1. How are each couple’s wishes for Helen’s house influenced by their social class status and role as parents?

2. What is the significance of Kate being unofficially tasked with maintaining her mother’s traditions such as setting New Year’s resolutions on December 21st? How does this task relate to her role within their family?

3. How is the theme of home explored throughout FLIGHT? Is it strictly tied to a physical space? How dothe characters conceptualize home differently?

4. Kate and Tess consistently cast judgments on the other’s parenting and life choices. How does their conversation during the search for Maddie illustrate their different embodiments of motherhood and womanhood? Do they eventually come to respect each other, or do they continue to harbor silent judgments?

5. Tess, coming from a distant and cold family, finds comfort in being welcomed under Helen’s wing. She eventually realizes “that living with lack does not prepare you for loss. Lack is an amorphous murk, difficult, unpleasant, but loss weighs more, has a shape and texture all its own” (48). How does the author explore the differences between lack and loss? What are these differences?

6. The central role of family in one’s life is a key theme in this novel. How is family defined? How does it transform and expand for each character as the novel progresses?

7. How is Alice’s complicated relationship with motherhood explored through her connection to Maddie? How does she understand her role in Quinn and Maddie’s family?

8. How are starkly different parenting styles characterized throughout the novel? How do the kids reflect or reject their parents’ influences?

9. What did you make of the men’s eagerness to devise a thought-out plan to search for Maddie? How do Martin, Josh and Henry each express their masculinity in distinct ways?

10. The two sets of parents, Tess and Martin, and Kate and Josh, have different approaches to sharing domestic labor among themselves. How do Josh’s and Tess’ views on domestic work shape their relationships with their partners?

11. Henry spends much of the novel preoccupied with perfecting his bird artwork. How does the motif of birds evolve throughout? Was he satisfied by the reveal at the very end?