Union Atlantic Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

Print PDF

For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Events That Precipitated the 2008 Recession and our BookBrowse Review of Union Atlantic.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

About This Guide
The discussion questions and other material that follow are intended to enhance your group’s conversation about Adam Haslett’s debut novel, Union Atlantic, a deeply absorbing and accurate vision of American history as lived in our modern gilded age—the first decade of the twenty-first century.

About This Book
At the heart of Union Atlantic lies a test of wills between an ambitious young banker, Doug Fanning, and a retired history teacher, Charlotte Graves, who has suddenly begun to hear her two dogs speaking to her in the voices of Cotton Mather and Malcolm X. When Doug builds an ostentatious mansion on land that Charlotte’s grandfather donated to the town of Finden, Massachusetts, she determines to oust him in court. Drawn into the intensifying conflict is Nate Fuller, a troubled high school senior who unwittingly stirs powerful emotions in both of them. As a senior manager of Union Atlantic, Doug is orchestrating the bank’s elaborate gamble to remain at the head of the pack. And it is Charlotte’s brother, Henry Graves, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, who must keep a watchful eye on the financial giant and its effects on the entire financial system.

Reader's Guide

1. The opening chapter puts Doug Fanning at the center of a real event in July 1988: the U.S. Navy’s shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet, killing all 290 people aboard. Why might Haslett have chosen to give his protagonist this particular backstory? How is Doug’s past navy career related to his present one in finance, and how is the historical moment of 1988 related to America’s later involvements in Iraq (p. 286–87)?
2. The plot’s central conflict results when an ostentatious mansion is built in a wealthy Boston suburb next to an old colonial house. Charlotte Graves’s house is "the physical form her opinion of the world had come to take" (p. 196–97). What does Doug’s house express about his opinion of the world (pp. 114–16)?
3. Charlotte’s dogs speak to her in the voices of Cotton Mather, the Puritan preacher, and Malcolm X, the black activist. Why might these two outspoken figures be chosen as Charlotte’s constant companions?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Anchor Books. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.