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Quick answer: Good discussion questions for The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller focus on Elle’s choice between her husband Peter and childhood love Jonas, family secrets, childhood trauma, memory, desire and the Cape Cod summer camp that shaped her life. Below are 19 questions grouped by theme, plus a spoiler-free summary.
Quick facts
Author: Miranda Cowley Heller
Published: 2021
Setting: a family summer camp on Cape Cod, over a single day, with flashbacks across 50 years
Structure: one present-day day intercut with Elle’s past
Content note: child sexual abuse, rape, explicit sex and infidelity
The Paper Palace was a Reese’s Book Club pick and a bestseller, and it divides readers in the best way for a book club. It takes place over a single day at a rustic family summer camp on Cape Cod, as a 50-year-old woman decides between the husband she loves and the childhood friend she has always loved. Along the way, it reveals the family secrets that shaped her. Please note that it contains very difficult material. This guide includes a spoiler-free summary, characters and themes, and 19 discussion questions grouped by theme. The questions contain spoilers.
Table of Contents
Spoiler-Free Summary
Elle Bishop has spent every summer of her life at “the Paper Palace,” her family’s rambling, rustic camp in the woods of Cape Cod, beside a pond and close to the sea. She is 50, happily married to Peter, a kind British academic, and the mother of three children.
The novel opens the morning after Elle and Jonas, her oldest friend and the boy she has loved since childhood, finally give in to their feelings, while their spouses sit just yards away at a dinner party.
Over the next 24 hours, Elle must decide what to do. As the day unfolds, the book moves back through her life: her bohemian mother, her parents’ marriage, her childhood with Jonas and the secrets that have kept them apart for decades.
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Main Characters and Themes
| Character or Theme | What to Know |
|---|---|
| Elle Bishop | A 50-year-old woman torn between two lives |
| Peter | Elle’s loving, steady husband |
| Jonas | Elle’s childhood friend and great love |
| Wallace | Elle’s sharp, unconventional mother |
| Anna | Elle’s younger sister |
| Gina | Jonas’s wife |
| The Paper Palace | The family’s rustic summer camp on Cape Cod |
| Choice | Love, loyalty and what we owe our families |
| Secrets and trauma | How hidden wounds shape a life |
| Place and memory | How one place holds a whole family’s history |
Discussion Questions (Contains Spoilers)
Elle
- Elle narrates her life in present-day moments and long flashbacks. How did that structure affect your understanding of her?
- Do you think Elle’s choice was ever truly open, or was she always going to choose one man?
- How has Elle’s childhood shaped the way she loves?
- Did you like Elle? Did you need to?
Peter and Jonas
- What does Peter offer Elle that Jonas can’t, and the reverse?
- Why didn’t Elle and Jonas end up together when they were young?
- How did you feel about Jonas’s marriage to Gina?
- Which man did you want Elle to choose, and why?
Family and Secrets
- How does Wallace’s parenting shape her daughters?
- What role does the camp itself play in the family’s history?
- How did learning the family’s darkest secret change your view of the adults around Elle?
- Why do you think Elle kept her trauma hidden for so long?
Love and Desire
- Is the affair at the start of the novel a betrayal, an inevitability or both?
- The book is frank about sex and desire. How did that affect your reading?
- What does the novel suggest about the difference between passion and partnership?
The Ending and Big Picture
- The novel ends with Elle on the verge of choosing. Were you satisfied, or frustrated?
- Which choice do you believe Elle makes?
- What does the title, The Paper Palace, suggest about the family and their home?
- Would you recommend this book, knowing its difficult content?
Is The Paper Palace a Good Book Club Pick?
Choose it if your group enjoys literary fiction with strong opinions attached, because readers either love Elle or are frustrated by her, and both camps make for great talk. It’s a single summer day stretched over about 400 pages, so it reads like a slow-burning beach read with a dark core. It isn’t right for every group: the childhood abuse scenes are explicit, so make sure everyone knows that before you commit.
Book Club Ideas for The Paper Palace
- Serve a Cape Cod spread, like lobster rolls, steamed clams, corn on the cob and blueberry pie.
- Hold a secret vote on which man Elle chooses, and reveal it at the end of the meeting.
- Share a place from your own childhood that still feels like home.
- Talk about first loves in general terms: do they ever really leave us?
Books Like The Paper Palace
If your group loved it, try The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo for another family saga full of secrets, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid for a woman’s complicated love life, or Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng for family drama and hidden pasts.
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How to Structure Your Meeting
Open with a show of hands: Peter or Jonas? Then work through two or three questions from each theme above, saving the “big picture” questions for the end. If your group is large, split into pairs for one theme and report back.
A simple 90-minute plan:
- 0–15 minutes: food, catch-up and the opening question.
- 15–60 minutes: the discussion questions, theme by theme.
- 60–75 minutes: one of the book club ideas above, or a quick comparison with the adaptation if there is one.
- 75–90 minutes: everyone rates the book out of five in one sentence, then you pick next month’s read.
Related: the best literary fiction books for book clubs and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo book club discussion questions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Paper Palace about?
Over one day at her family’s Cape Cod summer camp, 50-year-old Elle Bishop must choose between her husband, Peter, and her childhood love, Jonas, as the novel reveals the secrets of her past.
Is The Paper Palace good for book clubs?
Yes, for groups comfortable with difficult content. Elle’s choice and the open ending spark lively debate.
Is The Paper Palace appropriate for all book clubs?
No. It includes child sexual abuse, rape and explicit sex, so share a clear content note before choosing it.
Who does Elle choose at the end of The Paper Palace?
The novel ends just as Elle makes her decision, without stating it outright, so readers debate which man she chooses.