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 Reserve:
1. Banks offers a sobering description of the US in the throes of the Great Depression. Talk about the people and hardships he presents in this novel.
2. Much of Banks's book is about socio-economic class. How do class divisions reveal themselves in the book? What does the author's tone suggest about his attitude toward class? In what way do class distinctions exist today...do they exist in the same manner?
3. The staff and servants are are "allowed onto the Reserve and club grounds, but only to work, and not to fish or hunt or hike on their own.... The illusion of wilderness was as important to maintain as the reality." What does Banks mean by that statement? Why is illusion important?
4. What kind of man is Jordan Groves? How would you describe him? Does he have a moral center?
5. What about Vanessa Cole? What do you think of her...and what does Jordan think about her? Why does Jordan allow himself to become entangled with her?
6. Discuss the following passage describing Vanessa's relationship with truth:
The truth was somewhat transient and changeable, one minute here, the next gone. It was something one could assert and a moment later turn around and deny, with no sense of there being any contradiction. Merely a correction.
7. Talk about Hubert S. Germain and the ways in which he differs from Vanessa and Jordan? How does he get caught up in the events of the story? Would you consider him the moral force in the story? Perhaps the most sympathetic?
8. Talk about Alicia. What does her affair with Hubert cause her to realize about her marriage to Jordan?
9. Were you surprised by the plot's twist and turns, the revelations that come later? How do those revelations alter what we know about the characters?
10. Russell Banks intersperses italicized chapters between the formal chapters. Did you have difficulty with them at first? Do they make sense to you now? Do they ever get resolved? Why might Banks have used this time-shifting structure?
11. There has been much talk by critics of Banks channeling Hemingway in the book. Evidences of Ernest are in the name of Banks's lead character (Robert Jordan is the main character in For Whom the Bells Toll), the Spanish Civil War episodes, and the way Banks uses Hemingwayesque prose. Have you read Hemingway's work, particularly For Whom the Bells Toll? If so, can you see similarities in prose style? Why might Banks have drawn from Hemingway? Is this simply a homage to the former writer...or something else?
12. In addition to class issues (see Question #1), the novel is also concerned with individual identity. How do world events—the depression and the rise of facism—affect characters' sense of who they are and what they believe in? To what degree do characters change by the end of the novel...or do they change?
13. The setting is the heavily forested Adirondack mountains in upstate New York. What symbolic significance does the natural setting have in this story? What might the wilderness represent for the characters?
14. Do you care for any of these characters?
15. Is the ending of The Reserve satisfying? Are loose ends tied up, issues and questions resolved? Would you have preferred a different ending?
16. Did you enjoy reading this novel? Have you read other novels by Russell Banks? If so, how does this compare? If not, are you inspired to read others?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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