Delicate Edible Birds Reading Group Guide

1. Why do you think Groff decided to title the collection Delicate Edible Birds? There are a number of stories that hinge around actual birds, but who or what could signify a more metaphorical idea of “birds”? Why would they be both “delicate” and “edible”?

2. Water or swimming plays a large part in nearly every story: Why do you think this is so? What other themes or motifs are carried between stories?

3. Each story is told in a different way, from the intimate first-person voice of Lollie in “Lucky Chow Fun,” to the collective voice of “The Wife of the Dictator,” to the close and shifting third person in “Delicate Edible Birds.” Why do you think Groff chose to tell each story differently? How would “Majorette,” for instance, be a different story if it had been told in the first person instead of the third?

4. Main characters have a missing parent in stories like “Blythe,” “L. DeBard and Aliette,” and “Lucky Chow Fun.” What do you think the absence of parents lends to each narrative?

5. Why do you think Aliette names her son “Compass” rather than something more conventional?

6. In “Majorette,” why do you think Groff chose to give the main female character a talent for baton twirling?

7. Blythe is beautiful, wealthy, successful, married to a supportive husband, and the mother of healthy children. What does she mean when she states that “this is no world for women”?

8. In “Sir Fleeting,” how does Ancel de Chair impact the narrator’s life? Does her relationship with him change the way she looks at the world or the people around her?

9. The author offers the points of view of many characters in “Fugue.” Whom do you feel the most empathic toward? Does your allegiance shift as you read the story?

10. In the story “Delicate Edible Birds,” Bern witnesses the eating of the ortolan, a tiny songbird that has a taste said to represent the Christian holy trinity. Afterward, Groff says, Bern was able to see “the barbarism at the heart of all the beauty” of Christianity. What exactly do you think she means by that? How does it apply to the larger story?

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