Introduction

This funny, exuberant novel captures the reader with the grand sweep of seven-foot-tall David “Lizard” Hochmeyer’s larger-than-life quest to unravel the mystery surrounding his parents’ deaths. It’s a journey laden with pro football stars, a master chef and his beautiful transvestite lover, a world-famous ballerina and her English rocker husband, and a sister who’s as brilliant as she is unstable. A wildly entertaining, plot-twisting novel of murder, seduction, and revenge—rich in incident, expansive in character, and lavish in setting—Life Among Giants is an exhilarating adventure. 

Editors’ pick for Amazon’s Best of 2012 

Shelf Awareness Top Ten Best Fiction of 2012 

Columbus Dispatch’s Top Books of 2012 

Editorial Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2012: I hereby nominate Lizard the humongous football player and Sylphide the mysterious ballerina as two of my favorite characters of 2012. Rarely have such elite and outsize personalities felt so true on the page--a joy to be with, worth rooting for. We meet Lizard at age 17, when his parents are murdered, setting up his decades-long search for the truth behind his father's shady business dealings and his family's weblike relationship with the couple in the mansion next door: Sylphide, the world's greatest dancer, and her rock star husband. Like early John Irving, Roorbach has crafted a story that's rollicking and sexy but not shallow or slight. Seven-foot Lizard and petite Sylphide, both giants in their own way, are a pair to behold. Part Gatsby, part Garp, Life Among Giants is an urgent tale of greed, love, and revenge. --Neal Thompson

Excerpt

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Discussion Questions

1. Who are the giants of the title? Is Lizard one of them, or is he merely an observer and chronicler? What is life among these giants like for Lizard? How have they steered his life? And how has he resisted them?

2. Why do you think Sylphide is so attracted to Lizard, and why, throughout their lives, does she keep him at arm’s length? In what ways does he differ from the men she chooses to marry?

3. What is the draw of the High Side for each of the members of the ?Hochmeyer family? Is it something different for each one? Is there an equal repulsion for each? Who pays the highest price?

4. Where would you place the root cause of the Hochmeyer family’s problems? Is it Dad’s insecurity and posing? Kate’s troubled questing? Mom’s chilly withholding? Or does it lie with Lizard himself? The Hochmeyer family has a lot of secrets, and a lot of alliances among its members. What are the secrets, and who knows what? And who shares what with whom?

5. How did your opinions of the characters in Life Among Giants shift as you read? Were there any characters you started out mistrusting but ending up liking? Any characters you started out liking and ended up mistrusting? Any you held a steady regard or dislike for?

6. Is Lizard’s father truly bad? Or is he an insecure person trying to build himself up? Is he being manipulated by stronger forces, or is he an operator, looking out for himself?

7. Lizard connects with a number of women in the book, yet he seems to pick loves who aren’t truly available. What’s that all about?

8. Emily is very important to Lizard, yet she doesn’t offer herself to him very fully. Why does he hold her in such high regard? What role does she play in his development and in the devel-opment of the story?

9. How would you describe Lizard’s relationship with Linsey? What about Sylphide’s relationship with him, and Kate’s? What is Linsey’s role in the story?

10. Lizard takes warmly to Etienne and RuAngela. Why do you think this odd couple appeals to him?

11. From the first paragraph to the last climactic moments, food plays a big part in Life Among Giants. What is the role of food in the narrative?

12. Why does Sylphide choose death in the end? Hasn’t she every reason to live?

13. What do you think Kate and Dabney’s relationship was really like? Was it one based on love or was it based on something else?

14. Life Among Giants is not a traditional mystery, nor is it a traditional bildungsroman. How does it depart from the conventions of each genre? How does the story of this young man’s growth interconnect with his quest to find the killers?

Weblinks

»	Author Bill Roorbach's web site
»	Publisher's Web Site

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