1. Compare Frances and Lydia's friendship with Hilda and Pearl's. Is Frances and Lydia's relationship a typical childhood friendship? Will Frances have similar female friendships as her mother and aunt's or will the '60s and '70s have profound effects on her possibilities?

2. How have relationships and expectations between husbands and wives changed since the time when Hilda and Pearl took place? How are they the same?

3. Do you think Pearl will ever tell Simon who she thinks his real father is?

4. Pearl and Mike's romance is not particularly romantic. Pearl doesn't want to work at her father's candy store so she gets married instead with very little fanfare around the event. Does Pearl and Mike's future together hold any promise?

5. Discuss the relationships between the mothers and their children in Hilda and Pearl: Pearl and Frances, Hilda and Adam, Mrs. Levenson and her sons, and Frances's friend Lydia and her mother. How much influence do these mothers have over their children?

6. Frances is an observant little girl, on the cusp of adolescence. Will she ever fully understand the complicated relationships of her parents and aunt and uncle? What do you see in her future-will she become a homemaker like her mother or get caught up in the culture of the '60s and '70s?