Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with personal experiences.

1. Reflect on Brooks’s need for solitude to grieve. Have you ever sought solitude in a time of emotional upheaval? How does being alone help you process your feelings?

2. Is there a place that holds emotional significance to you? How do you feel when you return there?

3. Has storytelling ever helped you understand or cope with grief or other powerful emotions?

4. How did reading Brooks’s memories of her husband lead you to reflect on memories of those you love? Do you think of memory as a comfort, like Brooks, or as a trigger for deeper pain?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. How do you think contemporary society helps or fails to help people navigating grief? What support systems are missing?

2. Discuss gendered expectations around emotional expression and the emotional burdens placed upon grieving women.

3. Analyze the book through the lens of partnership. Does Brooks and Tony’s relationship strike you as an equal partnership? Explain why or why not. 

4. What have you observed about how distinct cultures approach grief and mourning? Are there practices from other cultures that you find meaningful?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. How does the memoir’s nonlinear structure parallel Brooks’s experience of grief?

2. Discuss Brooks’s portrayal of Tony. How does she memorialize him as a husband, father, author, and friend?

3. Analyze the alternating settings of Martha’s Vineyard and Flinders Island as symbols.

4. Discuss Brooks’s analysis of cultural mourning practices and the American tendency to shy away from conversations about death and mortality.

5. Trace Brooks’s use of intertextuality and literary allusions. How does her engagement with other works enrich the memoir?

6. Identify and unpack Brooks’s usage of sensory language to convey the rawness and complexity of her grief.