READERS GUIDE
Reader’s GuideFeast by Catherine Kurtz
Discussion Questions:
1. Minha is aware of her sense of taste—and smell, which is the greater part of flavor—from her infancy. What is your first food memory? What are your earliest memories overall, and how do they reflect who you know yourself to be as an adult?
2. Minha’s sense of taste is exceptional, an amplification of what we might think of as being highly sensitive or intense. Do you think those things are a blessing or a curse?
3. If taste is Minha’s superpower, what is yours?
4. A search for belonging is a common experience of mixed-heritage people. Why do you think that is, and how is that reflected in Minha’s story?
5. There are certain food motifs in the story—bread, peaches, strawberries, hops. What foods would tell the story of your life?
6. When Minha meets Alexandre he is very dependent on her. Why do you think being needed in that way has such immediate impact on Minha? And what do you understand about the difference between power and strength in the way they each behave across the novel?
7. Friendship plays an important role in the novel, whether from a family member such as Minha’s grandfather or from the baker Camille.
What role can friendship play in navigating acceptance of self and recovery from trauma?
8. Much of the novel is set in the fairy-tale Château de Bellefalaise, which beguiles Minha at first sight. What place have you fallen in love with and found magical? Which places are important in the novel, and why?
9. There are certain objects in the novel—Minha’s grandfather’s knife, the scarf her father gave her mother—that are almost talismanic for her. Do you have an object or objects that serve you in a similar way?
