READING GROUP QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

How does envy, one of our primal emotions, function in the novel? Discuss both the obvious and ambiguous ways in which it works.

Will’s occupation easily lends itself to constant self-scrutiny. How would Will’s character be different if he weren’t an analyst? Do you think we’d know more about his innermost thoughts, or less? How would this change affect our impressions of Will?

Will has, in some ways, failed in his role of caretaker. In childhood, he was unable to protect his twin from pain and abuse; in adulthood, he could not protect his own child from a fatal accident. And his relationship with his wife, Carole, lacks the emotional security of marriage. Discuss how this affects his sense of self.

Stereotypically, we think of men using sex to threaten and intimidate women, but in Envy, we see women using sex in similarly aggressive ways. How does Jennifer’s punishment of Will differ from Carole’s?

Beyond dire sibling rivalry, Envy is a novel about grief—about mortality and loss—which each of the Morelands must grapple with. In the wake of his son’s death, Will obsesses over paternity. Carole’s way of managing grief is illuminated by her reading habits—from yoga magazines to grisly true-crime books (or from a Buddhist acceptance of suffering to a bloody, cathartic confrontation of death). What about Will’s parents? How do they cope?

Discuss the parent-child relationships in Envy. Do the parents— Will’s father, Jennifer’s mother, and, of course, Will and Carole— maintain appropriate boundaries between themselves and their children?

Discuss Harrison’s use of water imagery in the novel (for example, Mitch as a swimmer or Luke’s death while sailing). What purpose does it serve?

Although Will’s brother, Mitch, is the psychological linchpin of this novel, the catalyst for loss, he never appears. Is it possible to regard Mitch as Will’s doppelgänger rather than his actual twin? How strictly realistic is this novel?

What does Envy have to say about secrecy?

Will and Carole go against stereotypical gender types. Will, the man, lacks the emotional control of his wife, Carole, who is self-contained and unwilling to reveal her feelings in what we consider a typically feminine manner. Is this inversion significant to the novel’s plot? What effect does it have on the story’s catharsis?