1. The last words of the book are ". whatever she needed she had only to imagine." Why do you think the author chose to end the book this way? How is imagination a central and absolute necessity for the members of the Haggard family?2. What is the relationship between the fables of Isidora and the rest of the book? How are situations, characters, and feelings from the lives of the Haggard family transformed in these fables? Why do you think that the Haggards maintain this storytelling tradition despite everything that they lose, forget, and abandon? What traditions do you keep that help maintain your own family's identity? How do your traditions relate to your family's history?3. Comparing the Haggard family's two legaciesthe EOA-23 gene and the stories of Isidorathe author writes:  "Two ideas, spontaneously improvised, altering in slight ways with each passage, yet remaining, fundamentally, themselves" (p. 175). In what other ways are these two inheritances similar? What is the relationship between them? In what ways are they different?4.

When Jamie leaves home, she leaves a letter for Abel that claims, "life here is no longer possible."  Do you think that if Abel hadn't told her the truth she would have been able to stay? Do you think that he was right to tell her?5. In one of the Isidora fables, a group of elders wonder, "To remember nothing . what more could one possibly ask of eternity?" (p. 201) Despite the horrors of Alzheimer's disease, are there ways in which its most well-known symptom, memory loss, is liberating for some of the characters in this book? What do you think of the possibility of there being something positive, even blissful, in the oblivion of Alzheimer's disease? In certain instances, might it be better to forget?  6. By the end ofThe Story of Forgetting,Jamie appears desperate to return to her childhood home. Do you think she would have still felt this need if she hadn't developed Alzheimer's disease? Was it only after she had forgotten the reasons she had left, and her guilt over abandoning Abel, that she could return? Do you think that eventually she would have returned anyway, even if her memory had not failed?7. Why do you think that when Paul begins to develop Alzheimer's disease, he so quickly forgets who Abel is, replacing him with the memory of Jamie Whitman? Do you think there is a way that Paul's love for his brother remains intact, even after he has forgotten who Abel is?  8.

In "Genetic History, Part 3," the author, describing Paul's unceasing love for Jamie Whitman, asks if "Love . [is] strong enough to gird Memory, at least for a time, against Chance's inevitable progression" (p. 243). How is love stronger than memory loss in this book? How is it not?  Do you think one's love is made more or less valid if one forgets and confuses its conditions?9. Have you ever known anyone with Alzheimer's disease? If so, how does the characterization of the disease in this book relate to your own experiences? How does this characterization relate to depictions you've come across in other books or films?10. Why do you think Seth is so devoted to being a "Master of Nothingness"? Why does he want so badly to disappear?11. Before Seth and Abel know of each other's existence, they are already linked by their family's two legacies: the stories of Isidora and the devastation that the EOA-23 gene has wrought upon their loved ones. What else do Seth and Abel have in common? Might these similarities serve to hint, early in the book, that the two are part of the same family?12.

The Story of Forgettingis written in a number of voices, genres, and time periods. Why do you think that the author chose to tell the story this way? How does this style of writing.