The Fairfax
Library Book Discussion Group will meet Thursday, February 13th at 7:00
p.m. in the meeting room of the
Fairfax Library to discuss our February book, Disappearing Earth by Julia
Phillips.
I apologize
to anyone who wasn’t able to borrow the book in time for our discussion. It got
very popular after we chose it. Feel free to join us for the discussion and see
if you’d like to read it afterwards.
Here are some
links for additional background and information:
Coming up, we
have the following book to look forward to reading:
Thurs.
Mar. 12th The Soul of an
Octopus by Sy Montgomery
Thanks for
reading with us. I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.
Beth Bailey-Gates
Friends of
the Fairfax Library
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. 1. Most of the
chapters of the book are stories of women on the peripheries of the
disappearance of the two girls in the first chapter. It has been suggested that
the author uses the suppression of these women to trap the reader as
effectively as these girls are trapped by their stranger abduction and that the
constraining, disheartening, utterly recognizable cages these women navigate
are exhaustingly universal to a female reader with the women stuck in the world
of the men in their lives. Would you agree or disagree with that assessment?
2. 2. The Kamchatka
Peninsula almost figures as a character in the book from the city center of
Petropavlovsk to the lives of indigenous people of the north, including the
reindeer herders. Kamchatka is described as a fallen paradise in post-Soviet
times (with the removal of much of the military and an influx of immigrants)
and an isolated provincial enclave filled with even smaller isolated
communities. Did you learn anything about this area of the world? Was the
location used to good effect in the novel?
3. 3. Would you
describe the book as a crime thriller, a literary novel, a collection of linked
short stories? Or something else?
4. 4. All of the
stories told in the book are from the perspective of a woman. Why did the
author choose to tell the stories only from women’s perspectives? Was this
essential to the novel? Effective?
5. 5. The novel has
as many characters as there are chapters. Each has their own individual story
that at least tangentially links to the mystery of the missing girls. Did any
of the characters and their situations stand out to you? Why?
6. 6. The novel
shows many of the female characters as oppressed by the people or circumstances
around them. Do any of the characters show surprising strength given their
circumstances?
