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Discussion Guide

Familiaris

Oprah’s Book Club Pick for Summer 2024

The follow-up to the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling modern classic The Story of Edgar SawtelleFamiliaris is the stirring origin story of the Sawtelle family and the remarkable dogs that carry the Sawtelle name.

It is spring 1919, and John Sawtelle’s imagination has gotten him into trouble … again. Now John and his newlywed wife, Mary, along with their two best friends and their three dogs, are setting off for Wisconsin’s northwoods, where they hope to make a fresh start—and, with a little luck, discover what it takes to live a life of meaning, purpose, and adventure. But the place they are headed for is far stranger and more perilous than they realize, and it will take all their ingenuity, along with a few new friends—human, animal, and otherworldly—to realize their dreams.

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, mysterious and enchanting, Familiaris takes readers on an unforgettable journey from the halls of a small-town automobile factory, through an epic midwestern firestorm and an ambitious WWII dog-training program, and far back into mankind’s ancient past, examining the dynamics of love and friendship, the vexing nature of families, the universal desire to create something lasting and beautiful, and of course, the species-long partnership between Homo sapiens and Canis familiaris.

These book club questions are from the publisher, Blackstone Publishing.

Book club questions for Familiaris by David Wroblewski

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

In the prologue, David Wroblewski writes, "The same would be true for each of the great quests in John Sawtelle's life." How would you describe the great quests in John Sawtelle's life?

Mary is the strong, sensible, joyful backbone of the Sawtelle farm. She is talented at rerouting a conversation or course of action to a better result—at times she is an agitator, at times a peacekeeper. Which events of the book are changed by her intervention?

John often uses the prompt "Suppose you could do one impossible thing." This phrase becomes his ethos for approaching life's challenges. How does each character interpret it?

The text Practical Agriculture and Free Will by the fictional thinker George Solomon Drencher turns up regularly in Familiaris, quoted sincerely by John and as a punch line by others. The characters are amused by the book's overblown verbosity, but they do find guidance in its passages. How does the book unify the characters' life stages? Did any Drencherian quotes stand out to you for their strange practicality?

Throughout the novel, So Jack encourages many characters to have heart-to-heart conversations with Granddaddy. Why? How do characters benefit from these conversations?

John, Mary, Gar, and Claude are a family of extremely talented dog trainers, and the reader gets a detailed look at that process. Did any aspects of their work surprise you?

How does the author differentiate each canine character from the others?

Watching the Sawtelles and their friends over decades explores the broader contours of life experience—starting with their big dreams as they seek what Drencher would call their "singularism." Do you feel that the characters achieved a version of their dreams? Would Drencher say so?

For those readers who have also read Wroblewski's debut novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, how did the events of Familiaris enhance your understanding of Gar and Claude's relationship and their family history?

Do you have a favorite canine character in Familiaris? Do any remind you of a dog that has been part of your life?

The friendship between John and Frank is tested throughout the book. How does the dynamic change over the course of their lives?

The Peshtigo fire was a real event that occurred in Wisconsin on October 8, 1871. Its place in history is overshadowed by the Great Chicago Fire, which started on the very same day. Had you heard of the Peshtigo fire before reading Familiaris?

The part-human, part-supernatural character known to the Sawtelles as Ida Paine powerfully redirects several events, changing their outcomes and effectively turning back time. Do you see Ida as a force for good, or something more complicated?

In your opinion, what does Ida want? What does Nyx want? Do they work together, or are they often at cross purposes? Who is in control?

If you could have a conversation with your younger self and your older self, as John does with Ida's help in part III, what would you want to say?

The categories the Sawtelles use to classify their dogs—Searcher, Consoler, Challenger, Defender—can also be used to describe the human characters in the story. How would you assign these? Do some apply to more than one character?

There are many pair-wise relationships in the novel: John and Mary, of course, but also So Jack and Granddaddy, John and Elbow, Walter and Ida, etc. How can each of these be thought of as a love story?

What is Elbow's relationship to wood? How does his work speak for him? Similarly, what about Frank's relationship to food?

At the end of part III, John dreams of the first dogs who lived alongside humans. What does this dream mean to you? What do you think it means to John?

Claude brings chaos and deceit to his relationships. In your opinion, does his darkness come from within or without, and is this universal?

Why does Claude decide to leave at the end of part IV? What might he fear about staying?

What does the novel say to you about friendship? What about love? Grief?

Think about active mourning versus passive mourning, especially as it relates to John.

Compare John's time at the rooming house with his time at the farm. What kind of community does John create in each place?

What does it tell you about John's character that he never tells Frank the truth about the necker knob? Do you think Frank knows this, consciously or unconsciously?

Which character do you most relate to, and why?

Discuss the following terms: agency, choice, fate, optimism, creation, knowledge, yearning, loss. How are these manifested across the scope of the novel?

Familiaris Book Club Questions PDF

Click here for a printable PDF of the Familiaris discussion questions

“I’m delighted for us to dive into an epic novel from the tremendously talented best-selling author David Wroblewski with his latest creation ‘Familiaris,’” said Oprah Winfrey. “David takes us on an extraordinary journey that brilliantly interweaves history, philosophy, adventure, and mysticism to explore the meaning of love, friendship and living your life’s true purpose.” – Oprah Winfrey

“By taking us back to the origins of the Sawtelle family, Wroblewski has set a storytelling bonfire as enthralling in its pages as it is illuminating of our fragile and complicated humanity. Familiaris is as expansive and enlightening a saga as has ever been written.” – Tom Hanks, Academy Award–winning actor, bestselling author of The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece and Uncommon Type

 “David Wroblewski is one of the few contemporary authors who can create a world that the reader doesn’t merely visit but fully inhabits. And what a world it is, rich with love and joy and heartbreak. And wonder, especially in the way human and canine form inseparable bonds. It has been a long wait for a new Wroblewski novel. The wait is worth it.” – Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author of SerenaIn the Valley, and The Caretaker 

“No writer understands the depths of dogs’ natures the way David Wroblewski does, and once again we have a vital, absorbing, and remarkable fiction fueled by this understanding. Familiaris is a rare novel, modest and epic.” – Joan Silber, PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author of Secrets of Happiness and Improvement

“Like many readers, I adored The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, with its gripping tale of treachery and the magnificent Sawtelle dogs. Now I adore Familiaris. David Wroblewski is a wonderfully inventive writer; he knows so much—how to test a tractor, how to make a table, how to borrow money, how to see the future—but best of all he is a writer of extraordinary characters, human and canine, who will take up residence in your mind and heart. A dazzling and irresistible novel.” – Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author of The Road from Belhaven and The Flight of Gemma Hardy 

“‘Suppose you could do one impossible thing,’ John Sawtelle says in David Wroblewski’s stunning new novel Familiaris. What would you do? Clearly, what the author would do and has done is write this impossibly wise, impossibly ambitious, impossibly beautiful book.” – Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of the North Bath trilogy (Nobody’s Fool, Everybody’s Fool, and Somebody’s Fool)

“Tender, ambitious, fierce, deeply human, and of course wonderfully canine, David Wroblewski’s second novel is an American tour de force. There were moments when reading that I thought of Russo, Irving, Strout, McCarthy, Gilbert, and then just Wroblewski himself. A story spun out over generations, to be read for generations, this is a big brave book that is old fashioned in the very best sense of the word." – Colum McCann, National Book Award winner and author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin 

“Already having drawn comparisons to Russo, Irving, Strout, McCarthy, and Gilbert, with García Márquez added here, Wroblewski earns them all, amply rewarding readers who have been waiting impatiently for fifteen years…This colossus of a book will own you, and you will weep to be freed.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“There are beautiful passages on the bonds between humans and animals and plenty of folksy charm. Fans of the first book will be satisfied.” – Publishers Weekly 

“Spellbinding…This warm, big-hearted novel pays tribute to the joys of curiosity and creation and turns out to be surprisingly funny, even as storm clouds gather on the family’s horizon.” – Minneapolis Star-Tribune

If you’ve read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, you know that no one writes about dogs with more insight than Wroblewski…This great American novel bustles with life, and if it takes all summer to read it, who cares.” – Newsday