Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.

1. Which setting in Beautiful Ruins created the most vivid emotional response for you and why?

2. What similarities and differences do you notice between Beautiful Ruins and Walter’s earlier novel, The Financial Lives of the Poets, in their exploration of failed dreams?

3. The novel presents several stories within the main narrative, including Alvis’s war chapter and Shane’s “Donner!” pitch. Which embedded narrative most enhanced your understanding of the larger story?

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. When have you experienced tension between your desires and your sense of what is right, similar to Pasquale’s struggle with Amedea and Dee?

2. What unfulfilled dream have you carried through your life? Has your relationship with that dream changed over time?

3. Dee observes that “some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start” (54). When have you caught yourself living for some future moment rather than experiencing the present?