Exit Party

Mandel’s work is sometimes categorized as sci-fi and sometimes as literary fiction. How would you categorize it? Do these distinctions even matter?

Many of Mandel’s books are connected in a kind of “Mandelverse,” with recurring events and characters, including Ari in this novel. Have you read any of the author’s other work? If so, what Easter eggs did you notice? What recurring themes tie her work together?

Exit Party has multiple interconnected narrators. Did you enjoy coming at the story from multiple points of view? Did you have a favorite narrator?

The painting Swan Dive exists in both universes, and several characters form their own personal connections to it. How do you imagine it? Why do you think Mandel chose a work of art as a thread between the two worlds? What does the novel suggest about the way art moves through time and across lives?

There are two universes in the novel. Which feels more like our own? Does either remind you of other places or times, real or fictional? While the universes feel like opposites in some ways, what parallels did you see between them?

Are there moments in your past where you can see how your path diverged because of a choice you made? Would you want to know alternate versions of yourself?

Discuss some of the themes explored in the novel: time, memory, parenting and found family, loneliness and connection.

What did you think of the ending? Did you want more resolution? Did you find it hopeful?