Alice and Oliver (Bock) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Alice and Oliver … then take off on your own:

1. Alice and Oliver is based on events in Charles Bock's own life. Does that knowledge affect how you experienced the novel? (See Bock's interview with Tom Perrotta.)

2. Talk about Alice and Oliver's life in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan before cancer disrupted everything. How would you describe it — charmed, perhaps? What else …?

3. Follow-up to Question 2: How does the couple's life change after Alice's diagnosis. Talk about their battles with chemotherapy, the frustrations with the healthcare bureaucracy, even the strange reactions of friends.

4. How does cancer affect the couple's relationship? How do the two adjust to the falling away of the very things that attracted them to one another? How might you adjust (or how have you had to adjust) to the tragedy of a loved one with a life-threatening disease?

5. Follow-up to Question 4: Once the cancer takes over, who suffers more — Alice or Oliver?

6. Of the various case studies included in the novel—the man whose jaw is surgically removed, for instance, or the 2nd-grader who falls out of remission—which one most affects you?

7. Does the wealth of specific details regarding chemotherapy and the logistics of bone-marrow transplants feel overdone in the novel … or appropriate?

8. No one in Alice's orbit is left unchanged once her disease strikes. Talk about how her battle with cancer reshapes those closest to her.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks)

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