The Paperbark Shoe Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, An Interview with Goldie Goldbloom and our BookBrowse Review of The Paperbark Shoe.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

About this Guide
The following author biography and list of questions about The Paperbark Shoe are intended as resources to aid individual readers and book groups who would like to learn more about the author and this book. We hope that this guide will provide you a starting place for discussion, and suggest a variety of perspectives from which you might approach The Paperbark Shoe. Discussion questions have been reprinted courtesy of Fremantle Press.

Discussion Questions

1. Virginia Toad is an unreliable narrator. In what ways does she reveal this unreliability to us – via accounts of her mental state, her relationship with Antonio, and her relationship with her children?
   


2. What is the effect of reading a book where a gap remains between what the narrator tells us and what the reader understands to be happening?
   


3. Many of Gin’s qualities are less than likeable. For instance, what kind of mother is she? What difference might it have made to Gin if Joan, her first (and only albino) child, had lived? In what way does the author manage to retain reader sympathy for her narrator?
   

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