Tailbone Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Effects of the 2008 Financial Crisis on South Korea and our BookBrowse Review of Tailbone.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. The opening line of Tailbone is "I ran away for good in the stinking slop heart of summer." How does this set the tone for the rest of the story?
2. In the first chapter, the narrator shares a bad dream she had, in which her mother was standing on a train platform and the trains kept passing her by and not letting her on. Her mother says that it wasn't a bad dream, and that it means a better train is coming for them. "We're taking the next train together. And it's the express." What does this interaction reveal about the characters and their relationship?

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