1. What effect does the past/present narration have on your reading experience? What are the significant events in Lucy's youth that influence your perspective on the characters?

2. By revealing the personality flaws of Anna and Faye before Frank's tragic accident, the author eliminates that specific trauma as an explanation for their general behavior. Keeping that in mind, how did you react to those characters? Did you want to have a solid reason for their respective troubles?

3. Discuss the character of James. What effect did he have on the family? Was he ultimately a positive or negative influence? Could you anticipate the reason for Faye and James's divorce, as revealed at the end of the novel?

4. The novel is made up of images. Describe the image that has stayed with you the most. Why is this image more significant to you than any other?

5. Lucy compares her and Anna's respective views of the world: "I was Walker Evans alongside her Robert Mapplethorpe" (p. 223). If your family photo album were done by a famous photographer, who would it be?

6. Discuss Anna's revelation in her family session at the rehab clinic. Why do you think she alters her memories in such a way? How does this color your opinion of modern therapy?

7. Before the therapy session at the rehab clinic, Lucy thinks, "I thought this sounded like a bad idea, this plan to agitate the past. . . . Somebody was going down today" (p. 217). How do you relate to this statement? Is there always a reason behind an act? Is there always someone to blame?

8. Leaving drunkenness out of it, why do you think Lucy got the tattoo that resembles her father's back? What is the significance of this mark that they share?

9. What happens to Lucy in the end? What makes her so capable and strong and able to guide both her mother and her sister?

10. At the end of the novel, Lucy insists that she, her sister, and her nieces go skinny-dipping while they spread Faye's ashes. In this moment, Lucy is, in a sense, forcing a memory on the reluctant. Why does she do this? In what ways does it help the family heal?