Book Club Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Heroic Measures:
1. How does Ciment treat the lives of Ruth and Alex as an aging couple? Does she emphasize their limitations, using them as a point of humor? Or does she present their aging as a normal phase of life? The couple have been together for 45 years; how would you describe their relationship?
2. Dorothy, of course, is almost more important a character than Alex—she's given her own "voice." How did you react to Dorothyt's narration? Is she "believable" as a character? What about her name: in what way might Dorothy allude to the heroine of The Wizard of Oz?
3. Many readers and critics say that the state of Dorothy's health worried them more than the terrorist's threat—that her out-come was more important than the city's. Was that your experience reading the book? Symbolically, how might the dog's illness reflect (or structurally parallel) what's happening in New York?
4. Talk about Abdul Pamir as a character. Do you find him sympathetic, pathetic...or what? Is there humor in his situation...or is it not particularly funny to you? What about the moment when the police bomb-sniffing German Shepherd approaches Pamir?
5. Ciment takes aim at Americans', in particular New Yorkers', high anxiety about terrorist attacks. On whom (or what) does she level her satiric eye? Who is most ridiculous in this story —and why? Is her humor fairly leveled, or does the public have reason to be frightened?
6. In what way does the real estate market track the city's level of anxiety?
7. Alex is creating a work based on Ruth's FBI file. What do we learn about Ruth's past? And how does that past, especially with regards to the House Un-American Activities Committee, connect thematically to the present?
8. What is the significance of the book's title, Heroic Measures?
9. Does this book deliver for you? Did you enjoy the dialogue, characters and fast-paced, thriller-like plot?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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