Discussion questions for April's book Room by Emma Donoghue
Below Ive listed 10 questions Ive sourced for April's book club discussion concerning Room by Emma Donoghue remember before you read the questions below that they contain spoilers to the actual plot of Room – so its up to you if you want to read them before you have finished the book or not.
1. Why do you think the author chose to tell the story of Room through Jack and not through a third-person narrator?
2. Why does Jack call their captor "Old Nick?"
3. What are some of the ways in which Jack’s development has been stunted by growing up in Room? How has he benefited?
4. When Ma is interviewed, the interviewer implies that perhaps not everyone would agree with Ma's decisions regarding Jack
1. Why do you think the author chose to tell the story of Room through Jack and not through a third-person narrator?
2. Why does Jack call their captor "Old Nick?"
3. What are some of the ways in which Jack’s development has been stunted by growing up in Room? How has he benefited?
4. When Ma is interviewed, the interviewer implies that perhaps not everyone would agree with Ma's decisions regarding Jack
- first, her decision to keep him in Room when she could have tried to have Old Nick abandon him at a hospital, &
- secondly Ma teaches Jack that Room was all there is, that things in TV aren't real, etc.
What are your thoughts regarding these decisions? What would you do differently if you were Jack’s parent? Would you tell Jack about the outside world from the start?
5. Have you ever heard of someone getting into a car with someone they don't know, as Ma did? Did you find this to be a believable way for a 19-year-old to be kidnapped?
6. Did you find yourself wanting to know more about Old Nick? If so, why do you think this is?
7. Jack often wishes he were back in Room. Is there any way in which he would be better off back in isolation with only his mother? Why or why not?
8. What sort of problems do you think Ma will face now that she and Jack are out on their own? What does joining the outside world do to Jack? To Ma?
9. If Ma had never given birth to Jack, what would her situation in Room be like?
10. What role do you think the media play in the novel?
Room by Emma Donoghue - Aprils Book chosen by Sarah
Room by Emma Donoghue - April's Book chosen by Sarah
Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.
Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.
Questions for March's book club meeting
After last nights book club I thought I would list some general 'non fiction' questions I looked on the web and I wasnt able to find any specific questions for More than Just Coincidence, the questions might give you something additional to think about while reading the book.
What did you find surprising about the facts introduced in this book?
How has reading this book changed your opinion of a certain person or topic?
Does the author present information in a way that is interesting and insightful, and if so, how does he or she achieve this?
If the author is writing on a debatable issue, does he or she give proper consideration to all sides the debate? Does he or she seem to have a bias?
How has the book increased your interest in the subject matter? Is this a subject area you knew anything about before? If so, were you surprised by any facts introduced in this book? If not, were you surprised by how interested you were in it?
How do you think the author treated the subject? Was the material presented in an interesting and thought-provoking way? How did the author achieve this?
More Than Just Coincidence (BBC My Story Family) by Julie Wassmer the book for March
Heartwarming, compelling and genuinely remarkable, More Than Just Coincidence is the true story of a mother who was reunited with her daughter, twenty years after she gave her up for adoption, in the most incredible of circumstances. One hot summer day in 1970, teenaged Julie dressed her 10-day-old baby daughter for the last time. Then she placed her newborn into a nurse's arms and walked away, taking with her only a tiny plastic bracelet on which were written two words - 'Baby Wassmer'. Over the next twenty years, the print on the bracelet began to fade, but the memory of Julie's lost child continued to run, like thread, through the fabric of her life. Julie travelled the world and led an adventurous life, but at the back of her mind always remained the daughter she had let go. On 5 November 1990, a struggling writer, aged 36, Julie stared at the reflection in a mirror on her bathroom wall as she prepared for her first meeting with a literary agent. All of sudden a thought came into her mind: now might be the perfect time for her daughter to re-enter her life. A few hours later, in the most astonishing way, two worlds were about to collide. Real life can be stranger than fiction.
Questions for February's book club
Hi there
Ive had a look through some book club questions on the web for February's book - The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid which I have edited down and posted below.
The questions dont have to be taken too seriously its just a way of getting the ball rolling and the conversation going within the book club and a way of breaking the ice with everyone
Ive added them just in case you want to spare a few thoughts about before the next meeting and I will bring them along with me when we meet on February 7th. Im not expecting us to get through even half of the questions and theres no pressure attached to having an answer at all, its just something to think about.
Louise
1. Early on, Changez says that his café companion’s "bearing" gives him away as an American. What does Changez mean by this? What are his deeper implications?
2. In chapter 1, Changez explains that his family belonged to the old aristocracy in Pakistan—though they are no longer wealthy, they still retain their social status. How important is it to Changez to regain what his family has lost? How does he hope to do that?
3. What do we learn about the American who sits across the table from Changez for most of the novel? And what do we never learn about this person?
4. Who is Jim, and why does he take such a liking to Changez? What do they have in common?
5. Changez announces in chapter 3, "I was . . . never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker." Explain this. How is Changez’s sense of identity altered over the course of the novel?
6. In chapter 5, Changez is in a hotel in Manila, packing his suitcase and watching television, when he sees the World Trade Center collapse. "And then I smiled," he confesses. Explore this scene as the turning point of the novel—in terms of plot, character, scope, and tone.
7. After visiting his family in Pakistan, why does Changez decide not to shave his beard upon returning to New York?
8. Discuss Changez’s relationship with Erica. What prevents them from having a “normal” relationship? Why are they attracted to each other? How does Erica’s fate affect Changez?
9. For a novel with “fundamentalist” in its title, this work has surprisingly little to say on the subject of religion. When, if at all, does Changez speak of devout faith, divine right, or deity worship?
10. Since 9/11, there has been a growing trend in contemporary fiction to write about the tragedy of that day and its aftermath. Compare The Reluctant Fundamentalist with some of the other “9/11 novels” you have read. What sets it apart or makes it unique?
The Reluctant Fundamentalist Mohsin Hamid - February's Book
February 7th Book Club Meeting
At a café table in Lahore, a Pakistani man converses with a stranger. As dusk deepens to dark, he begins the tale that has brought him to this fateful meeting...
Among the brightest and best of his graduating class at Princeton, Changez is snapped up by an elite firm and thrives on New York and the intensity of his work. And his infatuation with fragile Erica promises entree into Manhattan society on the exalted footing his own family once held back in Lahore. For a time, it seems as though nothing will stand in the way of Changez's meteoric rise to personal and professional success: the fulfilment of the immigrant's dream. But in the wake of September 11, he finds his position in the city he loves suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez's own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and perhaps even love.
January's book: Diary Of An Ordinary Woman By Margaret Forster
Date of next meeting - 3rd January, 7pm at the Hotel Continental
Diary Of An Ordinary Woman by Margaret Forster (chosen by Julie)
Millicent King is an 'ordinary' woman living through extraordinary times in this brilliantly conceived piece of fictional memoir writing. Diary of an Ordinary Woman is the edited diary of fictional woman Millicent King (1901-1995). From the age of 13, on the eve of the Great War, Millicent King keeps her journals in a series of exercise books. The diary records the dramas of everyday life in an ordinary English family touched by war, tragedy and money troubles in the early decades of the century. With vividness, she records her brother's injury, her father's death from pneumonia, the family's bankruptcy, giving up college to take a soul-destroying job as a shop assistant. Millicent struggles to become a teacher, but wants more out of life. From Bohemian literary London to Rome in the twenties, her story moves on to social work, the General Strike, the Depression Era of the 1930's and the build-up to the Second World-War in which she drives ambulances through the bombed streets of London. This is followed by her experience of the Swinging Sixties and Maggie Thatcher's Britain. She has proposals of marriage and secret lovers, ambition and optimism, but her life is turned upside down by wartime deaths. Here is twentieth-century woman in close-up coping with the tragedies and upheavals of women's lives. Her ordinary life proves unexpectedly absorbing and, at times, extremely moving showing that, above all, the most ordinary lives are often extraordinary…
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About Me
- Louise
- Im interested in films, movies, social networking, books, photography, art, graffiti and graphics