Book Club Discussion Questions
for STAY: A Story of Family, Love, & Other Traumas
by Julie Fingersh
(Sorry guys – you’ll need a few meetings to cover these!)
Available on Audible, Spotify, and anywhere books are sold.
- When we were kids, we all wondered what our lives were going to be. What would we do when we grew up? Who were we going to be? And now many of us are here in midlife, and a lot of those questions have been answered. But here’s mine for you now: Are there parts of yourself that got buried along the way? Are there parts that you long for? How are you doing here, in the middle of your life?
- STAY begins with an exploration of the narrator’s complicated feelings about her daughter leaving for college: a mix of grief, guilt, and a shameful sense of envy at her daughter’s position in life, where “her life stretched before her––everything possible, everything yes, everything why not.” Thoughts? Any feelings that come up for you that might signal inner conflicts of your own that you’d rather not have?
- STAY’s narrative structure weaves three storylines, moving between past and present––Julie’s relationship with her little brother Danny, and, three decades later as a midlife parent to Jesse, who is about to leave for college. And Julie’s relationship with her own identity and personhood. In these three relationships, several themes are explored — joy, love, loss, grief, unmet potential, family secrets, work/life balance, how motherhood changes identity. Which storyline most resonated with you and do you think the past/present weave worked?
- Parenting adult children is described variously as both an exercise of bursting with love and being thrown into constantly unchartered territory that asks you to navigate between supporting your child and letting go. If it pertains, what lessons have you learned as a parent of an adult child? Does supporting your child ever feel like it is robbing them of agency?
- The search for the Meaning of Life is a recurring theme in STAY. Is this something you think about? Has your perspective evolved over the course of your life? Have you gotten any closer to what the point of it all is?
- How do we help the people we love without losing our own way? Chronic illness and depression/anxiety/mental illness are the biggest epidemics of our times, driven by COVID, social media, and the state of the world. If you yourself struggle with love someone who struggles with these challenges, what are the ripple effects on your life? Did living alongside the narrator’s journey of mistakes and lessons learned as daughter, sister, and mother leave you with any thoughts about how to navigate them? How can you feel less alone?
- How do you relate to the narrator’s experience of the Mommy Wars and the choices she made in work? As a woman, how do you navigate the line between nurturing others and actualizing yourself? How much did/does society’s ecosystem of woman as the primary nurturer affect your development of self? Any thoughts on how you’d like to shape your next chapter?
- Julie’s family secrets play a major role in the story. What are yours and if you don’t want to share them, how does that privacy serve you or the people it purports to protect? What is its cost? Are there parts of yourself that you hide from others? Does your privacy ever venture into loneliness?
- Julie talks about her conscious effort to chart and change her blueprints – first with her father, then with her daughter. How is your past a blueprint for your life and relationships today? Are there ways you’d like to change them?
- Does the phrase “worshiping at the altar of productivity” mean anything to you? If so, step back and share: what do you gain? What do you lose?
- Julie writes about The Committee of old men living in her head who narrate and legislate her every move. Do you have a committee? What does it say and how can you shut it the hell up?
- STAY is written to appeal to many audiences––women in mid-life, parents making hard career choices, people living with chronic medical or mental illnesses, dog lovers––which audience do you relate to most and why?
- What was your reaction to the role of the dragonfly in the book? What are your beliefs around what we cannot see?
- What does the title of the book mean to you? Did your understanding of the word stay change over the course of reading the book?
- What of this book will stay with you most, and are there ways you want to use the insights you gained to change things in your life? Name one thing you’d like to do differently going forward and what the next step is. Can your book club friends help with accountability?
Note to readers: Thank you so much for reading STAY! As you may guess from this incredibly dense list of questions, I (Julie) would LOVE to hear your thoughts about STAY and any impact reading it had on you in terms of your own life. So if inspired to, please email me at julie@juliefingersh.com! Also, I would ***so so appreciate it** if you help me drive the success of STAY, which is a little book in the giant world of publishing! So please leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads here — and help spread the word to your people! Also, if I have the bandwidth, I’d be happy to do a book reading event for your community.