Florence Gordon Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Second-Wave Feminism and our BookBrowse Review of Florence Gordon.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

Meet Florence Gordon: blunt, brilliant, cantankerous and passionate, feminist icon to young women, invisible to almost everyone else. At seventy-five, Florence has earned her right to set down the burdens of family and work and shape her legacy at long last. But just as she is beginning to write her long-deferred memoir, her son Daniel returns to New York from Seattle with his wife and daughter, and they embroil Florence in their dramas, clouding the clarity of her days and threatening her well-defended solitude. And then there is something strange going on with her left foot, which is starting to drag and interfere with her indomitable march forward through life. Defiant and determined, Florence can humble the fools surrounding her with one barbed line, but it turns out there are realities even she cannot outwit.

Discussion Points

1. Why is Florence writing a memoir? What difficulties keep getting in her way?
2. Florence is often described in ways that make it clear she is a difficult person. She even leaves her own surprise party, preferring to go home and write. In your opinion, is Florence not a nice person, or is she simply being true to herself? Do you have to choose? How else does this question spring up in the novel?
3. On page 15, Janine recalls an essay in which Florence quotes a psychologist who said that "one is constantly confronted by situations in which one must make either a growth choice or fear choice." How does Florence respond to "opportunities for heroism" in her own life? Consider each of the main characters in the story and identify whether the choices they make are growth choices or fear choices.

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