Discussion Questions
1. At the start of the story, a dying old man, Elias Cole, is chronicling his life to Adrian, a British psychologist. He says,
This is how it is when you glimpse a woman for the first time, a woman you know you could love. People are wrong when they talk of love at first sight. It is neither love nor lust. No. As she walks away from you, what you feel is loss. A premonition of loss (p. 1).
How does the premonition reappear in the course of the story?
2. Cole’s narrative introduces two of the principal characters, Saffia and Julius Kamara. What first impressions of these people do you get from Elias’s description? Were the impressions accurate? Is the storytelling more confessional than therapeutic? Is Cole creating a myth or unburdening himself?
3. What brought Adrian Lockheart to post-conflict Sierra Leone? What keeps him there?
Adrian’s empathy sounded slight, unconvincing in his own ears. So he nudged his patients along with questions aware of the energy it cost him to obtain a sliver of trust (p. 21).
How do his sessions with his patients affect him? Did you find the name "Lockheart" symbolic? How does Adrian relate to his patients, their experiences, and their culture? What is the divide he cannot cross?
4. A dramatic medical emergency immediately precedes the first meeting between Kai Mansaray, an orthopedic surgeon, and Adrian. How do their differing reactions serve to clarify the differences between the two men? "In the days and weeks that follow, the rhythms of their lives begin to intertwine" (p. 51). In what ways do they start to connect? How does this affect each of them? What is the importance of the friendship to each of them?
5. Elias Cole unravels his story to Adrian, very slowly and very carefully. Why? From his portrayal of his own interaction with the Dean, what do you gather about the nature of his character? Why is he mesmerized by Saffia?
6. When they first meet, Ileana is cold to Adrian. "You should have been here from the start. But of course you weren’t. Nobody was. You all turn up when it’s over" (p. 85). Why does Ileana feel this way, and is her anger justified? What makes her experience different from Adrian’s? Which other characters share her opinion? When he leaves, has Adrian verified or disproved her initial judgment? What is different about her that makes her ask to stay?
7. "And the bridge is the one Elias Cole described. Exactly as he described, Adrian is certain of it. Julius’s bridge" (p. 89). This bridge is mentioned several times in the novel. Why is it "Julius’s bridge?" Why is it significant? Talk about some of the other connecting elements of the story.
8. "Agnes is searching for something. Something she goes out looking for and fails to find. Time after time" (p. 116). Adrian is anxious and troubled by his patient—Kai calls her his holy grail. Talk about her unusual condition—an obsessive traveler, a fuguer, and how it connects with her wartime experience. Is Adrian’s concern just clinical? Can he help her? Why is she so compelling?
9. "The man on the table has dreams, he dreams of marrying" (p. 117). What is the nature of Kai’s interest in his patient Foday? How does he separate his professional and personal lives? What do you know about Kai from his relationships with his old friend Tejani, and later with Adrian? How do these friendships differ?
10. The July 1969 moon landing, as remembered by Elias Cole, is a watershed event in the novel.
"To fly," repeated Julius. "To test the limits of our endeavour, of our courage." He was serious. "Otherwise what point is there in being alive?" (p. 150).
How are the various characters affected, are they changed? Discuss the significance to the story.
11. "Elias Cole. How that name takes Kai back to another time, drops him down into a place in the past he doesn’t want to go" (p. 176). How do the secrets that are guarded keep people from confronting the past? How does it affect the present? Who are the characters who encircle Elias Cole? How are they connected?
12. Memory is a central theme of the book. Talk about the memories of war and of terror, of love, and of pain. Which characters are most haunted by the past? How does each of them endure?
13. Adrian first notices Mamakay when she is with Babagaleh, Elias Cole’s manservant.
As he walked away, he had been suddenly and shockingly aware of something fleetingly and exquisitely possible. So much so, he almost turned back, to say something to Babagaleh—anything—to find a reason to look at her again (p. 137).
Why is Adrian drawn to Mamakay? Do you think there are some parallels between this relationship and the one between Elias Cole and Saffia? What are the differences?
14. How is Adrian changed by his relationship with Mamakay? How does it affect his views of the country and its people?
15. "A lot of people here believe in dreams. So do you, don’t you? Psychologists?" (p. 278). Mamakay tells Adrian. People sleep and wake and dream throughout the story. What shapes the dreams? What is their impact?
16. Consider this passage:
Much later, after they have swum together, he watches Abass play on alone in the waves, crashing through the surf over and over. And he feels his love for the boy rise in his chest, pressing against his ribcage, crushing his lungs and his heart, as if it would suffocate him (p. 262).
Freetown is located on the coast, and the closeness of the sea is always present in the novel. What role does the sea play? Why does Kai feel like a "drowning man watching a ship sail by" (p. 342)? Find other references to the sea in the book.
17. What is the nature of Kai’s relationship with Abass? Why is it such a visceral one? What does Kai do for Abass and what does Abass do for Kai?
18. Late in the book Attila, the head psychiatrist of the mental hospital, says to Adrian,
When I ask you what you expect to achieve for these men, you say you want to return them to normality. So then I must ask you, whose normality? Yours? Mine? (p. 319).
Discuss the nature of each man’s normality. Have Adrian’s ideas about normality changed since the beginning of the book?
19. "But the hope has to be real—Attila’s warning to Adrian. I fall down. I get up. Westerners Adrian has met despise the fatalism. But perhaps it is the way people have found to survive" (p. 320). What do you think of this hypothesis? Do you believe, as is suggested, that the population as a whole is suffering from PTSD? Is that everyone’s secret?
20. Did you find Elias Cole’s final revelation concerning Vanessa shocking? How do Cole’s secrets differ from some of the other characters secrets? Do you think Adrian has gotten to the "point of Elias Cole" (p. 401)? Is Cole a sympathetic character?
21. Read the following passage:
Kai is right. For years nobody wanted to know about the killings, the rapes. The outside world shifted its gaze, by a fraction, it was sufficient. The fragmentation of the conscience. What indeed did Adrian think he was doing here? The truth—he had never known for sure" (pp. 424-425).
What do you think Adrian was doing in Sierra Leone? Why did he stay and why did he decide to leave?
22. In the end, why didn’t Kai leave?
They do not see, for they cannot, as they cross the peninsula bridge, the letter traced by a boy’s forefinger into cement on the far side of the bridge wall half a century ago, beneath the initials of the men who once worked the bridge. J. K. (p. 445).
Are there some distances that cannot be brdged?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)