Tell it to the Skies
by Erica James
Book of the Month: May 2008
Reading Group
- Reading Group Guide
- If you’re a child of the seventies, were you transported back? How does the author achieve this? How does she recreate the past?
- ‘Since Marcello died, seldom did she close the shutters as well. She didn’t like to shut out too much of the world.’ Doesn’t she? Why would Lydia want to see what was outside her apartment?
- How does the author use water in the novel?
- ‘In fact, we’re all so abnormal we’re completely normal.’ If Lydia had realised this earlier, how do you think her life would have been different?
- How is the concept of sanctuary used in Tell it to the Skies?
- Lydia believes she is ‘a lightning conductor of bad things’. Is she? Is any of it her fault? Could she have made her life better by making different decisions or behaving differently?
- What do you think the author thinks about religion?
- ‘Keeping relentlessly busy was the answer, she’d found. Leave herself with no time to dwell on those old memories and she was able to put it out of her mind.’ Does this save Lydia, or curse her never to move forward?
- Why do you think the author named Noah’s son Ishmael?
- Tell it to the Skies is a novel of consequences. As a tale of those ‘roads not taken’, whose lives could have been different?
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