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 Red Hook Road:
1. Why might Waldman have chosen to open her novel with the taking of photos after the wedding? What effect does the scene have on the emotional impact of the accident?
2. How would you describe Iris Copaken, mother of the bride?
3. What about Jane Tetherley, mother of the groom—how would you describe her? How does she feel toward Iris? Is Jane's opinion accurate...or does it stem from resentment?
4. Waldman describes a funny—and very human—reaction that always seems to occur whenever Jane talks to Iris. Jane makes Iris...
so uncomfortable that she inevitably found herself fulfilling what she imagined to be Jane's worst expectations of the fancy-pants New York from-away....her voice crept into a high shrill register and she said the most absurd things.
Why does Jane make Iris uncomfortable? Does the passage excuse Iris's behavior—perhaps make her transgressions not so intentional but rather a result of anxiety?
5. How does each of the different characters—parents and siblings—cope with grief?
6. What does Emil Kimmelbrod do for the families? What does he teach them? What have the Holocaust and his music taught Emil about life and death?
7. How—and why—does Waldman draw the parallel between boatbuilding and playing a stringed instrument?
8. How do the two families differ—how does Waldman use them to reflect the clash of culture and class?
9. Can Iris ever truly belong to the Maine community she loves...to which she has such deep ties? Is it her personality that keeps her an outsider, a "from-away," or the fact that the family spends only its summers there?
10. What are the fault lines in Iris and Daniel's marriage? Talk about the impact of the accident on the couple. Absent the tragedy of losing their daughter, would the two have split...or remained together?
11. Care to comment on this passage?
A long marriage, like a classic wooden boat, could be a thing of grace, but only if great effort was devoted to its maintenance.
12. Is the novel's end satisfying...or too much melodrama?
(Questions by LitLovers. Pleas feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)
top of page