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Apples Never Fall
Liane Moriarty, The New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers, offers your book club Apples Never Fall: a novel about marriage, siblings, and how the people we love the most can hurt us the deepest.
Book Summary:
It’s always reassuring when a successful figure gets a late start to their career. Born in 1966 in Sydney, Australia, Liane Moriarty didn’t publish her debut, Three Wishes, until 2003. Since then, HBO has adapted Big Little Lies, and Nine Perfect Strangers is now a series on Hulu. Moriarty’s become a regular on The New York Times bestseller list. She’s also close friends with Reese Witherspoon.
Now, in Apples Never Fall, old grievances and childhood injustices from the Delaney family erupt into the present, with wild consequences.
If you’ve already filled in the “far from the tree” that’s missing from Apples Never Fall’s title, you’re cleverer than I was. So let’s start there, with the theme of family, and ask a key discussion question for this book:
What must a family never do, if it wants to survive, according to the rules of Apples Never Fall?
Go through the Apples Never Fall discussion questions below to help you warm up for that one. And enjoy Apples Never Fall’s sensual and vivid writing!
Book club questions for Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.
1. Is the Delaney family the most important thing in the world in Apples Never Fall?
Do we get a sense that others might perceive them differently than they perceive themselves? Are they charming? Do you want to join this hyper-talented group of tennis gods and goddesses? Why or why not?
2. What does Apples Never Fall think about generational divides, and the contemporary emphasis on ethical or "PC" speech? There’s a funny moment where Joy’s neighbor Caro resigns herself to hating Fifty Shades of Grey because her English major daughter said it was about an abusive relationship.
Do younger people really understand better what makes a good relationship? What about Grant and Brooke’s marriage, for example?
3. What exactly is it that Savannah violates with her kindness in Apples Never Fall, even before the revelations about her true identity appear?
Amy calls Savannah her parents’ “carer” with horror, even before she learns about Savannah's ulterior motives. Why is Amy so horrified?
4. Moriarty likes to linger on women’s bodies in Apples Never Fall. Amy has “supermodel legs,” there’s Senior Detective Khoury’s bust size; not to mention Joy and Stan’s sexual chemistry.
In a different sense, there are also Amy’s panic attacks, Joy’s kidney infection, and Brooke’s migraines.
Do you think Apples Never Fall understands what it means to live in a woman's body? How are women's bodies important to the story?
5. Apples Never Fall often criticizes our ability to rewrite the past at the expense of the truth. Stan pretends he always thought Harry was cheating at tennis when in fact he yelled at Troy for suggesting it. Savannah’s mother imagines she was a strict ballet parent instead of a monster.
How do we distinguish changing the past in a bad way, or erasing what really happened, from cleaning the slate and moving on in a positive sense?
6. What does your book club think about the ending of Apples Never Fall? The New York Times’ review wishes it had “a little more bite.” Ironic choice of words given what happens to Savannah’s mother.
Yet how, exactly, does this book end? Does what's wrong with Joy and Stan’s existence together actually get resolved? Are the issues and tensions forced into the open enough, so that they can heal?
I’ll be honest: to me, their horrible, angry, grudge-filled existence together after Savannah exposes Joy’s role in the Harry Haddad affair rang a lot more “authentic” than the way it was all able to dissipate so fast.
Does Joy and Stan’s reconciliation work for your book club as an ending to Apples Never Fall?
Apples Never Fall Book Club Questions PDF
Click here for a printable PDF of the Apples Never Fall discussion questions