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1. What do the living spaces in their various
conditions throughout the novel suggest about the people living in them?
Figuratively speaking, which foundations turn out to be solid, or
precarious?
2. Mary Treat tells Thatcher that to be unsheltered is to live in
daylight. What does she mean? What kinds of shelter do these characters
crave, in their different centuries? How might sheltered lives—or the
craving for them—become a hindrance?
3. Which of the many challenges confronting Willa are hers alone to
bear, and why? What do you see as the foundation of her successful
relationship with Iano? How has marriage changed, or not changed, since
the time of Rose and Thatcher?
4. Why do you think happy marriages so rarely appear in fiction?
5. In what ways, if any, do you find Nick’s bigotry and anger
comprehensible? What accounts for Tig’s patience with him, despite their
differences? How do the family’s conflicts relate to the polarization of
present times? What’s suggested by Willa’s and Nick’s argument taking
place on the Walt Whitman Bridge?
6. How are Mary Treat’s eccentricities related to her strengths? In what
ways is her friendship especially valuable to Thatcher? What is the role
of the scientist in times of social upheaval?
7. What are some of the"old mythologies" discussed by Mary and Thatcher,
to which people cling for comfort even when they’re no longer true? Are
any of these still popular in the modern era?
8. Mary tells Thatcher she is "astonished at how little most people can
manage to see." Specifically, which realities in her century, and ours,
do people find it difficult to see? What are the costs? Is it possible
to view ourselves objectively in our own time?
9. When Thatcher sees the world "divided in two camps, the investigators
and the sweeteners," what is he observing? Which of the novel’s
characters are the former, and which are the latter? Where would you
place yourself?
10. Consider the creative names and botanical character identities
throughout the novel. What do they reveal? How have the various
characters’ education or backgrounds shaped their perspectives? Why do
you think a select few of them are able to think outside of what Tig
calls "the cardboard box," or Mary, "the pumpkin shell?"
11. What family dynamics might have made Tig and Zeke so different and
combative, while Jorge and his siblings are close and supportive?
12. How do the characters in two centuries variously understand and
connect with the natural world? When Willa’s phone causes "thousands of
birds [to burst] from their tree skyward like a house going up in
smoke," what does this potent image suggest? What about the ants that
seem to inhabit the neighborhood outside the boundaries of time?
13. When Willa complains that "the rules don’t apply anymore," what does
she mean? How are Zeke and Tig preparing differently for a future in
which they will have less than their parents? Did the novel move you to
any new insights about generational difference?
14. How does the powerful experience of loss affect this novel’s
characters, at personal and societal levels? Is the nature of grief
constant across human experience? How might "the loss of what they know"
influence people’s political behavior?
15. The novel’s epigraph quotes a Wallace Stevens poem,"The Well Dressed
Man with a Beard." How does the epigraph relate to the novel, and how
might Christopher Hawk (a well-dressed man with a beard) serve as its
pivot point? Why do you think the author chose to set the story in two
different centuries? And why these two in particular?
16. In shifting between chapters, what changes did you notice in the
characters’ language, or the narrative tone? In what ways did you find
the two separate narratives connected?
17. What is the "precise balance of terror and mollycoddling" that
Charles Landis manages? How, when, and why do you think people respond
to this leadership style?
18. The shooting of Uri Carruth by Charles Landis, and subsequent
not-guilty verdict, are actual historical events. Is the anecdote
relevant to the present? What is the role of journalism in a healthy
society? Who is responsible for its integrity?
19. As they shift from parent-child to a more adult relationship, what
does Willa learn from her daughter? How might "the secret of happiness"
be "low expectations?" How does this relate to the lost-and-found quote
about happiness from Willa Cather’s My Àntonia?
20. Thatcher settles finally on seeing Mary Treat as "a giant redwood:
oldest and youngest of all living things, the tree that stood past one
eon into the next." Do you agree?
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