A Southern Family is a novel of talking—through long passages characters reveal themselves and the plot through their accounts of themselves and of events. For some discussion group members, this will be the basis for their difficulty understanding the novel: The chestbeating lamentations of guilt, remorse, regret, and self-righteousness may seem like the whining of simpletons. A discussion of why an author would choose a format of characters recounting their versions of events could break through the resistance group members might have to a plot that is almost entirely psychological. The most common reason an author has for such a narrative is a desire to explore how different people may view reality in different ways—it is a reach for a universal question for human beings: How do we know what we know? A Southern Family implies that there are levels of meanings...