Book Club Discussion Questions and Guide for Jackie by Dawn Tripp

Book Club Discussion Questions

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Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. What was your opinion of Jackie Kennedy Onassis before you started reading this novel? How did Jackie change—or align with—your previous view?
2. Discuss the idea that a novel can tell us more about what a person feels than a straightforward biography. In what ways can fiction provide a "truer" picture of a person's life?
3. What surprised you most about Jackie, as Dawn Tripp wrote her?
4. Books were central to Jackie's life. She loved literature and poetry, and both she and Jack were passionate about reading. How did books shape Jackie's evolution? What did they offer to her?
5. Tripp describes Jackie as "an artist whose medium was fame." Discuss what you think she means by this. Was Jackie the first of her kind? Do you think this line could describe anyone in the public eye today?
6. How were fame and celebrity different during the 1950s and 1960s than they are today? How might that have informed choices Jack and Jackie made, and failed to make?
7. How would you characterize Jackie and Jack's marriage? Do you think they would have stayed together?
8. What traits did Jack bring out in Jackie? What traits did Onassis bring out? How did these versions of Jackie differ from the working girl—both Jackie the Camera Girl and Jackie the Editor?
9. What parts of herself did Jackie feel she needed to hide in her marriages—or throughout her life? Which parts did she exaggerate?
10. "It occurred to me that if the marriage question were neatly settled, to a perfectly respectable catch, I might be not more trapped ... but free," Jackie says. Explain her reasoning.
11. Jackie's fierce love for her children shaped her determination to create a stable sense of family despite extraordinary circumstances. Discuss how Jackie's identity as a mother determined many key choices that she made.
12. What scene from the book stands out the most to you?
13. Jackie was a woman who worked to shape her own identity and brand in ways that were progressive for her time. How do the complex politics of power, love, marriage, and gender play out in the novel?
14. What did you think of the brief sections from Jack's point of view? What did they add to the narrative?
15. "Such an easy net to get tangled in, isn't it? That belief a woman sometimes has that she can change herself to change a man." Discuss this quote. Have you ever fallen prey to this belief? Why do you think it's so pervasive?
16. Jackie is the story of a woman who lives through incredible trauma and loss, who strives to forge an independent life and balance societal and cultural expectations. How are these aspects of Jackie's experience aligned with the experiences of women today?
17. Toward the end of the novel, Jackie reflects, "And why does it seem like such a radical thing? The idea of a woman in love with her own life?" How did this resonate with you, both in terms of Jackie's story and how we understand it, and in light of your own experience?

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