Thank you for selecting my book for your book club! I hope you have a wonderful discussion (along with something good to eat…and perhaps you’d like to serve the Absolut-ly Silver Girl cocktail at your book club meeting?). Let me know if you’d like to talk about a Zoom visit. 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.
[Award-winning writer Beth Kephart interviews Leslie Pietrzyk. Check the “news” page for additional interviews.]
Book Club Discussion Guide
Note: There are no right or wrong answers to these questions; they are intended to provoke lively conversation.
- Why is this narrator unnamed? How did you feel about that element of the book?
- Why is this book not told in chronological order? What are the benefits and ramifications of this choice?
- In what ways is this narrator unreliable and untrustworthy? In what ways is she also painfully truthful and honest?
- How did your feelings about the narrator and the (sometimes harrowing) decisions she makes shift and evolve over the course of the book?
- Have you had a complicated friendship with someone, perhaps reminiscent of the narrator’s friendship with Jess? What kept you in that friendship? Or, what eventually led to the end of that friendship? What keeps Jess and the narrator together?
- The Tylenol murders took place in 1982, and product packaging and surveillance security have been transformed as a result. Does this crime feel like a relic from an earlier time? Or are there elements to these murders that feel relevant to today’s culture?
- These girls feel tremendous pressure to behave a certain way. Who applies this pressure? How do the characters find escape from these relentless expectations? How would you compare these expectations to your own experience coming of age?
- How do the various characters in this novel treat and consider material goods? Their appearance? Are their concerns superficial? Why/why not?
- In “Pretty,” the narrator accuses herself: “No one thinks about money the way you do.” How do you think about money? Have your views changed over time? How do you imagine other people think about money?
- In “Two Girls,” the narrator thinks, “Utter power, like God. That was what [the Tylenol killer] wanted, power—I felt sure of it…It was scary to understand that about him.” How would you describe the narrator’s interpretations of power? Are there times and situations when she has power, or imagines she does? When is she powerless? Why does she think about power so frequently?
- How does the physical landscape reflect and provoke the narrator’s experience?
- What is the role of stories within this book? How many different stories are told or are alluded to? Why does Grace like hearing about The Silver Girl?
- How would you describe the narrator’s view of personal relationships? How has she come by these feelings? Do her views change over the course of the novel?
- In “The Bedroom,” the narrator writes, “That endless yearning, that empty hunger, even when I knew it wasn’t sweaters I wanted (though also, actually it was). It was to not care how many sweaters I had; it wasn’t a number, but a word: enough. And that word was impossible, it seemed to me.” Do you think it’s possible to have “enough”? Why/why not?