1. Is Oliver a reliable narrator? Do you trust him more or less as a narrator as you learn more about him throughout the novel? Why?

2. Consider this passage from Oliver’s narration: "Apparently, you are supposed to learn the facts of life and the etiquette of how to treat women from your mother, or, failing that, your father. I learned instead by osmosis" (p. 31). What does Oliver fail to learn in his childhood about how to treat women?

3. How does the chorus of narrators bring Oliver’s character into focus? Is there any narrator that you would have liked to hear more from? Whose story isn’t represented among the narrators?

4. Why does Oliver not want to have children? Does his reason for not wanting children change throughout the book?

5. How might things have turned out differently for the characters of the novel if Barney hadn’t encouraged Alice to go away to a Greek island with Oliver? Do you think Oliver and Alice would have still gotten together? Why or why not?

6. Do you think Philip and Oliver’s father, Francis, was a good father to Philip? Was he capable of being a good father?

7. Family means very different things to Madame Véronique and her father, Monsieur d’Aigse, than the conservative Irish in the book. Why does Véronique choose to have Jean-Luc out of wedlock? Consider how Oliver’s father, Laura, Oliver, and others would have approached the same situation.

8. Oliver says he truly felt like a father to Jean-Luc. Do you think Oliver knows what a father is supposed to be? Does he know what being a father is supposed to feel like? Why or why not?

9. Why do you think Laura and Oliver’s relationship disintegrates? What role do the events of the summer in Bordeaux play? What role does Oliver himself play?

10. Oliver laments, "How could I even begin to explain that I only meant to be a hero, and not a murderer?" (p. 231). Do you believe him? Why or why not? Does he take responsibility for his actions?

11. Many of the parents (Mrs. O’Reilly, Monsieur d’Aigse, the Condells) in the book are only trying to guide their children into fruitful relationships, safe marriages. Who is successful at this end?

12. Father Daniel tells Oliver the story of his mother, the little that he knows. Does that make a difference? Does Oliver believe him? Would you have believed Father Daniel’s story?

13. Madame Véronique and Alice both discover the secret of Oliver’s locked box. Did you guess his secret? Why do you think Oliver did what he did?

14. Which characters are ultimately undone by family secrets? Could any of them have been saved by forgiveness? Who, and why?

15. What lengths will Oliver go to in order to protect his secrets? Does he make the right choice in keeping his final secret in the epilogue? Is that his redemption? Why or why not?

16. Do you think Oliver would have grown up to be a monster if he had a normal childhood? At what point did his life turn bad? Which decisions could he have made differently?