Music of the Ghosts Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Traditional Cambodian Music and our BookBrowse Review of Music of the Ghosts.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

Introduction

As Music of the Ghosts opens, Teera's beloved aunt Amara, the only link to her traumatic childhood escape from the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge genocide, has just passed away. Now, she must return to her homeland to rediscover a family legacy.

At age thirty-seven, Teera is in many ways a stranger to this new Cambodia and the stories it holds. In addition to fulfilling her promise to return her aunt's ashes to Phnom Penh, she has been called by a letter from a half-blind man, the Old Musician, who is searching for a peace he can't find in the temple compound where he earns his keep by playing for ceremonies and funerals. Still, the Old Musician and the young woman are bound by history, and the story of the three instruments that are her birthright.

In this lyrical and poignant novel (the follow-up to the author's bestselling In the Shadow of the Banyan), the heartbreak of the Old Musician's past intertwines with Teera's own voyage of self-discovery, as questions of past trauma, present justice, and the legacy of love change both of them forever.


Topics & Questions for Discussion

1. Teera feels sure that Amara has had to live with a "divided self" since fleeing her homeland and coming to live in Minnesota. Do you think Teera's identity is also divided, and if so, in what ways?  Do you think she feels this divide before returning to Cambodia?
2. When she first visits Wat Nagara, Teera panics, feeling sorrowful and isolated. "She wanted to be alone with the ghosts, to seek communion with her loved ones. Instead she came face to face with her aloneness, saw it reflected wholly, indelibly, in the engraved invocation." Of the two types of solitude mentioned here, which do you think is more painful for her and why?
3. Among the many parallels between the musicians' lives, both Sokhon and Tun abandon their young daughters on the eve of war. Do you think each of the fathers did the right thing? Is this abandonment more cruel or more kind?

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