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Book Discussion Questions for "Niagara Falls All Over Again" by Elizabeth McCracken

  1. Niagara Falls All Over Again prompts its reader to ponder the nature of friendship and what destroys it. Discuss.
  2. Elizabeth McCracken says her books are "mismatched love stories, where relationships that bring us the most joy and those that bring us the most pain are often one and the same." How does this book reflect her assessment?
  3. Carter and Sharp are enormously successful. How do Sharp's reminiscences reveal how a lifetime of disappointments, large and small, can alienate a person from those he most loves?
  4. McCracken gave her narrator a memorable voice with equal parts wry humor and melancholy. How does this affect the reader's experience and understanding of the novel?
  5. We have a first-person narrator in this novel. What advantages/disadvantages does that pose for the reader?
  6. Give some examples of how Mose, a lifelong storyteller, tweaks the details of a tale to improve its telling.
  7. Niagara Falls All Over Again opens and closes with scenes from a Carter and Sharp comedy. How do these scenes and the other snippets of their comedy act included in the novel impact our understanding of their lives and their relationship?
  8. Mose poses the question “What’s the difference between a comedy team and two people who happen to be funny together?” (pg 306) Discuss.
  9. What is the significance of the novel’s title?
  10. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition defines a “comedy” as “a dramatic work that is light and often humorous or satirical in tone and that usually contains a happy resolution of the thematic conflict.” To what extent is this novel an example of the “human comedy”?
  11. How and why are the tragedies that befall Mose revealed prior to their chronological place in the story?
  12. Rocky tells us that his parents raised him to be a disappointment. Why did they and how does that shape his responses to society?
  13. Who is the novel’s main character? With whom do your sympathies lie? Are there characters you especially like or dislike?
  14. How did the two men, Rocky and Mose, relate to the women in their lives?
  15. What role(s) do women play in the novel? Are they important to Mose’s world?
  16. Many of the people in this story are people whom society views as “freaks” or “grotesques.” Do they enhance or detract from the story?
  17. A recurring theme is the need to be needed by others. Is this compulsive need an emotional companion to the physical abnormalities that some of the characters face?
  18. In 1925 the Ku Klux Klan marched through Valley Junction. How was life depicted for a Jewish family living in central Iowa during the pre-World War II era? How does Mose’s Jewishness affect his career?
  19. The theatrical career of Carter and Sharp mirrors the lives of other comedy teams like Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello. Discuss.