READERS GUIDE
GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS Reading Group Guide1. Shoshana von Blanckensee is interested in telling the underdog story. Identify the underdog(s) of Girls Girls Girls and discuss whether there is (ironically) a sense of power inherent to the underdog narrative?
2. Early on, Hannah and Sam make their way to the fabled queer paradise of San Francisco. Discuss Von Blanckensee’s decision to introduce Girls Girls Girls as a sort of road trip novel. How did the road trip prime you for what is to come?
3. Bubbe is a true source of joy in Hannah’s life. Who understands you the way Bubbe understands Hannah? What qualities are necessary for someone to be a Bubbe to their loved ones?
4. Girls Girls Girls explores the desire to be free, or “frei” as Bubbe reminds Hannah, and what it looks like to achieve this. Discuss what being frei might look like in your life. Which of the novel’s characters do you think embodies this concept most successfully and why?
5. Sam is Hannah’s first love. Discuss what makes their connection so strong and what Hannah’s relationship blinders with regard to Sam might be.
6. Von Blanckensee deftly explores what it means to live with addiction. Discuss why sharing two perspectives on this—that of April and that of Chris—is important to the reading of the novel?
7. Girls Girls Girls explores a complicated mother-daughter dynamic, which, although specific, carries great resonance. Discuss the tensions often associated with the mother-daughter relationship archetype and to what extent these are in play in Hannah’s relationship with her mother.
8. Girls Girls Girls in some ways may be considered a triptych, with the second section of the novel illustrating one of Hannah’s biggest inflection points. How did you feel about the result of Hannah’s choices at the end of part two? At what stage did you see Hannah really grow up, if at all?
9. In almost every aspect, Girls Girls Girls is a story of grief—for long-lost friends, departed loved ones, past lives, and even past selves. Von Blanckensee opens grief up and dissects all the ways in which we come to mourn life as we live it. Discuss whether this story expanded your perception of grief?
10. From the first chapter, we learn that Hannah has always considered herself “weird.” Discuss how “weird” evolves as an identity throughout the novel. What did you make of the ending?
11. The title, Girls Girls Girls, echoes the neon signs from strip clubs in the nineties. How, if at all, did this book change your conception of sex work?
12. Girls Girls Girls is a story about the choices we make in the thrilling and often confounding search for ourselves and home. Based on Hannah’s journey, to what extent is “home” a feeling more than a place?
13. Girls Girls Girls, set in 1990s San Francisco, is steeped in nostalgia, with many of the restaurants and bars referencing real places that once existed. In what ways did this sense of nostalgia liven the read for you?
14. What do you see next for Hannah?
