Truly Madly Guilty, by Liane Moriarty

 

Characters
Sam Hart Clementine – celloist Holly and Ruby - daughters   Pam – Clementine’s mother	Erika Oliver   Sylvia – Erika’s mother, hoarder	Vid Tiffany – former stripper Dakota
Harry – cranky neighbor, died alone, found by Oliver and Tiffany   Steve Lunt – Harry’s great-nephew   Andrew – parent at Saint Anastasias who knew Tiffany in her previous life Gave Tiffany large amount of money for sex which provided the financial basis for her real estate business

 

For Discussion:

NOTE: Page numbers are from hardback edition.

1.      Discuss the problem of hoarding.  Erika felt that “every piece of junk represented a choice her mother had made of an object over Erika” (page 165).   Should, or could, Erika have been more understanding?

2.      Was it fair of Pam to ask Clementine to be Erika’s friend?   Should she have seen eventually how this bothered Clementine and allowed her to pull back?

3.      Why was Erika stealing things from Clementine?

4.      How much did Erika affect Clementine?  Toward the end of the novel Clementine wondered “if her entire personality was a fabrication, nothing more than a response to Erika’s personality.   You are like this, so therefore I am like that” (page 336).

5.      What would Clementine’s life have been like without Erika?  Clementine compared Erika to her cello’s wolf tone and the effect of the eliminator, and wondered if her life “would have lacked something subtle but essential without her [Erika] in it; a certain richness, a certain depth” (page 342).

6.      Could you understand Sylvia’s feelings about Pam, especially when she learned that Clementine might donate her eggs to Erika?  She thought “My grandchild will be Pam’s grandchild.  It’s not enough that she has to take my daughter, oh no, now she can lord it over me with this” (page 319).  Should she have been more grateful to Pam?

7.      Was Ruby falling into the fountain and almost drowning “bad luck” as Clementine said or “negligence” as Sam recounted (page 249)?

8.      On the night of the accident, Holly told Oliver and then Pam that she had pushed Ruby.  Oliver told her to whisper she was sorry to Ruby and Pam told her that she really didn’t push her and to put it out of her mind.   Were these the best ways to handle the situation?

9.      Dakota felt guilty about what happened because she went inside to read when she was bored playing with Holly and Ruby.    Are her feelings understandable?  Should her parents have realized this earlier and intervened?

10.  What did you think about the revelation that Tiffany had been a stripper and the pretend lap dance she performed at the barbeque?  Why did any of the adults think that was an appropriate thing to do?  If that event had not happened, would the next event of Rudy falling into the fountain have happened?

11.  What did the substory of Harry add to the novel?

12.  In the last chapter, Clementine is starting to feel that Erika is distancing herself.   Then, on the last page, she wonders “what sort of person Erika could have been, would have been, should have been, if she’d been given the privilege of an ordinary home. You can jump so much higher when you have somewhere safe to fall” (page 415).   How might Erika have been different if she had grown up in a more normal environment?

13.  As you were reading, what did you think happened at the barbeque?   Were you tempted to look ahead to find out what had happened?

14.  Did you like the way the story was written, with the event a mystery?  How would the book have been different if the reader had known what happened from the beginning?

15.  If you read the book again for this discussion, how was your reading experience given that you knew from the beginning what had happened?