Funny Girl Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Classic BBC Comedies and our BookBrowse Review of Funny Girl.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Early in Funny Girl, before recording Barbara (and Jim) for Comedy Playhouse, Sophie Straw says of the show, "I don't want it to go out into the world . . . I want to stay like we were" (see page 107). What is Sophie trying to preserve? What is she afraid of losing?
2. There are some in the book who are irritated by Barbara (and Jim)'s popularity (Edith Maxwell-Bishop and Vernon Whitfield, for example) and who seem to believe that entertainment should be more traditional and less bawdy. Whitfield also says of the show's audience, "I love ordinary people individually. It's ordinary people en masse that trouble me" (page 207). Does the narrator take a stand on this sentiment? How is it conveyed?
3. On page 150, a reviewer for The Times writes: "The very existence of Barbara (and Jim) indicates the birth of a modern Britain, one prepared to acknowledge that its citizens are as sex-obsessed as our neighbors across the Channel . . ." In what other ways does Funny Girl illustrate Britain's transition from the austere 1950s to the Swinging '60s? From the '60s to the 2010s?

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