Floating World (Babst) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book::

1. In The Floating World, the flood functions as both plot point and symbol. It "had hidden the mess, lifted everything up, given the city of a sense of buoyancy." What is the meaning of that observation? What is the mess that is hidden, and what is lifted up — both literally and figuratively?

2. Follow-up to Question 1: How else does the storm become a metaphor? Consider the uprooted magnolia tree that has crashed through the roof or the water that puts everything adrift.

3. How was it that Cora is left in New Orleans while her parents evacuated? Is Joe to be blamed for her refusal to leave?

4. Describe the Boisdore couple, Joe and Tess, and their marriage. What are the fissures in their relationship that are widened irreparably during Katrina? What slights, aspirations, observations, and disappointments do Joe and Tess grapple with yet rarely discuss openly?

5. How would you describe Del as well as her relationship with her family? What effect does her return to New Orleans have on the rest of the Boisdores?

6. In what way do race and culture drive the action of this novel, as much as, perhaps even more so, than Katrina?

7. Talk about Vincent Boisdore, Joe's father. In what way does he behave as both an old man and a child?

8. "Grief was infinite, though wasn't it something like love that, divided, did not diminish?" What does that question / observation mean, and how does it apply to members of the Boisdore family?

9. Whose narrative point of view most engaged you in this novel?

10. “MAKE GOOD, as if any good could be made out of what was, essentially, a hate crime of municipal proportions.” In what way are racism and class responsible for the Katrina debacle?

11. Consider each of the ways the Boisdore family members live up to the last line of the novel: "I'm home."

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

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