of these characters suffer from post-traumatic stress of some kind. Patty with her mother’s affair, Sebastian’s sexually abused childhood, and Charlie, who I imagine will come back in full force with his own story. Both “The Sign” and “Windmills” have dealt with characters who experienced some kind of trauma as children and developed into a particular kind of person — some part of them is damaged and we get to see the person they become.

I am also interested in Patty’s relationship with Sebastian. He’s not described as a particularly attractive man, with eyebrows that extend across his forehead, but there’s something about him that Patty likes. She doesn’t seem to think he needs fixing but it appears that some of his appeal comes from the fact that he would never cheat on her. Sebastian has made it clear that he will never recover from the abuse and it’s possible that Patty is comforted by the idea that she could never end up in a bind like her mother’s. They’ve agreed to be together without intimacy but their relationship is not without love. I found myself conflicted. Was it healthy? Was it beneficial, for either of them?

Discussion Questions:

1. What similarities do you see between Tommy and Patty? Should we be comparing them?
2. More than this small town in Illinois, what links do you see between the first and second stories?
3. The soybean field is specifically mentioned in both stories, what role does nature appear to play?
4. What kind of metaphoric possibility do the windmills have?
5. What do you think of Patty’s relationship with Sebastian? Charlie?
6. What role does Lila play? Why or why isn’t she an effective character?
7. Is this story a commentary on childhood and who we become?