Thank you for selecting my book for your book club! I hope you have a wonderful discussion (along with something good to eat). If you live in North Carolina, I may be available to visit your group. Or maybe we can Zoom? You’ll find my email address under “contact.” And I’m always interested to hear your thoughts about the book or try to answer any questions.
Writer Beth Kephart interviews me for The Rumpus.
Book Club Discussion Guide
Note: There are no right or wrong answers to these questions; they are intended to provoke lively conversation. These questions may contain spoilers.
- How would you characterize Lexie’s relationship with her father as she was growing up? How does this compare to Madison’s relationship with him? How do their experiences shape their relationship with him in the present?
- In “Wealth Management,” Drew says, “Everyone at this table is hateful.” Do you agree? Are these characters racists?
- Why is the Speaker drawn to the bridge in “We Always Start with the Seduction”? What bridges—literal and metaphorical—appear and reappear throughout this book?
- Why does the Speaker still think about Beau?
- In “My Father Raised Me,” Lexie says, “I do things I know are wrong. I do them and do them.” Do Lexie’s perceived (and actual) self-destructive tendencies frustrate you? Is there room for feeling compassion toward her?
- How do you explain Lexie’s complicated reaction to the news about her father?
- Of Tay, Lexie says, “He’s everything I want without being anything I want.” What other contradictions are seen in these characters?
- What is gained by allowing both Mary-Grace and Mia to narrate “I Believe in Mary Worth”?
- Is being patient “a kind of power” as the Speaker says in “I Believe in Mary Worth”? Is “learning to live unnoticed a talent” as Mary-Grace suggests?
- Did the Speaker call someone’s name in the ambulance? If so, whose?
- Is the narrator in “This Isn’t Who We Are” being too hard on herself and/or her suburban neighbors?
- Why is Patrick angry with Jillian in “People Love a View”?
- What should Ari do about her son?
- Do you think Christine is wrong to offer to pay for the apple juice in “Green in Judgment”? Is she wrong to want to be thanked? Why/why not?
- What do you make of the Speaker’s advice to his daughter/s, especially the advice Lexie remembers in “My Father Raised Me”? What has Lexie learned from her father? What are the various ways the past informs the present throughout the book?
- In “Admit This to No One”, we’re told the Speaker is “only a man standing on the outside, looking in.” Do you agree with this assessment? Would he agree with this assessment? Would Mary-Grace? His daughters? Ultimately, is the Speaker a powerful man?
- Do you agree that there is “power in the small and the ordinary,” as stated in “Admit This to No One”? What examples of power residing in small and/or ordinary things can be found within the book and/or within your life?
- “Kill the Fatted Calf” asks if a family is made “of memories or of blood.” What do you think?
- Why does Madison refer to feeling rage as an “indulgence” at the protest in “Every Man in History”? What other cases of anger—expressed or unexpressed—can you point to in this book?
- How do you interpret the book’s title? What things are these characters throughout unable or unwilling or afraid to admit to themselves, to others?