This reading group guide for Island Rule includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. 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

An angry mother turns into a literal monster. A company in San Francisco can scrub your entire reputation and create a new one . . . for a price. A failed actor on a reality show turns into an unlikely world savior. And much more.

Through each of these twelve interconnected stories, Katie M. Flynn masterfully blends people, places, and even realities. From a powerful and “radiant” (Kassandra Montag, author of After the Flood) new literary voice to be reckoned with, this collection will stay with you after you turn the final page.

Topics and Questions for Discussion

1. One of the recurring themes throughout the collection is hunter versus hunted. The titular story evokes this dichotomy, in which we learn about Bristol Foster’s observation that the body size of a species can vary between islands and the mainland—on islands small omnivores tend to get bigger while larger predators tend to get smaller. Interestingly, research has proven that this is no rule. How does this “rule” play out in the stories, both literally and figuratively?

2. The stories cross multiple generations, untangling family dynamics through many parent-child relationships. Discuss the various ways that the parents in these stories attempt to mold their children into their image and the ways in which the children react against their parents or, in some cases, follow in their footsteps.

3. In “Back Out Baby,” Linda and Evan claim to be madly in love. Do their actions say something else?

4. Aunt Linda the Hollywood agent loves to tell the story of the time she danced with Brad Pitt. Agatha becomes fascinated with the lore behind the explorer’s teeth. The Watson Girl believes that her father can be saved if he just tells her mother his story. Discuss storytelling as it comes up throughout Island Rule, and how the act of sharing stories can heal or harm.

5. “The King of South Phoenix” is written as a series of one-sided messages, to whom the recipient never responds. How does this unique format contribute to the plot of the story and your understanding of the character?

6. The interconnectedness of these stories allows the reader to see the characters through various sets of eyes and at different points in their lives. In one story, a woman is a mysterious neighbor in love with her chickens and, in another, she is The Single Friend seeking intimacy in problematic places. Choose a few characters that reappear throughout the book and discuss how the reader’s perception of them changes from story to story.

7. In “Copulation,” Gretchen takes immediate interest in Fran. Where does this interest, bordering on obsession, come from? How are these characters similar; how are they different?

8. Joel is bullied by the mortician’s kids. Lindy bullies a girl in the sandbox. Agatha the Great is a bully at school. Each of these characters are seen later as adults. Discuss how their childhood, as either a bully or bullied, may have affected their lives and personalities.

9. The stories are populated by interconnected characters, and yet an underlying feeling of loneliness permeates through the book. Discuss the characters that, despite being surrounded by community, suffer from loneliness and how their friends and family either help or hurt this condition.

10. A recurring motif is the mounds of bones that instill fear and excitement in characters throughout the stories. Why does the monster mother leave bone mounds, where do the bones come from, and how are they regarded by the various characters?

11. Plot the movement of the teeth throughout the stories and discuss what they mean to—or how they inspire—the characters who buy, steal, or barter for them.

12. In “Us, Being The Org, Being Us,” The Boyfriend says, “I’m scared all the time” of disappearing coastlines, fires, etc. He even questions whether to move, “but to where?” Agatha replies that she is more frightened of the universal algorithm than of climate change. In what ways does this duality reflect our own world?

Enhance Your Book Club

1. In the final story, we see some files of the characters that populated previous stories and how the polishers describe their strengths and weaknesses. As a group, choose a few more characters and discuss what their files would look like and how you, as a polisher, would try to raise their number.

2. In “Pheromones,” Kandi gives Dee a tarot reading but, in truth, uses the results as a means to tell her own story. Use a deck of tarot cards (you can look them up online) to create a story. Going around in a circle, each person chooses one card and pulls from the card’s themes to direct the plot.

3. Joel’s hit show Island Rule is about “a soldier who’s a coward, who escapes an alien invasion by going AWOL and sailing off on the ocean aboard a wooden raft he built himself. The coward gets caught up in a ruthless storm and marooned on an island where he must fight off hostile pirates. He lives alone until one day an alien ship crashes into the ocean and he’s joined by its pilot.” As a group, come up with a more detailed description of the show, either for the whole series or for one episode.