READERS GUIDE

GIRL UNDERWATER
Book Club Discussion Questions
 
 
1. When Avery meets Colin, they immediately clash: Colin thinks Avery should push to swim distance, the event she loves best, but Avery is willing to swim an event she isn’t passionate about for the sake of the team. Who do you think is correct? How do their stances affect how the other sees them? What helps them change that initial impression of each other?
 
2. Avery intentionally tries to change when she goes away to college, and is irrevocably and unintentionally changed after the crash. In what ways is she different and the same in her hometown and at school, and before and the crash? Who is the “real” Avery?
 
3. One of the themes in Girl Underwater is family. How does Avery’s concept of family change over the course of the novel? How does Colin’s?
 
4. Do the characters’ decisions seem real and believable? Can you relate to their predicaments in the wilderness? What would you have done in their situation?
 
5. Avery’s father and her brother Edward play significant roles in the book, but her mother and other brothers less so. Do you think this was an intentional choice on the part of the author? How did this narrowed view of Avery’s family affect your perception of her? Of the family as a whole?
 
6. How did the alternating present-past framework affect your reading experience? Did knowing that Avery survived her ordeal compromise the suspense or enhance it?
 
7. Why does Avery lie about what happened in the wilderness? Do you agree or disagree with her choice? What do you think would have been different if she’d been honest from the outset?
 
8. Avery’s story is as much about her psychological recovery as it is her physical recovery. Who do you think played the most important role in Avery’s battle with PTSD? Why? In what ways was Avery forced to overcome her ordeal on her own?
 
9. Avery is an elite college swimmer raised by a tough-nosed father, but her survival and recovery are fraught with setbacks. Did you perceive Avery as a strong or weak protagonist? Did your view of her change over the course of the novel?
 
10. What do you think about Lee? Why do you think Avery was drawn to him? If her plane hadn’t crashed, do you think she and Lee would have made it as a couple?
 
11. What do you think about Colin’s relationship with his family, particularly his mother? Do you think her illness helped him to cope with the possibility of death out in the wilderness, or did it make him fight harder to survive?
 
12. What role does guilt play in this novel?
 
13. How would you characterize Avery’s relationship with swimming? What role do you think swimming plays thematically in the book?
 
14. Were you satisfied with the book’s ending? Why or why not?