Book Club Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Houseguest:
1. What kind of man is Edward Devlin? What do you think of his decision to leave his daughter Maura behind in Ireland after his wife died? Is he correct in doing so—is his decision in the best interests of himself...or Maura...or both?
2. What about Sylvia—what kind of woman is she? What are her dreams...and why is her life unfulfilling to her?
3. Consider Sylvia's marriage to Fitzgibbon: is it possible to justify her affair with Edward? Do you have sympathy for the couple...Edward and Sylvia? For Edward—is his infatuation with Sylvia a betrayal of his deceased wife? Or is it earned: a feeling that "all the dreariness of the last months [was] working its way out of his system"?
4. Fitzgibbon thinks of Sylvia and Edward thus: ''He could not imagine spending the rest of his life with Sylvia.... Men like Devlin needed wives. They hardly existed without them. They hardly existed with them." Is this a fair assessment or not? Is Fitzgibbon overly self-sufficient—without normal human needs? Or is his independence admirable—what do you think?
5. Then, of course, there is Maura, left by her father in the care of two bitter aunts—Bell and Sadie. How well does Maura manage her grief and loneliness? In the end, she passes a sort of judgment on her father...is she right?
6. What is the moral predicament at the heart of this novel? Is there one...or more than one?
7. Are you satisfied by the novel's end? Do you feel the moral dilemmas have been resolved...or put aside?
8. Agnes Rossi tells her story from differing points of view. Why might she have decided to structure her narrative in that manner, rather than use a single narrator? How do these varying viewpoints affect your understanding of the novel?
9. Which character in this story did you sympathsize with most? Which one, the least?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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