Book Club Discussion Questions for "The September Girls," by Maureen Lee

Here are the discussion questions used by my book club for "The September Girls," by Maureen Lee.  I hope they help other reading groups discover this novel.  

While the book wasn't necessarily a favorite of my club members, it was appreciated for being an engaging and happy book.  It's a book to pick when you're worn out with death and disillusionment books -- a good "summer read."  Plus, our discussion was really lievely.  Love it or hate it, this is a great discussion book for a group.


1) Will Brenna and Colm get back together some day?  Did you like Brenna?  Did you like or sympathize with Colm?  What did you think of Lizzie?  

2) If not Brenna/Colm, who else might the tea leaves prophecy be about? Did you believe in the "tea leaves reading" within the framework of the story? Was the "reading" too much or a spoiler for you?

3) Did Nancy have any faults?  Was she realistic?  What role did she play in the book?  Did you expect Nancy's death?  

4) Was it right that Cara accept the house after Marcus died?  Did she owe Sybil anything after inheriting, considering Sybil was intended to inherit?  Would your answer be different if Cara had not had Marcus' baby?

5) Are Sybil and Tyrone going to have a happy or lasting marriage? How did you feel about Sybil throughout the story?

6) Was Fielding bisexual?  Did you realize the two lodgers were gay?

7) How did you feel about the Hector/ Eleanore marriage?

8) Were the friendships between the wealthy and servant/working class believable?  Were some friendships more believable than others?  Did the characters accurately behave, speak, and view the world as a person would who actually lived in that era?

9)  The book was entitled "The September Girls."  Thinking of the story as a whole, is it an appropriate title?  What else might the book be called?  

10) If you could change one thing about the book, story, or characters, what would that be?

11) How do you think you would have weathered the bombing of Liverpool?  Would you have stayed away in the countryside? Would you have sat in your kitchen as bombs fell? 

12) What do you think Anthony was doing all that time in America?  

13) Were you surprised by characters naïveté?  Would you have liked to live in those times?  

14) How did you feel about the women's experiences in the British military?  Were you familiar with the female soldiers' perspective in WWII? How do you see it as different as male soldiers? 

15) How do you feel about bombing cities in general?  (Like Liverpool or Berlin)  Would it be tolerated today? 

16) Religious faith, or its lack, was a commonly discussed trait in the book.  Was it portrayed as a positive or negative?

Sluggy self-knowledge and working to better some lesser-known author's world

I'm a blog slug.  I've come to accept that.

I used to sit down, research, and write volumes on here.  Then I accidentally erased three years of semi-consistent book-blogging output.  Now I just can't muster the same gumption.

(sigh)

Oh, well.  There's one thing I still can do with this site.  I find it particularly satifying to post discussion questions for those poor orphan books that don't have any.  Some Book Clubs won't select a book that doesn't have questions available online.  It's nice feeling that my small, rarely used blog can nudge a lesser known book into the book club world (and marketplace.)

So, in that spirit, here goes nothing.  On to book club questions!

By the way, I'm putting the questions in a separate blog post so the book title is in the first sentence.  Just helping a sister writer out with my techno savvy (what little I have anyway.)