1. Lucy Bloom’s sparkling voice is the book’s driving force, and it can be very funny, even when describing the more poignant or darker moments in Lucy’s life. Discuss the role that humour plays in the book. Do you see a difference between how Lucy and her mother, Joy, use humour? In what ways do Lucy and Joy each wield humour as both a shield and a weapon [p. 209]?

2. How would you describe Lucy’s role within the Bloom family? What does Lucy’s involvement in her parents’ tumultuous marriage reveal about the way adult relationships shape a child’s sense of self and experience of the world? To what extent does Lucy take on the responsibility for keeping the peace between her parents, and how much of this responsibility is thrust upon her?

3. As a child, Lucy finds it difficult to understand why her mother, Joy, suffers from “so many doubts and worries” [p.54]. How do Joy’s worries affect Lucy’s early life? The push-pull relationship between Lucy and Joy is one of the novel’s central concerns. How is their relationship tested and transformed over the course of the novel?

4. How does Lucy’s relationship with her father, Frank, change over the course of the novel? Which of Frank’s actions teach Lucy the most about his character?

5. Examples of different kinds of routines and rituals appear throughout the book. Why might the idea of routines — and the way routines can change or be disrupted — be significant in a coming-of-age novel? What is the relationship between routine and ritual? Discuss the routines and rituals that each of the major characters engages in. Which can be described as beneficial and which are more problematic?

6. In what ways could the following characters be described as being stuck in the past: Joy, Frank, Sol, Crashing Wave, Lucy? Discuss how each of these characters is able to move forward by the end of the book.

7. How would Joy, Frank, and Sol answer the question of what it means to be a success? Would Lucy agree? Do you?

8. What does the young Lucy’s devotion to the TV character ALF reveal about the way she thinks of herself and her place in the world?

9. When we first meet Lucy, she is dreaming of flying “five feet off the ground through the No Frills grocery store on a royal blue Schwinn” [p. 3]. What is the significance of Lucy’s dream? In what ways do elements of this same dream recur in an altered form in the epilogue? Why might Kirshner have chosen to allude to the opening dream sequence at the end of the novel?

10. Bicycles, automobiles, airplanes, roller-skates, and walkers — things that transport us from one place to another are referred to at numerous points in Kirshner’s novel. What is the relationship between these modes of transportation and the journey each major character makes? Describe the outer and inner journeys of the main characters and discuss whether they “go” where they wanted to go.

11. The book’s title, Where We Have to Go, has a few different meanings. What significance did the title have for you? An early alternative title for the book was “Odd Girl Out.” Which characters could this title describe and why? What are some of the reasons you can see for why this title was not chosen?

12. When Joy and Lucy move to Tivoli Towers, they meet Merle Gaddick and her daughter Diana. Merle likes Rothko; Joy likes Norman Rockwell. Lucy remarks: “I had the feeling that if we were going to fit in at Tivoli Towers, we’d have to stop being ourselves” [p. 72]. Why does Joy feel pressure to fit in with Merle? How does Joy try to fit in? At what points in the novel does Lucy try to change herself in order fit in?

13. There are several instances of bullying depicted in the book. In what ways is the bullying that Lucy and Tommy experience the same, and how is it different? Discuss how Lucy and Tommy resist being victims. How do Estelle, Joey, and Diana eventually come to reveal their own vulnerabilities?

14. There are a number of significant female relationships in the book. While some are fraught with difficulties, they are all depicted honestly. If we look at Lucy’s relationship with her best friend, Erin, theirs is a true friendship that is nevertheless tested. In what ways does Lucy’s friendship with Erin resist stereotypes about female friendship?

15. Judith Butler famously described gender as a “performance.” Gender is not natural, but socially constructed, learned, performed. Men and women learn how to perform masculine or feminine roles. How does Lucy learn what “femininity” means? How does she “perform” her gender? When does Lucy feel “successful” at being a girl?

16. “Lucy Bloom was a brain, not a body. This was a fact I learned early on” [p. 155], Lucy remarks, as she begins her descent into anorexia. What factors shape Lucy’s rejection of her body and her eventual acceptance of it?

17. One of the most fascinating characters in the novel is a woman known as Crashing Wave. What is the significance of Lucy describing Crashing Wave as “always less than a person, but more than a ghost” [p. 278]? Kirshner has said that she never wanted Crashing Wave to be a typical “other woman” character. How does Lucy’s understanding of Crashing Wave as “the other woman” change throughout the course of the novel?

18. Of storytelling and truth, Mr. Hardaway says, “I think about it sometimes, how we know when we’re beginning the right story. And I guess it’s that moment that scares you, that might even hurt because it’s so true. But you continue. That’s the right story” [p. 274]. How do Joy and Lucy use stories throughout the novel to shield themselves from painful realties but also to bring them closer to the truth? How does Lucy’s understanding of her mother’s motivations for telling her larger-than-life stories change by the end of the novel? Discuss Lucy’s reconsideration of what Mr. Hardaway meant by the “right story,” on pages 306-307. What is the significance of Lucy and Joy telling the story of the gang together?

19. At the end of the novel, Lucy is nineteen and on the edge of the rest of her adult life. Where do you see Lucy going in the next five years?

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