Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Book Club Discussion Questions for All the Ruined Men by Bill Glose

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

All the Ruined Men by Bill Glose

All the Ruined Men

Stories

by Bill Glose
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • First Published:
  • Aug 2, 2022, 288 pages
  • Rate this book

About this Book

Book Club Discussion Questions

Print PDF

Want to participate in our book club? Join BookBrowse and get free books to discuss!

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

  1. Bryce Pearson was disfigured by a bomb blast. In "Dead Man's Hand," his face now bears "two puckered lines jagging from his mouth to his neck, another one slicing across his right cheek." In what other ways have soldiers in his squad been ruined by war?
  2. Why does Pearson drive Darrell to the recruiting station if he doesn't really want him to enlist? Do you think Pearson made a mistake?
  3. Pearson compensates for his disfigurement by confronting the "unblemished public… like a form of combat." In what ways do other veterans from his squad show that they also have not adjusted well to civilian life?
  4. Staff Sergeant Berkholtz swapped off his guard duty the day the bomb ended up killing Private Pearson. At the time, he'd told Pearson, Rank has its privileges, with a smirk. How do Berkholtz's rank and responsibility weigh on him afterwards?
  5. How differently do the soldiers act among themselves compared to when they are with other friends and family?
  6.  When the veterans dare to hope, their desires are often intertwined with love for others. How does that work out for them?
  7. War affects not only the soldiers who fight in it, but their families as well. How have different family members been impacted by their sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan?
  8. In "Red Legs," Lewis has experienced a near-fatal parachuting incident and Anoush is suffering from a fatal disease. How has fear transformed these two characters differently?
  9. In "Dog is Not a Palindrome," the title plays with the sense that "Dog" is a reversal of "God." How has Curt Bradshaw's faith been shaken? How was this shown throughout the book?
  10. In the confessional, Bradshaw tells the priest, "I'm a lost cause, Father." Do you agree with that statement?
  11. In "Her Brother's Apartment," what do the glass globes suggest about the type of person Bradshaw was trying to be? 
  12. In "Sacrifices," what sacrifices do Brendan and Sophia Mueller make for the sake of their relationship?
  13. At the outset of "What Won't Stay Buried," Daniel Faust seems to have put his war experiences behind him. How does that all change after an employee on his shift is injured by one of the factory's machines?
  14. In several of the stories, the veterans throw themselves into their work—Bradshaw as a pool construction laborer, Faust as a factory supervisor, Zahn as a night-shift stock boy, and Mueller as a slaughterhouse worker. Has dedication to work benefited (or harmed) any of them?
  15. Stoicism often serves as a fortress for veterans. In "Bright, Inconsequential Things," how does trying to ignore his past affect Reuben Zahn's present? 
  16. When Pearson calls Faust on Oscar night in "What Won't Stay Buried," he is drunk and close to tears. How has survivor's guilt weighed differently on these two veterans?
  17. In "Penultimate Dad," when Mueller brainstorms ideas for what he can teach his daughter, what does he learn about himself? 
  18. Between 2000-2018, US soldiers suffered 225,144 traumatic brain injuries. In "All the Fractured Pieces," we view various fragments of Royce Terfertiller's life as he lies in a hospital bed. When we see him again in "Falling Backwards," how has his brain injury changed the course of his life?
  19. Knowing how things eventually turn out, does re-reading the final paragraph in the first story, "In the Early, Cocksure Days," bring up any different emotions? (Mueller bellows a long, wolfish howl and wraps Bradshaw in a hug. Then the rest of the squad collapses on them in a back-slapping scrum, wrapped in the glee of the moment, each of Berkholtz's boys certain he will live forever.)


Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of St. Martin's Press. 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!

Beyond the Book:
  Suicide Among Combat Veterans

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...
  • Book Jacket: My Friends
    My Friends
    by Hisham Matar
    The title of Hisham Matar's My Friends takes on affectionate but mournful tones as its story unfolds...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

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.