Questions for Reading Groups

The questions are based on the idea that book groups offer a special kind of opportunity to exchange knowledge and ideas about the world, in conversation both with the book and with other people. They recognise and explore the knowledge and life experience readers bring to a book and invite readers in groups to examine their own and other people’s positions. Novels often encourage us to pay attention to people and things that mainstream society permits or encourages us to ignore, and the questions explore whether and how novels show us things – about society, ourselves, other people – that otherwise tend to be hidden.