Bottle Grove: A Novel Daniel Handler The following questions are intended to enhance your discussion of Bottle Grove. About the book This is a story about two marriages. Or is it? It begins with a wedding, held in the small San Francisco forest of Bottle Grove, bestowed by a wealthy patron for the public good, back when people did such things. Here is a cross section of lives, a stretch of urban green where ritzy guests, lustful teenagers, drunken revelers, and forest creatures all wait for the sun to go down. The girl in the corner slugging vodka from a cough-syrup bottle is Padgett—she’s keeping something secreted in the woods. The couple at the altar are the Nickels—the bride is emphatic about changing her name, as there is plenty about her old life she is ready to forget. Set in San Francisco as the tech boom is exploding, Bottle Grove is a sexy, skewering dark comedy about two unions—one forged of love and the other of greed—and about the forces that can drive couples together, into dependence, and then into sinister, even supernatural, realms. Add one ominous shape-shifter to the mix, and you get a delightful and strange spectacle: a story of scheming and yearning and foibles and love and what we end up doing for it—and everyone has a secret. Looming over it all is the income disparity between San Francisco’s tech community and . everyone else. For discussion 1. Bottle Grove starts with uncertainty—a vicar who is not a vicar, a promise that if this is a story about two marriages, this is where that story begins. How does the ambiguity frame how you enter the story and view its characters? 2. Bottles feature prominently throughout the story, both literally and metaphorically, though the two Bottle Groves, the Bottle family, bottles of alcohol, bottles of cough syrup and mouthwash, etc. What other bottles did you notice in the story? What do the bottles and their contents (presumed and actual) say about the characters who use them? 3. On page 12, a character toasts “to the nickels,” with (more) deliberate ambiguity as to whether she means to the couple (the Nickels) or the form of currency. How is this line of thinking explored in the rest of the novel? 4. The spoken phrase “Well, that’s awful” repeats between characters throughout the story (from Ben to Rachel, from Martin to Padgett). What is similar about its use and its reception in the different scenarios, and what is different? Why? 5. Marriage is perceived in different ways by different characters. Examples include as a con, as a catalyst for change, and as a business exchange. How do these views change and evolve throughout the story? What does each label say about the character that expresses it? 6. On page 91, Stanford tells a grumbling Martin, “I bet, if you put your mind to it, you could think of some drawback in the life of a gay black man.” How does an ability or inability to see from another’s point of view affect behaviors and choices in the story? Who, in your opinion, does the best at seeing from another point of view, and who does the worst? 7. Animal imagery is used throughout Bottle Grove. What instances did you note, both large and reoccurring, and small and fleeting? 8. On page 123, Nina says, “They’re everywhere, Padgett. The city’s changing. Men, beasts like this are prowling all over the place like it’s theirs.” What do you think she means? How, if at all, does this relate to question #7 above? 9. How does the concept of appropriation tie into the overall story? To look at the same quote another way, when Nina says, “Men, beasts like this are prowling all over the place like it’s theirs,” (emphasis added), what, if anything, is being expressed? What other instances of appropriation did you notice? 109. How is the concept of time (and missing or lost time) used to further the plot and/or provide commentary on the lives of those doing the losing? 1110. How are the concepts of responsibility and ownership used, denied, twisted, and changed over the course of the story? 1211. How did the fates of each character make you feel? Were you happy with where they ended up? Surprised? Upset? Resigned? Why? 1312. If Bottle Grove is a story about two marriages, which two marriages is it about, and why? If it is not a story about two marriages, then what do you think it is about? Recommended reading Adverbs by Daniel Handler; We Are Pirates by Daniel Handler; All the Dirty Parts by Daniel Handler; Watch Your Mouth by Daniel Handler; Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett; Less by Andrew Sean Greer; Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple; My Ex-Life by Stephen McCauley Daniel Handler is the author of the novels All the Dirty Parts, We Are Pirates, Why We Broke Up, Adverbs, Watch Your Mouth, and The Basic Eight. As Lemony Snicket, he is responsible for many books for children, including the thirteen-volume sequence A Series of Unfortunate Events and the four-book series All the Wrong Questions. He is married to the illustrator Lisa Brown and lives with her and their son in San Francisco. .