Sentimentalists (Skibsrud)

Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Sentimentalists:

1. What is the meaning of the book's title?

2. One of Skibsrud's thematic concerns is the fragility and unreliability of memory. In what ways specifically, both large and small, does that theme play itself out in the novel? (Consider, for instance, the field glasses turned the wrong way around.)

3. Talk about the metaphor of Casablanca's having been flooded—and especially the canoe rides in which Henry and Napoleon's daughter skim over the place where Henry grew up.

4. What is Napoleon's relationship with his daughters? In what way has his war experience shaped his role as a father?

5. Discuss Napoleon's marriage and the narrator's mother with her depressive episodes.

6. Comment on Napoleon's statement, "Women think they can make sad things go away by knowing the reason that they happened." True, false, neither—not just the part about women, but also whether understanding why sad things happen is an antidote to sadness?

7. The Vietnam War is central to the second part of the book. What exactly happened during the war that has so deeply affected Napoleon? Is it possible to sort out the truth from all the conflicting accounts?

8. Does the narrator truly come to know her father at the end of his life...or by the end of this novel? What does she know, or understand, about him?

9. Johanna Skibsrud approaches the novel as a poet. Can you point to evidence of her poetry background in The Sentimentalists? Think about the rhythmic quality of her prose, her diction, the use of imagery and symbols.

10. How did you experience this book? Was it a difficult read for you? Did it hold your interest?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
 
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