When the World Tips Over

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. What commonalities exist among the many love stories in the novel? Which couple’s story did you find the most affecting?

2. Which character’s conflict did you identify most strongly with, and why?

3. Have you had an experience, as have several characters in the book, where a personal transformation is triggered by interaction with another person? Who are the people who have helped you open up?

4. What did you think of the book’s theme about how blessings and curses can be handed down throughout families? Have you had experience with this?

5. What do you make of Cassidy’s suggestion that Theo and Bernadette’s separate “mistakes”—the infidelities that led to Cassidy and Wynton—are actually a positive, because of the way Cassidy and Wynton are meant to be together? Do you think this was an effective way to resolve the family curse?

6. Do you imagine Theo and Bernadette will get back together? Should they?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. How does Marigold’s alternative lifestyle place her at odds with the expectations of the mainstream culture around her? What makes this life seem alluring but ultimately unreal to Dave?

2. Why do you think Nelson gives magical properties to Paradise Springs and to the Fall vineyard? How do these magical elements represent the book’s commentary on California as both dream and reality?

3. What does the text have to say about the prevalence of the wine culture of the region?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. Discuss why you think the book is structured as it is and why the different background stories appear where they do.

2. Discuss the magical properties that Nelson gives some of the characters (Alonso’s light; Theo’s ability to attract animals; Miles’s telepathy with Sandro) in context with some of the realistic qualities, like synesthesia. How are these devices used to develop character?

3. Discuss how you see this book fitting within the young adult genre. How does it draw on techniques and approaches more commonly found in literature for adults? How does it adapt them for younger readers?

4. Discuss how Nelson builds and supports the book’s message that even great pain can be accompanied by joy, and tragedy and sorrow can lead to reconciliation.

5. Why do you suppose so many characters are fascinated with the book’s fictional romance novel Live Forever Now? How does that book serve as both symbol and theme?

6. What did you think of the book’s use of magical realism more generally? What influences does the book draw on in crafting its magical elements? You might consider Isabel Allende’s Eva Luna, which is about storytelling, or The House of the Spirits, the fable of a family; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, which features a family curse; The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, about the history of a California woman who runs a spice shop; or Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, which addresses the magical properties of food.