Reading Group Questions
- Do you think it’s possible to stay friends with the people you knew when you were young, or is it inevitable that you grow apart?
- Which of the women in the novel did you empathise with the most? Who did you feel least sympathy for?
- Betrayal is a key theme in the novel – in what different ways did the women betray each other? In your opinion, whose actions were worse? Do you think any of the relationships could, or should, have been reconciled?
- Were the women wrong to not return to the park when they heard the splash? Were they culpable by their lack of action?
- Even though they weren’t at the reunion, how much are the men in the novel to blame for what happened that night?
- Are any of the women victims of their own circumstances? Do you think any of them should have taken more responsibility for their own behaviour?
- ‘If you’d done no wrong and you told the truth what harm could possibly come to you?’ To what extent do you agree with this statement? Should some secrets be kept no matter what?
- There are two rapes in the novel – why did neither woman go to the police? Do you think things would have been different if they had?
- How is motherhood depicted in the novel? How do the relationships the women have with their parents affect them over the years?
- Did the final scene change your feelings about anything else in the novel?