Burning Girl (Messud) - Discussion Questions

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

1. Start a discussion by parsing the personalities and characters of the two girls in this story, Julia and Cassie. How are the two similar and how are they dissimilar?

2. Follow-up to Question 1: Consider also the status cues between the two households which delineate socio/economic class.

3. Trace the steps which begin to undo the girls' friendship, starting with Cassie's mother's move-in boyfriend. How does it unravel? Does the split seem inevitable to you?

4. Julia's mother tries to console her daughter by telling her that "Everyone loses a best friend at some point." Is that true? Is it true in your life?

5.  What does the statement mean that "being a girl is learning to be afraid? Do you agree?

6. Ultimately, the novel poses the perennial question: can we ever truly know someone, even those who are close to us? Is there a satisfactory answer to that question?

7. How does Elizabeth Bishop's epigraph on the opening pages relate to the novel? You might consider, for starters, the burning deck as the friendship between Julia and Cassie … also, that the boy seems powerless: he stammers.

(We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available.)

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