Last Last Chance A Novel [Paperback]

ATime Out New YorkBest Book of the Year

Named one of the 5 Best Writers Under 35 by the National Book Foundation

Includes an Author Interview and Discussion Questions

A lethal strain of virus vanishes from a lab in Washington, D.C., unleashing an epidemic--and the world thinks Lucy Clark's father is to blame. The plague may be the least of Lucy's problems. There's her mother, Isifrid, a peddler of high-end hatwear who's also a crackhead; her twelve-year-old half sister, Hannah, obsessed with disease and Christian fundamentalism; and Lucy's lover, Stanley, who's hell-bent on finding a womb for his dead wife's frozen eggs. Finally, there's Lucy herself, who tries to surmount her drug addiction and keep her family intact in this brilliant novel about survival and recovery, opportunity and apocalypse, and, finally, love and faith in an age of anxiety.

Discussion Questions

1. Lucy struggles with self-loathing and a sense of worthlessness. Why do you think she feels this way? Nature or nurture? Do you blame her neglecting parents or something else?

2. On p.35, Lucy describes how she fell in love with Eric, but that this love wasn't enough to stop or even curb her drug abuse. Why not? Why might the support and presence of someone you love not be enough to help a person like Lucy cope with her suffering?

3. Similarly, Lucy is convinced that rehabs and therapybasically all the services available to people with problemswill not work for her. Why does she think so? What do you think she has to surmount before she's able to believe she can change or be helped?

4. ThroughoutLast Last Chance, the narrative gives voice to the main characters after they have died, or before they were born. How do these scenes affect the overall tone of the novel? Are they meant to give the action in the story a spiritual setting? To create some historical patterns? Do these voices help explain anyl“