Discuss Tiffany’s meditation on sex: 'People had such complicated feelings when they heard that she’d been a dancer.

What does Clementine mean when she thinks back on the 'extraordinaryordinariness' of her life before the barbecue? How is the ordinary treated in this novel? Do you think it’s inevitable that we don’t appreciate the ordinary? Do we need a life event as jarring as what happened to Sam and Clementine in order to fully appreciate our lives?ĥ. Erika’s psychologist tells her, 'You’ve got to get this idea out of your head about there being some objective measure of normality.… This ‘normal’ person of whom you speak doesn’t exist!' Do you agree? Do you think this relates back to Tolstoy’s famous quote, '… each unhappy family is unhappy in itsown way'? Is the real normal that, once you scratch the surface, no family is normal?Ĥ. The epigraph is a Claude Debussy quote: 'Music is the silence between the notes.' What does that mean to you? How significant are silences and the unsaid in this novel?ģ. Why do all of the characters feel so guilty? Should they? How do they deal with their guilt?Ģ.

Truly madly guilty novel