When I Lived In Modern Times Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

1. The following are intended to enrich your conversation and help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for approaching this novel.
   
   Discuss the idea, as reflected in the title, of the past being more modern than the present.
2. The novel opens with the words "When I look back I see myself at twenty, I was at an age when anything seemed possible." How different, if at all, would this novel been if Evelyn had been twenty-five? Thirty-five?
3. How is art in its many forms, including music, painting, and architecture, used to express the concept of modernity in this book?

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