Half a Life Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Risks on the Road & Survivor's Guilt and our BookBrowse Review of Half a Life.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Strauss has a number of scenes (him chatting up girls at the accident site; going to the movies later) that paint him in an unfavorable color. Do you think this makes him less likeable, or more so. How effective is he in drawing your sympathy. Do you think he wants to?
2. It took Strauss half a life to write this book. How do you think it would have differed if he'd tried to write it at the time? How would it be different if he were to have waited another 18 years?
3. Strauss writes that he thought of college as a "witness protection program" – he went off to school and told basically no one about the accident. Do you think this time was necessary for him to heal, or would he have benefitted from talking about it to a lot of people, right away?

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