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RMC Book Club

Use this guide to foster book club discussions

Overview of Telephone

cover image of telephone by percival everett

Zach Wells is a perpetually dissatisfied geologist-slash-paleobiologist. Expert in a very narrow area—the geological history of a cave forty-four meters above the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon—he is a laconic man who plays chess with his daughter, trades puns with his wife while she does yoga, and dodges committee work at the college where he teaches.

After a field trip to the desert yields nothing more than a colleague with a tenure problem and a student with an unwelcome crush on him, Wells returns home to find his world crumbling. His daughter has lost her edge at chess, she has developed mysterious eye problems, and her memory has lost its grasp. Powerless in the face of his daughter’s slow deterioration, he finds a mysterious note asking for help tucked into the pocket of a jacket he’s ordered off eBay. Desperate for someone to save, he sets off to New Mexico in secret on a quixotic rescue mission.

A deeply affecting story about the lengths to which loss and grief will drive us, Telephone is a Percival Everett novel we should have seen coming all along, one that will shake you to the core as it asks questions about the power of narrative to save.

The RMC Book Club read Telephone for their January 2023 meeting. Below are the discussion questions we used to foster our conversation. 

Discussion Questions

  1. What were your general reactions to the novel?
  2. Percival Everett wrote three different endings to the book. Does having three endings connect to the plot or larger themes of the novel?
  3. Why do you think the book is called telephone? 
  4. The novel has an epigraph from Kierkegaard. How does the quote from Kierkegaard tie in with the novel overall?
  5. Each chapter has short little interludes between sections. At the start the narrator describes bird species that can be found in a cave. Chess moves. Latin words. Camping supplies. Descriptions of paintings in the Louvre. The phrase “it was hotter in new mexico”. What is the purpose of interrupting the narrative like that? How do the interludes connect to the plot/themes of the novel?
  6. Why does the narrator want to save the women in New Mexico?
  7. What do you think about Zach’s relationship with Sarah?
  8. How does Zach and Meg’s relationship change over the course of the novel? 
  9. Zach uses New Mexico as a distraction from the tragedy at home. Often at the expense of Meg. Does that affect whether or not we see his plot to save these women as heroic or good?
  10. While reading, did you have problems distinguishing Zach Wells’s dreams from his reality? How might this have impacted your understanding of the novel?
  11. Do you think it was right to keep Sarah’s diagnosis and consequential prognosis from her? Does Sarah ever fully realize what is happening to her? What parts of the story support your way of thinking?
  12. The possibility of seeing and coming in contact with wild animals—like rattlesnakes and bears—recurs throughout the novel. Why are they important? What influence does the natural world have on those who are suffering with loss and grief?
  13. How do racial tensions and right-wing ideologies (pg 122) affect the Wells family? What does Telephone add to the conversation surrounding racial and political tensions over the Mexican-American border? Was Zach Wells justified in being distrustful of the New Mexico police?
  14. What role does inheritance and family play in the novel? Think on the characters’ bodies, lifestyles, cultural statuses, and thought patterns.
  15. Was the ending expected or unexpected? How did it differ from what you may have wanted or anticipated? How does it fit the themes of the novel?
  16. Some of these questions were taken/adapted from Reading Group Choice's discussion questions: https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/telephone/