1. BIRD IN HAND is told from the perspectives of the four main characters. How do they see themselves individually and how do they see each other?

2. What is your opinion of each of the four characters? Which character, if any, did you relate to the most? Do you recognize yourself --- or elements of your own life --- in any of the characters and their dilemmas?

3. What is the significance of the car accident at the beginning of the novel? Would the events that followed have unfolded anyway?

4. Compare Alison and Claire. What does each one offer the other? Consider the two marriages, as well as the affair. How is the affair different from, and similar to, the marriages?

5. Though she had a copy of Claire’s novel, Alison “couldn’t bear” to read it. How would you feel if a close friend wrote a fictional account of his or her life? Would you have the same reaction as Alison? Do you think Alison’s reaction to Blue Martinis would have been different if she’d read it before the accident and its aftermath?

6. Much of the pain in the novel is caused by avoidance, by not wanting to know the truth. How does avoidance affect the lives of the characters in BIRD IN HAND? How might their lives have been different if they’d been honest from the start?

7. “You would think that two people who had built a life together over eight years, who’d seen each other at all hours of the day and night, who were raising two children together, might know each other better than anyone else in the world. But Charlie had the peculiar sense with Alison that he might never know her. She’d always been a kind of mystery to him.” How well can you know your partner? Your best friend? Your child? Your sibling?

8. What do you think the future holds for the four characters and especially for Charlie and Claire?

9. When she was dying, Charlie’s mother offered him advice. “Here’s what I learned. It’s not enough to hope that happiness will find you. You have to seek it. And another thing: No matter how complicated your life seems, you have the power to change it. Don’t make the mistake I did and waste precious decades because you’re too afraid to act.” Do you agree with this?

10. At Claire’s book tour reading, she chooses a passage about love. “She came to believe that there was such a thing as true love, and that it was the most important thing in the world --- more important than kindness or constancy, more important even than trust.” Did Claire and Charlie share true love? How might they define it?

11. Claire and Charlie broke up two marriages, and changed the lives of two small children in the name of love and happiness. Did they do the right thing?

12. The author not only tells the story from the perspectives of each of the four characters, but she also interweaves past and present. How does knowing their backgrounds influence your perceptions of the characters and events? How does this structure add depth to the story’s telling?