Reading Group Guide

FIVE-STAR STRANGER

Kat Tang

This reading group guide for Five-Star Stranger includes an introduction and discussion questions. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

Introduction

The unnamed narrator of Five-Star Stranger finds his career as a top-rated Rental Stranger suddenly at risk when an eccentric client pushes him to break character. She threatens to expose his long-term role as father to a young girl as a paid gig if he doesn’t come clean to her, which forces him to confront the surprising depth of his feelings for his pretend family. The unexpected discoveries he makes will change the course of his life.

Topics & Questions for Discussion

1. The narrator keeps three rules for himself as a Rental Stranger: “(1) form no emotional attachments, (2) participate in no illegal activities, and (3) allow for no touching beyond a hug or holding hands” (page 17). What do you think of these self-imposed guidelines?

2. Analyze Stranger’s routine as he describes it at the beginning of Chapter 3. Discuss how he structures his time. If you were a Rental Stranger, how would you prepare for your meetings with clients?

3. Lily is described as an incredibly intelligent child. At the beginning of the novel, Stranger remarks on how she’s become even more inquisitive lately. Do you see seeds of suspicion in her line of questioning?

4. Darlene hires Stranger to act out scenarios with him for writing inspiration, and she pushes him to break character. Discuss their relationship and how it develops over the course of the novel.

5. At what point do you think Stranger developed genuine feelings for Lily and her mother, Mari? Why do you think that is?

6. Talk about the nightmare Stranger has at the end of Chapter 11. What do you think brought on this nightmare? What does it foreshadow?

7. We learn about the Rental Stranger profession primarily through the narrator’s perspective and in the few scenes where he talks with another rental. Do you think most Rental Strangers think like the narrator, or do you think he has a specific philosophy about the work?

9. As the novel progresses, we learn how complicated Stranger’s relationship was with his own mother, culminating with Chapter 13. How does your perspective of him as a character develop as you acquire this knowledge?

10. Discuss the argument between Stranger and Mari when he explains the predicament with Darlene. Mari cruelly describes him as a “parasite” (page 193). What do you think about her criticisms? How does her assessment align with your opinion of Stranger?

11. Early in the novel, Stranger admits that he is afraid of the dark. However, at the end of the novel, he describes willingly “pitching the room to blackness” (page 227). What does this change signify?

12. The pursuit of happiness is a central theme of the novel. Talk about the variety of opinions the characters express on the subject. How do you think Stranger’s relationship to happiness develops over the course of the novel?