Truly Madly Guilty

In Truly Madly Guilty, Moriarty illustrates how several characters handle traumatic events and experiences. Does the narrative suggest that there is a right way and a wrong way to handle trauma?

Pick a couple from the novel. Compare the husband and wife as characters. How do their similarities and differences affect the way they function as a married couple?

What is the function of the flashback structure in this novel? How does it affect the pacing? How does it interact with the themes?

Sex plays a major role in this novel. Compare the three couples’ attitudes toward sex. How do the events of the barbecue affect these attitudes?

How does Clementine’s attitude toward parenting change throughout the novel? What conclusion does she come to about her culpability for the events of the barbecue, and what experiences lead her to that conclusion?

How does Moriarty build reader expectations about the events of the barbecue? Using specific textual examples, show how Ruby’s accident is described before the reveal occurs, and discuss what conjectures the reader is likely to make about the climax before the events of the barbecue are fully revealed.

Innocence and experience are contrasted in a variety of ways in this novel—youth versus age, naivety versus jadedness, chastity versus promiscuity. Is one of these states better than the other, or more worthy of protection? How do the events of this book explore these contrasting states, and what does Moriarty suggest about them?

Truly Madly Guilty begins with an epigraph, “Music is the silence between the notes.” Claude Debussy (6). How does the story of this novel illustrate this statement?