Humanity Project (Thompson) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
1. The novel opens with a brief chapter set in italics, and other similar passages are interspersed throughout the novel. Although the italicized section at the end of the book is clearly Linnea’s, who did you think was speaking in these earlier sections? What kind of voice does it seem to be?

2. What brings Conner and Linnea together? Linnea refers to it as either a "desperate friendship or peculiar courtship." What do they give to each other?

3. Does Linnea's arrival change Art? How so? What compels him to reach out to Beata and invite her to lunch?

4. Beata asks Art what he’d like to be doing in ten years, and tells him that she wants "to be entirely new…new work, new house. Everything new and amazing." What do you make of this? What does it tell the reader about Beata? What does Art’s reaction to this comment tell you about him?

5. We get to know the characters both through the sections they narrate, and by the opinions and responses of other characters. Were there some characters you believed more than others? Was it interesting to pick out the discrepancies between different characters’ points of view?

6 A reviewer of the book writes that it "vividly, insistently poses questions we should be asking." What, in your view, are the questions it asks? (Suzanne Berne, The New York Times Book Review)

7. Several characters wonder aloud what "The Humanity Project" means, or even what "humanity" means. Does the novel have an answer to this question? What is the purpose of the project? Is it actually definable? Does it succeed in any way?

8. Towards the end of the novel, Christie wonders: "What if she were to allow herself to feel everything she really felt…why fight against her every instinct and impulse, bend herself into some impossible and hobbled shape, hold herself back with every step?" Why do you think it has "taken her so long to even ask" these questions?

9. What does the book have to say about virtue? What is it, and what is it not? Does the novel make a judgment at all?

10. Consider the parent-child relationships depicted in the novel: Linnea and Art, Conner and Sean, Leslie and Mrs. Foster, "Laurie" and the shooter. What kind of picture of parenthood does the book paint? Linnea says that she can understand why her mother chose her husband over her child. Do you believe her?

11. Can you understand Linnea’s impulse to change her name and find a new identity? Why does she lie to Connor about what happened to Megan?

12. Discuss Christie ("Nursie") and Sean’s reunion. Christie thinks, "how strange to be so remembered and so touched, in so much forlorn darkness." This line closes the main action of the novel. Would you consider it a hopeful end? Would you agree with Christie that "to be alive is to be, in spite of everything, hopeful?"
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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