Unbecome discussion questions: a reading guide for book clubs

Unbecome discussion questions work best when they stay on the page, with the book's stories and its argument, not with anyone's own history. This guide groups questions by chapter, for a book club or for two friends reading at the same pace. Nobody in a book club has to share anything personal.

Marguerite and her neighbour have been reading the same book since September, a chapter a week, and they talk it over on Tuesday evenings, walking the Dubai Water Canal.

This week it's chapter 4, the one with the kitchen. Near the second footbridge her neighbour asks, gently, whether Marguerite's own house was anything like that.

Marguerite watches a paddleboarder slide under the bridge. She says she'd rather stay with the book this evening, and talk about the lion.

"The lion, then," her neighbour says, and doesn't ask again.

They spend the rest of the path on Leo: whether the flock should have known what he was, whether the old lion was kind or only patient. By the coffee cart at the far end, each of them has changed her mind once.

What are good discussion questions for Unbecome?

Good questions for Unbecome stay with the book: its stories, its images and its argument about what covers a person. The ones below follow the chapters in five groups, with a way to run a meeting after them. Every one can be answered about the book alone, and anyone may pass on any of them.

The groups follow the chapters and nothing more. The book is clear that unbecoming and remembering aren't steps taken in order, and nothing here treats them that way. If someone in the group has missed a few weeks, my summary of each chapter will bring them up to date.

What should a group agree before the first meeting?

That nobody in a book club has to share anything personal. Unbecome spends whole chapters at family tables and in hard years, and some of its pages ask about your own life. Those questions are between you and the page, or you and someone you trust. In the group, talk about the book's people: Leo, the boy at the dining table, the three portraits chapter 5 builds out of many lives.

Unbecome isn't therapy or medical care, and a book club isn't either. Anyone in treatment keeps working with their doctor or therapist. No chapter is a reason to alter treatment, medication or support, and a recovery programme, meetings and people included, runs alongside the reading the whole way.

Two chapters need a word in advance. Chapter 6 tells a hard story about a woman in hospital, and says before it begins: "Nothing in this story says that anyone causes their own illness." Hold the room to that. The chapter is no way to explain anyone's illness. Chapter 8 deals with suicide. Anyone can sit that chapter out, or miss that meeting, and owes no one a reason. If anyone in the group seems at risk, stop the meeting, don't leave them on their own, and call your local emergency services or a crisis line. If you're in crisis yourself, contact your local emergency services.

A heavy chapter is a good reason to call your doctor or someone you trust, and if you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services. Outside the book, there's a 21-question quiz: Who Did You Become to Survive? Or read on.

What can you ask about the letter and chapters 1 to 6?

The opening letter, chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 1 tells the fable of Leo, the lion who grows up in a flock, and catches the moment his smallness turns into character: "Smallness pays, in the only currency he has ever wanted, and so he keeps paying, season after season, until being small stops feeling like an effort and starts feeling like a personality."

• The flock is never cruel to Leo. Why do you think the fable makes them kind?
• In a room, I break off the fable at the lake, and the book holds back the rest in the same way. What did the wait do to your reading?
• The morning that opens chapter 2 is built from many people's mornings, and the book says so. Did knowing that change how it read?

Chapters 3 to 6. Several of these chapters sit at dining tables and in kitchens, mine among them. Chapter 3 won't call a child's performing a lie: "A child who adapts is not deceiving anybody. A child who adapts is solving." Chapter 4, on blame, draws a careful line: "Blameless is not the same as harmless."

• Where does your group land on the difference between adapting and deceiving?
• Chapter 4 borrows the Russian doll, each figure holding a smaller one. What does that image let the chapter say about blame?
• Of the five survival identities chapter 5 names, which one is drawn most vividly on the page?

What can you ask about chapters 7 to 15 and the epilogue?

Chapters 7 to 9. Chapter 7 starts with spilled coffee and arrives at the walls a child builds: "Walls have a perfect attendance record and terrible judgment." Chapter 8 opens with a refusal: "I don't get to give you a hero story." Chapter 9 says what all the subtracting is for: "You are not here to end up empty. You are here to end up unhidden."

• What do the walls in chapter 7 keep out, and what do they keep from the one behind them?
• Why do you think chapter 8 turns down a hero story? What does the book gain, or give up, by it?
• Chapter 9 reads the grammar of self-improvement, where the self is the thing being worked on. Does that reading hold up for your group?

Chapters 10 to 14. Chapter 10 says a label pinned on someone long ago is one reading, taken once and copied forward ever since: "They are not measurements. They are recitations." In chapter 11, a professor calls the whole idea impossible in front of a full room, and I describe what I'd learned about answering a man like that: "you can defeat a man in front of an audience, or you can reach him. You do not get both." Chapter 12 turns to the people who never give anyone a moment's trouble: "Easy people are easy to lose." Chapter 14 describes how a life narrows: "It never slams. It settles."

• How does chapter 11 treat its professor, and did that surprise you?
• Chapter 13 says plainly that its twenty-dollar demonstration isn't original. Why tell the reader where it came from?
• Who in chapters 10 to 14 is easy to lose, and who notices them?

Chapter 15 and the epilogue. Leo returns in chapter 15, and this guide gives away nothing of what he finds. The book then closes on a dream, in which a traveller it calls a student of life reaches water at last: "He floated the way a man floats when he has finally stopped holding himself up."

• Without spoiling it for anyone still reading, did chapter 15 answer the question chapter 1 left at the water?
• Why do you think the book ends on a dream rather than an argument?
• Which single sentence would your group carry out of the book?

For thirteen more of the book's lines, see unbecoming quotes.

How could one meeting run?

Anyone can stop the meeting, leave the room or skip the evening at any point, and needs no reason. This is a plan for talking about a book. Doctors, therapists and helplines are there for something else, and open to anyone in the group whenever they want them.

1. Start with the first rule. Nobody has to share anything personal, ever. Anyone can pass on any question.
2. Bring one underlined line each. Any line from this month's chapters, chosen for any reason. Nobody has to say why.
3. Hear them all before anyone comments. Each person reads theirs out in turn, or passes.
4. Choose one of the book's ideas for the evening. Take it from the chapters or from the questions above, and agree on what exactly the book claims before anyone says whether it's true.
5. If the group wants, try the other side. One volunteer argues against the book's idea. Never against a person, and never against a line someone brought.
6. Finish on the next chapters. Close with one question about what's coming, so the evening ends with the book.

When an evening turns heavier than a book club should carry, end it early. Change the subject, take a break, and leave room for anyone who wants to talk to someone they trust or a professional, that night or later.

Is Unbecome a good pick for a book club?

For some groups more than others. Here's the kind of group it suits.

1. The group enjoys a disagreement. The book asks for doubt out loud. From chapter 11: "I like skeptics. I want them in my rooms."
2. The group prefers stories to confessions. The book's stories are mine, Leo's and those of people the book builds out of many, so there's always something to discuss besides yourselves.
3. The group can pause when it needs to. Chapter 6 is hard going and chapter 8 deals with suicide, so it suits a group that's comfortable skipping, stopping or ending early.

When a group settles on it, everything about getting a copy is on the book's page.

Get The Paperback

Any group that reads my book is welcome to disagree with me.

Amazon's page for my book, and Anne's words there: "This book is so much more than a read."

Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.

P.S. A first meeting needs only the opening letter and chapters 1 and 2, so nobody has to finish the book before the group begins. Get The Paperback