8. How would you classify Appel’s writing style? Are there other novelists, or periods, that his voice reminds you of?
9. Appel has called the book a postmodern love story. In the afterword he explains, “While the structure is ‘postmodern’ in the spirit of Donald Barthelme or John Barth, that’s not what I meant when I wrote of a postmodern love story. Rather, I meant that the love itself is ‘postmodern’—hyper-aware, ambivalent, fragmented. That’s the world of romance that we live in today.” Has he accurately captured the essence of dating in the twenty-first century? What examples from the book, or your experiences, capture hyper-aware, ambivalent, and fragmented attempts at finding a mate?
10. Theme is a reader’s word, and Biology is full of many of the big themes we find in good fiction. But one theme that Appel clearly establishes is stated at the end of chapter one. “He is happy, happy in the way he knows he can be if he wills away the inevitable and succors himself with the remotest of hopes. That is the purpose of his book. That is the subject of his book. That is the reason that the city rises from its slumber.” How is hope represented in the course of events that transpire on this one June day in New York City?
11. All great art owes something to its predecessors. Appel has said he paralleled parts of his novel after Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses. What links did you discovery between these seminal works and Biology?
12. The most obvious question has to be asked—what is Starshine saying yes to, and what is she saying no to? Can you think of other books, or films, that end like this? Does that opened-ended mode work for you—why or why not?
The Biology of Luck Page 21