The Women in White Book Club Questions
by Sarah Pekkanen
These questions assume everyone has finished the book and contain spoilers, including the ending.
This novel is built on secrets, memory, and the way women’s stories get erased. That makes it ideal for a book club: there are hard questions about trust, coercion, and psychic ability, but also moments where readers will genuinely disagree about what they would do. The split timelines and multiple narrators give everyone a different point of entry, so conversation tends to move easily between the 1964 institute and the present day.
Use these questions however works for your group. You can go through them in order, pick a topic from the groupings, or let one strong reaction lead you somewhere unexpected. The numbered list makes it easy to refer back to specific moments. Keep an open mind, because some of these questions have no comfortable answers.
The 1964 Women: Trauma and Agency
- 1.Kathleen kills Ronald with the baseball bat while believing she is attacking Mac, her childhood abuser. Do you read her final act as a tragic reclaiming of agency against trauma, or as proof that Dr. Trimble's experiments shattered her grip on reality?
- 2.Helen is told she can stay in the dorms only through the semester, is rejected by Kathleen, and goes to the bridge where she becomes 'invisible again.' Did you find Helen's suicide the most heartbreaking death, or did Ivy's forced institutionalization or Kathleen's murder-suicide affect you more?
- 3.Betty's dream of the yellow baby blanket ruined in the road seems to predict Ivy's baby's death, but it actually foreshadows the loss of Betty's own unborn child in the crash. Did you guess the dream's true meaning before Douglas ran the red light?
- 4.The novel alternates between Riley's present-day investigation and first-person chapters from Betty, Kathleen, Ivy, and Helen in 1964. Did having access to each woman's inner life make Dr. Trimble's experiments more disturbing than if we had only seen them through Riley's research?
Power, Coercion, and Erasure
- 5.Riley discovers that every 1964 Trimble Institute folder in the Marquis archives is empty, and Betty's name is absent from the yearbook. What do you think the university's erasure of these women was really trying to hide, and did it change how you understood Betty's decades of isolation?
- 6.Dr. Trimble punishes Ivy by locking her alone in a dark room after calling her test results 'subpar,' and he pressures her by implying David could lose his job. Were you surprised the women didn't leave the institute earlier, or was the coercion realistic given the era and their dependence on their husbands' careers?
- 7.Sandra reveals she performed Ganzfeld tests on homeless runaways because 'no one would notice if they vanished.' Did you feel the novel was drawing a parallel between the vulnerable women Dr. Trimble exploited in the 1960s and the overlooked people Sandra preyed on decades later?
- 8.At the end, Riley tells Betty's story to journalist Bill Stevens, beginning with 'She was called Girl Four.' Do you think telling the story is enough to restore Betty and her friends to history, or does the novel suggest some erasure can never be undone?
Betty and Douglas
- 9.After the accident, Douglas hides Betty in a house with locked doors, no television, and no family visits, warning her that 'anyone could be an agent or enemy.' Did you agree with Betty's choice to let Douglas contain her for the rest of their marriage, or was there a point where she should have refused?
- 10.Betty tells Riley that Douglas was panicked the morning they fled for reasons beyond just protecting her. Did you think Douglas was hiding Betty out of love, guilt for his role in the experiments, or genuine fear that Dr. Trimble would find her?
- 11.Betty insists that Dr. Trimble's pipe smoke appears in her nightmares, and she panics when she smells it on Sam's porch. How much of Betty's present-day behavior do you think was driven by trauma versus genuine psychic ability, and did your view of her change when she fought back with the gun?
Riley, Sandra, and the Ending
- 12.Sandra, the therapist who helped Riley and Betty, is revealed to be the one abducting Alex and running new Ganzfeld experiments. Did you see her as a believable successor to Dr. Trimble, or did her turn from compassionate grief counselor to captor strain credibility?
- 13.During their escape, Riley and Betty both independently choose the coffee mug and the chair as weapons, which Betty uses as proof that Riley shares her psychic gift. Do you believe Riley actually has abilities, or was that just a natural connection forged under pressure?
- 14.In the ending, Riley uses Betty's inheritance to pay off Danny's debts and Alex's college expenses, then tells Danny she loves him but blocks his number. Did you agree with Riley's choice to finally cut Danny off after spending so much of the novel trying to save him?
- 15.Betty's final cross-country road trip with Riley and Hank brings her to the Grand Canyon, where she watches a meteor shower and dies peacefully in her sleep. Did this quiet ending feel earned after the horrors of the 1964 plot, or was it too neat a resolution?