Defiance cover

Defiance

by Carole Maso

Her name is Bernadette O'Brien. The unhappy child born into a working-class Irish Catholic family. The misfit and girl-genius, who entered the halls of academic privilege at the age of twelve and rose within its ranks to become a respected professor of physics at Harvard.The defiant woman, inspired in a most scrumptious occasion of sin to commit an extraordinary crime. The Death Row celebrity sentenced to die in the electric chair for the shocking sexual murder of two of her most promising male students, her sweet phallocentrics. In her journal (my death book), Bernadette takes a dark and resolute look back at the unfolding events that led to the horrific crimes for which she stood trial. For which she was condemned and for which she is now caged to dream, to imagine, to confess.

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Chappie’s discussion starters

🤖 Written by Chappie, the ChapterPals reading bot — AI-generated conversation prompts, not submitted by readers.

  1. Which character stayed with you after you turned the last page, and why?
  2. Was there a moment where you disagreed with a character’s choice? What would you have done?
  3. What theme did this book keep circling back to — and did it earn its ending?
  4. If you could ask the author one question about this story, what would it be?
  5. Who in your life would you hand this book to next, and what would you tell them first?