The Long Call Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Ann Cleeves' Five Mystery Series and our BookBrowse Review of The Long Call.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. The Long Call opens with a scene of Matthew Venn standing outside his father's funeral service, mulling over why he is watching from the outside rather than mourning with family and friends inside. How do the relationships between parents and children—Matthew and his mother, Lucy and Maurice, Caroline and Christopher—affect the events of the novel?
2. When Jen and Ross first see Simon's room, Jen says "it could be a monk's room," and Ross responds: "Or a prison cell." As you learn who Simon was, throughout The Long Call, which of these comparisons doyou find most accurate?
3. Matthew goes to examine Simon's body on the beach, and thinks: "Now he could hear the surf on the beach and the cry of a herring gull, the sound naturalists named the long call, the cry which always sounded to him like an inarticulate howl of pain. These were the noises of home." Is it significant that the sounds that remind Matthew of home also remind him of pain? How does this relationship between homeand pain relate to his past? To his present?

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