When Will There Be Good News? Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, and our BookBrowse Review of When Will There Be Good News?.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

Questions and topics for discussion

1. Many of the characters in When Will There Be Good News? have lost family members: Joanna loses her mother, sister, and baby brother in the novel's opening pages; Reggie's mother has recently drowned; and Jackson lost his mother, brother, and sister in the course of a year when he was twelve. In view of these tragedies, compare Joanna's, Reggie's, and Jackson's respective outlooks on life with those of the other characters in the novel.
2. The question of Nathan's paternity haunts Jackson Brodie. Why? How might Jackson's life change if he discovered he was Nathan's father? Is Jackson a good father to Marlee?
3. With When Will There Be Good News? — and previously also in Case Histories and One Good Turn — Kate Atkinson introduced elements of the traditional crime novel into her fiction. Other than the "crime," what elements make up a crime novel? What crime- fiction conventions can you discern in this book?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Back Bay Books. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.