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 Shadow Tag:
1. Start with the title....what is its significance within the scope of the story? What does it mean to step on a shadow?
2. Describe both Gil and Irene. What kind of people are they, and what is their relationship with one another? What does each character want from the other...or not want?
3. Care to comment on this passage?
They might hate each other, at least, Irene might hate Gil, while he had no idea how much he hated Irene because he was so focused on winning back her love.
Is this an accurate assessment? Do the two hate one another?
4. What kind of parents are Irene and Gil? Why doesn't Irene protect the children from Gil's abuse? How are Florian, Riel, and Stony protrayed...and how are they affected by the family's dysfunction?
5. Gil uses Irene as a model for his paintings...while Irene is studying a Native American painter whose subjects died soon after they were painted. Talk about this as a metaphor within the story—the affect that Gil's paintings have on Irene and her sense of identity?
6. Why does Irene keep two diaries? Who is at fault here when it comes to duplicity and/or stealth? Which is more important in a marriage—respect for privacy or transparency and truth?
7. Do you care about these characters—are either (or any of them) sympathetic? Does this book have a villain?
8. Does the 3rd-person narrator seem to side with Irene? If so, does it influence your attitude toward the characters? Is the narrator reliable?
9. What about the ending? Do you feel it is "almost unbearably sad" as the New York Times reviewer writes? Would you like to have seen it end differently? Would a different ending have maintained the novel's integrity?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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