Introduction

Outside an east Belfast mission hall, pastor and family man Samuel Orr meets Anna, a young Beckett scholar. They embark on an intense, passionate affair, their connection both intellectual and erotic. When Anna becomes pregnant, the affair is revealed. The repercussions are slow to emerge but inescapable, and the fallout, when it finally comes, is shocking.

More than thirty years later Sam, their son, is in New York, living a steady, guarded life, his childhood and family safely abandoned. But when the past once more crashes into his life, he is forced to confront the fears he has kept close all these years.

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Discussion Questions

1. When Orr and Anna begin their affair, the narrator explains, “There was a determination in Orr, an attempt to keep it in public, as though if it were visible it would be safe. But God knows we have whole cities inside us, places to hide secrets from ourselves” (page 10). Discuss the idea of inner versus outer selves. What are the secrets in the novel? What do these characters hide from themselves? And, what happens to these characters when their secrets break through to the surface?

2. Anna is a Samuel Beckett scholar. Have you read anything by Beckett? If so, how do you think his work might inform this story? If not, did Anna’s grappling with his words pique your interest in his work?

3. “Blasphemy is so close to devotion. The believer knows God, know him intimately, not through rules and laws but in his heart; he feels God move through his body” (page 18). Religion plays a critical role in this novel—Orr’s faith, of course, but also the way in which each character contends with sin, forgiveness, and punishment. Discuss our central characters’ individual relationships to religion.

4. When Anna gets pregnant, she begins thinking about relationships in a new way: “Who belongs to whom, and in what way can human beings belong to one another, or, for that matter, to themselves? She had not, until a child grew in her womb, thought of relationships as a form of property, but now she could think of nothing else” (page 31). Discuss this shift that happens in Anna. Do you believe that relationships are inextricable from notions of ownership and/or power?

5. On page 50, Orr says, “There are different kinds of truth.” What does he mean by this? Do you agree with him?

6. “Orr, no stranger to scepticism about human nature and the potential for violence embedded in even the most average of men, was struck suddenly and for the first time that this tendency was as present, as possible, in the rooms of his own house” (page 62). Discuss the role of violence in the novel. Were you surprised by the way in which Philip developed? What did you make of his act of violence against Sam?

7. On page 113, right after the slash, the narrator finally asserts himself. Did you have a sense of who the narrator was before this moment? If so, what clued you in?

8. Discuss the shift between the first and second half of the book. The narrator remains the same, but the tone and voice change significantly. What did you make of this?

9. “I returned repeatedly to a British painting from the early 1800s by Henry Raeburn, an artist I didn’t then know, of three children…I returned to it each time I visited that week, and was almost shocked when it struck me, on my third visit, that what I was seeing felt like my own childhood” (pages 134 – 135). Sam works at the Met, and it’s the place where Philip tracks him down. What role does art play in the novel?

a. Do you consider Sam an observer? Is he a passive observer? On page 214, Sam comes to the conclusion that: “The world isn’t just there to be seen, but to be created. When we look at the world we create it.” What does he mean by this?

10. When Sam confronts Oki about what happened between them, Oki punches him. Sam writes, “One pain becomes another” (page 147). Discuss this quote within the context of the novel as a whole. How is pain passed down? And to whom?

11. When Sam visits Philip in the hospital, he kisses him and describes it as a “transaction.” What does he mean by this? What is Sam passing to Philip? How would you describe this exchange?

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