No Two Persons: A Novel

1. General Impressions

Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.

• Have you ever read a novel in stories before (examples might include Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, or Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried)? How did this one compare? Alternatively, how did the experience of reading a novel in stories compare to reading a traditional novel and/or a traditional collection of short stories?
• Which story was your favorite, and why? Your least favorite?
• What do you make of the novel’s title? How did it shape your expectations of the work? Did your understanding of it change as the novel unfolded?

2. Personal Reflection and Connection

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

• Part 2 of No Two Persons consists of reviews of the novel-within-a-novel Theo. How much do reviews matter to you when choosing what to read? How do you account for the diversity of opinions on a given book, even among reviewers?
• The novel explores several marriages or otherwise long-term relationships. What does it suggest about the ingredients that make for a successful partnership? Do you agree? Why or why not? 
• Rowan has had to reinvent himself after leaving his career as an actor due to a skin condition. Have outside forces ever forced you to change the direction of your life substantially? How do you feel about those changes in retrospect?
• Has a piece of art ever changed your life? How so?

3. Societal and Cultural Context

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

• What competing values does the conflict between Miranda and her mother bring to light? What role does No Two Persons posit for art in a modern capitalist economy?
• Consider Kit’s experiences telling past girlfriends about his work as a bookseller. What does it mean to have a “career” versus having a “job”? Do you think there is still a double standard whereby men are under more pressure to have a “career” than women are? 
• Discuss Nola’s experiences as an unhoused teenager. What sorts of societal interventions could improve her situation? Could anything have prevented it in the first place?

4. Literary Analysis

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

• Consider the order of the stories in No Two Persons. What sort of overarching narrative does their sequence create? Why do you think the book begins and ends with Alice?
• Does this novel have a protagonist? If so, who is it, and why? If not, what fills that narrative role?
• The stories in No Two Persons all take place on either North America’s West Coast or its East Coast. What effect does this have? How does the setting of each individual story (British Columbia, Florida, etc.) inform its meaning?
• How does the experience of reading Theo draw characters closer together? Does it ever have the opposite effect? What do you think the novel is saying about the role of literature (or language) in mediating relationships?
• Compare Miranda’s sculpture to Alice’s novel. Do both function in similar ways as works of art? Taken together, what do they suggest about the role or nature of art?

5. Creative Engagement

Encourage imaginative and creative connections to the book.

• Miranda uses Theo to create a statue, which in turn inspires Alice’s next novel. If you were to create a work of art based on this novel, what medium would you choose? What would the work involve?
• When Madeline learns she has a terminal illness, she goes through her book collection as a means of surveying her life. If you were compiling a retrospective of your life thus far based on the books you’ve read, which would you include, and why? Try to brainstorm at least five titles that correspond to distinct moments or phases in your life.
• Based on what you know of Alice’s novel from No Two Persons, design a cover for Theo that captures the book’s narrative, atmosphere, or themes.

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