The Secrets We Kept Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Dr. Zhivago, the Movie and our BookBrowse Review of The Secrets We Kept.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

The questions, discussion topics, and other material that follow are intended to enhance your group's conversation of Lara Prescott's The Secrets We Kept, an intensely dramatic, eye-opening fictionalized account of the inner workings of the CIA during the height of the Cold War, told through the eyes of the women who made the Agency run as typists and spies, and specifically as the revolutionary novel Doctor Zhivago threatened to upend the Soviet regime—and the hearts of those involved in its creation and dissemination.

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. Compare the way the men and women in the book go about their work of secret-keeping. How do societal gender roles determine who does what and who is acknowledged for their work in public? In your opinion, do the men or women wield more power?
2. For the main women in the book — Olga, Irina, and Sally — secret-keeping incurs different punishments and rewards. Who do you think suffers and sacrifices the most? Who winds up most "successful"?
3. Throughout the book, we read of Olga's unsent letters to one of her interrogators in the Gulag, the prison where she's sent for her association with Boris Pasternak. Were you surprised by her loyalty to him in spite of the immense suffering she endures? How, in her own way, does she use those letters to express the kind of truth about love and oppression that Boris does in his novel?

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