Outlander - Diana Gabaldon [413]
Many book clubs enjoy using interviews with the author and other background material to broaden and deepen their reading experience, and Readers’ Guides sometimes include those resources. Thanks to Diana Gabaldon’s generosity and to lively online communities of readers, however, these are readily available elsewhere. If, like many of us, you want to deepen your enjoyment and appreciation of the Outlander universe even further—especially if, as I did, you go into withdrawal when finishing Diana Gabaldon’s books—you will also enjoy these resources.
The Outlandish Companion, a hard-cover treasury which she wrote after the first four novels (a second volume will appear in the fullness of time!) is indispensable. Online resources abound: take a look at
Diana’s own website: www.dianagabaldon.com (you’ll find links to interviews here)
and her blog: http://voyagesoftheartemis.blogspot.com, Listen to her podcasts:
http://www.randomhouse.com/audio/podcasts/diana_gabaldon_rss.xml And see video interviews on her YouTube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/voyagesoftheartemis You and your book club will discover kindred spirits and their intelligent and lively discussions of her work on discussion sites:
CompuServe Books and Writers Community: http://community.compuserve.com/Books and on the Ladies of Lallybroch site: www.lallybroch.com and on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DianaGabaldon/summary
Questions and insights about the characters, plots, settings, themes, symbolism, historical backgrounds —and the creativity and discipline that transform them into these remarkable novels—await you … and will bring you back to the books, our own kind of time travel.
Happy reading!
Part ONE Inverness, 1945
1. You undoubtedly knew that this was a time travel novel. If you had not known this, however, at what point would it have become clear to you that Claire has gone back in time?
2. Fantasy, the para-normal, the supernatural … if we as readers are willing to suspend our disbelief (to use Coleridge’s phrase), narratives that make demands on our credulity require a very credible, trustworthy narrator. What qualities does Claire possess that make us willing to believe her tale? Are there aspects of Claire’s personality with which you can personally identify? Can you think of other narrators whose credibility is the key to a reader’s acceptance of an otherwise unacceptably incredible story?
3. Examine Claire’s account of her second honeymoon with Frank, weighing their affection, relief at being reunited after the war, and sexual passion, on one hand, with the evident tensions, on the other. All marriages have some strains in them; what signs of possible trouble do you see in theirs? For example, Frank seems pedantic to Claire. Does he seem so to you? And she seems ambivalent about the ladylike deportment required of her as a don’s wife. Perhaps most serious is their disagreement on the question of adopting a child. How significant, do you think, might these tensions have become had Claire not inadvertently disappeared through the stones? (If you and your group have read the sequels, how does Frank’s initial belief that he could not love an adopted child affect your sense of his character in the later books?) At this point, how sympathetic a figure do you find Frank to be?
4. The ghost episode (20): Yes, Diana Gabaldon confirmed that the kilted figure gazing up at Claire’s window was indeed Jamie and that we will know at the end of the series why he was doing so. Having read Outlander, however, why do you think he was there? The apparition provoked Frank’s clumsy attempt to tell Claire that he would understand and accept that she might have been unfaithful during the pressures of war. What is your reaction to this: is her angry response