Discussion Questions
1. What do you make of the inclusion of real historical evidence (photographs, cartoons, and images of the 1960s) alongside fictional text? Does it blur the line between fact and fiction?
2. At the launch party for Bill Gardiner’s book, Diary of a Soho Boy, Tony Holmes does not feel jealous toward his colleague’s success but does feel jealous upon seeing a “beautiful young coloured girl” (see page 368) and wonders, Why didn’t he know any young, coloured women? What does this tell us about both Bill and Tony and about the milieu of Britain at the time?
3. Much of Funny Girl’s energy lies in the bantering dialogue between characters. How do these exchanges allow the characters to define themselves in ways the narrator cannot? For example, Sophie’s agent, Brian Debenham, is repeatedly telling young women, “I’m a happily married man” (see page 48, for example). What other character traits can we glean from such dialogue?
4. A recurring question the characters face while producing Barbara (and Jim) is whether comedy can be intelli- gent. How is this addressed throughout Funny Girl? How would you respond to the question?
5. Funny Girl is told through the voice of an omniscient narrator. Why do you think Nick Hornby chose to narrate the book this way? How might it read differently if it had been told in the first person—say, if it had been told by Sophie?
6. As a “quick-witted, unpretentious, high-spirited, funny, curvy, clever, beautiful blonde” (page 257), Sophie might strike some readers as almost too good to be true. Is she? How does Hornby address this anomaly?
7. What dawning realization allows Sophie’s anger toward her mother, Gloria Balderstone, to soften? What does this tell us about Sophie? What does this tell us about the eras from which these two women came?
8. Funny Girl captures the excitement of youthful success and of burgeoning talent, but it also considers what it’s like once that excitement fades. How would you describe the mood at the end of the book as Barbara (and Jim)’s glory days inev- itably pass? Funny Girl Nick Hornby
About the Author Nick Hornby is the author of seven internationally bestselling novels (Funny Girl, High Fidelity, About a Boy, How to be Good, A Long Way Down, Slam and Juliet, Naked) and several works of non-fiction including Fever Pitch, Songbook and Ten Years In The Tub. He has written screenplay adaptions of Lynn Barber’s An Education, nominated for an Academy Award, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn. He lives in London.
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Source: http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/313123/funny-girl-by-nick-hornby/9781101983355/readers- guide/