My Last Love Story

Book Club Questions

1. What was your overall experience while reading My Last Love Story? Were you engaged immediately and throughout or the opposite?
2. Which character did you like the most? Which one did you like the least? Why?
3. Consider the meaning behind the novel’s title. Whose last love story do you think it refers to—Simeen and Nirvaan’s, or Simeen and Zayaan’s?
4. Read aloud a passage from My Last Love Story that stood out to you. Explain why.
5. Did you learn something new by reading this book? Has this book changed your views of the world in some way?
6. Discuss some of the themes the story touches on.
7. Simeen was orphaned during her formative years. How do you think, if at all, the need to fill this parental void impacted her choices in life?
8. In Simeen’s shoes, how would you have reacted on and after your eighteenth birthday?
9. To many, Simeen’s running away to Mumbai might seem like a cowardly act, but do you agree with Simeen about keeping the trauma a secret in her situation? What do you think would have happened had she told the truth?
10. Discuss the same for Nirvaan.
11. Discuss how Zayaan would have reacted had he known the truth.
12. Part of the story took place in India and part in the United States. How did the cultural differences and societal mores impact how this story unfolded and the options available to the characters?
13. Do you think it is possible for three people to love each other equally?
14. Had the traumatic events in the story that broke up the Awesome Threesome never occurred, would Zayaan and Nirvaan be as accepting of each other in Simeen’s life?
15. What kind of man would Nirvaan have been if he had not had cancer? What about Simeen and Nirvaan’s marriage? How would it have fared without the cancer?
16. Compare the two mother-son relationships narrated in the novel.
17. Nirvaan’s mother essentially gave the green light to Simeen to live however she chose, in complete contrast to Zayaan’s mother’s admonishments. Do you think Simeen would have had the courage to choose as she had without Nirvaan’s mother’s approval?
18. Did Zayaan’s mother protect her own interests by forcing Simeen’s silence in Surat, or did a mother simply protect her cubs?
19. Was Nirvaan right in trying to arrange Simeen’s life to run smoothly when he was gone? Why did Simeen call him a bully for that?
20. Zayaan, while a good friend, was also, in many respects, Nirvaan’s rival. Why did Nirvaan put his medical decisions in Zayaan’s hands and not in Simeen’s or his parents’, which would’ve been the right pecking order?
21. What are your thoughts and feelings about Zayaan? What do you think he knew or suspected about the past?
22. What feelings did reading the last line invoke in you?
23. If you could change something about My Last Love Story, what would it be? And why?