Are you part of a book club or looking to start one? Other Evolutions by Rebecca Hirsch Garcia makes a great book club pick!
A searing and dark debut novel that doesn’t bother much with the boundaries of reality and unreality. Protagonist Alma’s life is derailed by a car accident and the death of a friend. When she encounters him years later, she discovers the impossible truth of his apparent resurrection.
Book Club Questions
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What forces do you think contribute to Alma’s struggle to move past her accident and Oliver’s death? How do you think it affected her personality and outlook?
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How does the novel explore power imbalances within families? How do you think the family’s dynamic was affected by Alma’s accident?
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In what ways do family history and intergenerational traumas (e.g., the Holocaust, colonialism, immigration to Canada) manifest in the family dynamics?
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How do you think the accident affected Marnie’s life? Do you think she would have lived differently if it hadn’t happened?
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How does Alma’s arrested development following her accident intersect with her belief that “everything was always changing and only for the worse”?
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There is a popular trope where a stagnating character travels to an “exotic” location and finds themself in the process. Do you think Alma changes when she goes to Mexico in search of her mother? Why or why not?
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What do you think the reappearance of Oliver so close to Alma’s home, and the place that Oliver died, represents?
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Why do you think the author chose to include subtle, unreal, or speculative elements in the book? What do these elements add to the story?
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Once Alma realizes that the “new” Oliver is not the boy she knew, there’s a shift in her reactions to him. What do you think this Oliver represents for Alma by the end of the novel? Why does she help him when it means losing him again?
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Alma has a lot of anxiety around the looming climate disaster throughout the novel. How do you think this interacts with her choices and her pessimistic view of the future in general? Do you think her outlook has changed by the end of the novel?