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 start a discussion for Under the Influence...then take off on your own:
1. Talk about Helen. In what state of mind is she when readers first meet her? Are you sympathetic toward her? Clearly, she is prone to making bad decisions—do you find her not infrequent lapses of judgment irritating...or understandable?
2. Talk about the widening gap in the relationship between Helen and Ollie? Is it inevitable that their visits would become awkward? Where Dwight in all of this, and what about his new wife Cheri?
3. What was your first impression of the Havillands, both Avis and Swift? And at what did you begin to feel uneasy about them?
4. Talk about the degree to which Helen falls "under the influence" of the Havillands? What were your feelings when she began to run errands and do chores for them? What in Helen's personality makes her susceptible to the attentions, and demands, of Ava and Swift?
SPOILER ALERT from here
5. What do you make of Elliot and his attentions to Helen? What sparks his suspicions of the Havillands?
6. We know from the start that something will go amiss in the relationship between Helen and the Havillands. Why might the author have structured her book this way? What affect does it have on your reading experience? What if Maynard hadn't telescoped the troubled friendship?
7. Once the accident happens, what would you have done in Helen's place? Did she make the right or wrong decision?
8. We you surprised by the turn the plot took by the end?
9. Does this book play into the idea of female victimhood? Yes? No? Possibly?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use these, online or off with attribution. Thanks.)