Join BookBrowse today and get access to free books, our twice monthly digital magazine, and more.

Reading guide for Dry Ice by Stephen White

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

Dry Ice

A Novel

by Stephen White

Dry Ice by Stephen White X
Dry Ice by Stephen White
  • Critics' Opinion:

    Readers' Opinion:

  • First Published:
    Mar 2007, 416 pages

    Paperback:
    Mar 2008, 528 pages

    Genres

  • Rate this book


Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
Buy This Book

About this Book

Reading Guide Questions Print Excerpt

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

  1. What are some examples of the secrets the characters in Dry Ice keep from one another? What purpose do these secrets serve in the novel?

  2. Is it significant that the book’s first scene is that of a cemetery worker digging a grave?

  3. When Sam Purdy comes to Alan’s office to seal it off as a crime scene, Alan invites him in, against his better judgment. Was Sam trying to take advantage if his friendship with Alan? What would you have done in this situation?

  4. In Chapter 15, Alan muses, “Secrets usually aren’t as important as our motivation for keeping them.” What was his motivation for keeping his own secrets? Do you think he was right to hide his past, especially from his wife?

  5. What was Michael McClelland’s motivation for constructing this elaborate revenge against Alan, Lauren, and Sam?

  6. In many instances during Dry Ice, things are decidedly not what they appear to be. Name some examples of “illusions” in the book and how different characters were misled by them.

  7. What was your first impression of Sam? Did it change as you read Dry Ice?

  8. Did you believe that Nicole Cruz’s death was a suicide, or did you think it was murder? If the latter, what were some clues?

  9. Discuss Kirsten Lord and her relationship with Alan, prior to becoming his lawyer. Do you think she was the appropriate person to act as his attorney? Why or why not?

  10. What did you think of Lauren’s bombshell revelation in Chapter 57 Do you think her secret is what caused her to be so closed off to her husband? Why didn’t she reveal it sooner?

  11. Did you suspect that Sam was involved in the death of Currie/J. Winter Brown?

  12. “To chemists, sublimation is the process by which matter changes from a solid state to a vapor without first melting. ‘Think dry ice,’ she’d said.” [page 212] What does the book’s title mean, in this context?

  13. Consider how many characters in Dry Ice have multiple identities. What role does this type of deception play in the novel?

  14. Is Lauren’s illness—multiple sclerosis—a metaphor for something else in the book?


Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Signet Classics. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Support BookBrowse

Join our inner reading circle, go ad-free and get way more!

Find out more


Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Enlightenment
    Enlightenment
    by Sarah Perry
    Following two friends three decades apart in age who hail from the Bethesda Church Baptist community...
  • Book Jacket: We Refuse
    We Refuse
    by Kellie Carter Jackson
    The cover image of Kellie Carter Jackson's We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance is ...
  • Book Jacket
    Cecilia
    by K-Ming Chang
    In the first few pages of K-Ming Chang's bizarre yet engrossing novella Cecilia, Seven, the ...
  • Book Jacket: Women and Children First
    Women and Children First
    by Alina Grabowski
    After Lucy Anderson falls to her death at a high school party, no one in Nashquitten, her gloomy, ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
Look on the Bright Side
by Kristan Higgins
From the author of Pack Up the Moon comes a funny, romantic, and moving novel about life's unexpected rewards.
Book Jacket
The Pecan Children
by Quinn Connor
Two sisters deeply tied to their small Southern town fight to break free of the darkness swallowing the land whole.
Win This Book
Win The Bluestockings

The Bluestockings by Susannah Gibson

An illuminating group portrait of the eighteenth-century women who dared to imagine an active life for themselves in both mind and spirit.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

A W in S C

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.