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 Lake Shore Limited:
1. How does Billy's play reveal her feelings toward Gus and her response to his death on 9/11? Is the play disrespectful to Gus's memory? What is she exploring in her play?
2. What is Leslie's response to her brother's death...and to Billy's play? What has she led herself to believe about Billy and Gus's relationship? What does she want for Billy...or what does she think she wants?
3. How does the play change Rafe? Was he wrong to have relations with Billy?
4. Why does Sam decide he wants nothing more to do with love?
5. Miller's novel explores the ways in which people respond to tragedy. The central characters of this novel have all experienced (or, in Rafe's case, are experiencing) the loss someone dear. How has each responded to personal loss? How should one respond to loss and grief? Is there a correct way—or does it differ according to person or circumstance?
5. In what way does this novel explore, as Ligaya Mishan in the New York Times puts it, "the failure of men and women to understand each other; the hunger for a different life."
6. Miller tells her story through four different characters' points of view. Do you enjoy this structural technique...or find it difficult?
6. Were you satisfied with the way the novel ended?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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