Beginning Middle End
Cut along the dashed lines and pass the cards around the table.
The mother and daughter fill their days cooking side by side, reading aloud and playing chess. Which of these small rituals would you most like to share with someone, and who would you pick?
If you could run away for one reset summer like these two, where would you go, who would come with you, and what would you cook the first night?
The book asks, 'How do you begin again if you got the beginning wrong?' Did that question stir up anything for you, and did the story leave you feeling hopeful about fresh starts?
The narrator is caught between a mother who is losing her memory and a daughter who is starting to ask hard questions. Which moments of that in-between feeling touched you most, or felt closest to your own life?
The two of them bicker and make up again and again. Did those small fights and repairs feel familiar or comforting to you? What does 'making up' look like in your own family?
The trip brings them near ruins where the narrator's grandmother once worked on a dig. What family story or keepsake from an older generation do you hold onto, and why does it matter to you?
Over the summer the daughter starts to take the reins, and the balance between the two shifts. How did it feel to watch that happen? Did it bring back a time when you became the one leading, or the one letting go?
With the whole book in mind, how did the title 'Beginning Middle End' sit with you? Do you think of your own life as having beginnings, middles and ends, and did the book change how you feel about getting some of them 'wrong'?