FRAGILE
A Novel
Lisa Unger, bestselling author of Beautiful Lies and Die for You
BROADWAY BOOKS READING GROUP GUIDE
“[A] nail-biting whodunit.”
—People
“[A] simmering, tragic tale. Fans of authors
like Jodi Picoult will want to read this one in a
nice comfortable chair.”
—Associated Press
“This one is a stunner…Unger’s genius is
in plotting the story so that the reader never
knows what’s coming next…This is a read that
will stay with you.”
—New York Journal of Books Review
“Bestselling author Lisa Unger made her mark
with a string of successful thrillers—Beauti-
ful Lies, Black Out, and Die for You. While her
new novel, Fragile, has a mystery (or three)
and often unfurls with page-turning suspense,
it also mines the more intimate territory of
family and community dynamics.” residents. But when their son’s girlfriend, Charlene,
—Boston Globe
“Unger’s taut and edgy tale stealthily plumbs
the depths of desperation that grow more dan-
gerous with the passage of time.”
—Booklist
“Fragile delivers everything that Lisa Unger’s
readers have come to expect—a thrilling story
that affects complicated and nuanced people.
But it’s also a sensitive meditation on the very
nature of family and community and the ties
that bind us to one another.”
—Laura Lippman, New York Times
bestselling author of Life Sentences
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The questions and discussion topics that follow are
designed to enhance your reading of Lisa Unger’s
Fragile. We hope they will enrich your experience as
you explore this tale of haunting memories and the
power to redeem.
INTRODUCTION
Lisa Unger’s novels have thrilled readers around the
globe, blending suspenseful story lines and thought-
provoking portraits of humanity. With Fragile, she takes
us to the very heart of fear, in a town where the sins of
fathers are visited upon their sons and love is tested in
startling ways.
Making their home in The Hollows, a seemingly quaint
village outside New York City, psychiatrist Maggie
Cooper and her policeman husband, Jones, are all too
familiar with the private lives of their town’s longtime
goes missing, they are eerily reminded of their own
youth, when Maggie’s high-school friend was found
brutally murdered. Law enforcement proves to be a
dangerous game in the case of Charlene’s disappear-
ance; the top cop in The Hollows is no stranger to
Maggie and Jones: he was a bully when they were
growing up together, and now his son, Marshall, is
one of Maggie’s patients, a wounded soul who has
suffered years of abuse. In a race against time to
uncover the truth about Charlene and the desperate
hours when her friends last heard from her, the quest
leads Maggie to discover a long-buried secret about
her husband—a tragic realization that will threaten
everything she holds dear. In a community where the
past is always present and no one is above suspicion,
Fragile delivers a gripping story of love and loyalty.
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READING GROUP GUIDE
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Discuss the novel’s title. Who are The
Hollows’s most fragile residents?
Ultimately, who are the most resilient ones?
2. What makes Jones and Maggie a good
couple? How would you have reacted to
Jones’s revelations if you had been Maggie?
What life lessons—for better or worse—do
they impart to Rick?
3. What accounts for Travis’s hatred of
women? What spurred the cycles of
violence in the Crosby family?
4. How did your opinion of Marshall shift
throughout the novel, from his session with
Maggie in chapter three to the powerful
closing scenes? What does it take to defeat
the emotional grip of an abuser?
5. How does Elizabeth cope with the respon-
sibilities she accumulated after shepherd-
ing students for most of her lifetime? What
does she teach Maggie about motherhood?
6. In chapter nine, Lisa Unger describes the
way Maggie, Melody, and Denise behaved in
high school. Did they change very much over
the years? Did high school predict your life
accurately?
7. Is Melody a good mother? What attracted
her to Graham? How did the truth compare
to your theories about him?
8. Facebook plays a role in the race to rescue
Charlene, but was it a healthy resource for
her friends? Does it enhance or distort
reality?
9. In his pivotal phone call to Maggie,
Marshall asks, “How do you know if
you’re a good person?” How would you
have answered this question?
10. How does The Hollows reflect the person-
alities of the people who live there? What
makes it a charming place to live? How
does the landscape, rugged yet scenic, make
it a place where secrets can exist in plain
sight? How does its proximity to New York
City affect the characters’ dreams?
11. Through Wanda, Charlie finally finds the
courage to believe in himself. What enables
him to accept Wanda’s love? How does his
story reflect the way the novel unfolds?
12. Who is ultimately responsible for what
happened to Sarah? Could anything or any-
one have prevented the circumstances that
led to her death?
13. Would Tommy Delano have received better
treatment in the twenty-first century?
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READING GROUP GUIDE
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
14. Do you think of your family, or your
community, as being open and candid, or
do they have a lot to hide? Discuss a time
when you discovered something potentially
damaging about a loved one’s past. How
did you handle it? Has your own past ever
haunted you?
15. Discuss Fragile’s connections to the other
Unger novels you have read. How do her
characters approach the line between good
and evil?
Reading group guide for Fragile by Lisa Unger. Copyright © 2011 by the Crown Publishing Group. Distributed by permission of the Crown Publishing
Group, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this reading group guide may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in
writing from the publisher.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Unger is an award-winning New York
Times, USA Today, and internationally best-
selling author. Her novels have been published
in more than twenty-six countries around the
world.
She was born in New Haven, Connecticut
(1970) but grew up in the Netherlands, England,
and New Jersey. A graduate of the New School
for Social Research, Unger spent many years
living and working in New York City. She then
left a career in publicity to pursue her dream of
becoming a full-time author. She now lives in
Florida with her husband and daughter.