Book Club Kit
Discussion Questions 1.
What is your answer to the central question of this novel: How does one endure after terrible loss?
2.
What draws Tom and Hannah together? Why do their differences bring them together rather than drive them apart?
3. Is Tom a good father? How does his relationship with Peter change throughout the course of the novel? Do you agree with his decision to leave Peter in the Jesus Camp? Why or why not?
4.
Why do you think Hannah decides to open her bookshop? What does moving to Australia and selling books mean to her?
5.
Do you think Hannah’s heart is forever broken? How does her relationship with Tom heal her? Are there ways in which it can’t? Can we ever fully heal after a tragedy?
6.
Tom has also suffered loss—of Trudy and then Peter. Is it possible to compare his losses to Hannah’s? Does he need healing in the same way she does?
7.
Discuss how Hannah struggles to tell Tom about her experiences during the war. How much does Hannah want Tom to understand her and what she has experienced? Why does she choose to only tell him what she does? Were you frustrated with Hannah at any point? Why or why not?
8.
Why is Hannah open to loving Tom after she has buried two husbands but resistant to loving Peter?
9.
Hannah herself draws a contrast between the people she knew in Europe and the Hometown people; the former cultured and political, the latter putting off reading until retirement. Yet, “here, Adolf Hitler would have brayed in vain. Maybe.” (p. 207-208). Is Hannah right, that the Australians at that place and that time would not have listened to Hitler? What about now? Where do you think Americans fall on this scale? Where do you think Hannah would place them?
10. Discuss the setting of small-town Australia. Do you think this story could have been set elsewhere? In what ways does the Australian setting shape the story? Do you think small towns are alike everywhere? Why or why not?
11. How does the book treat Trudy and her inability to be a good mother? Why do you think she joins the Jesus Camp? Compare Trudy to Hannah as mothers and wives. In what ways are they different? Are there any ways in which they are similar?
12. Hannah knows that we cannot speak of things that are “meant to be” (p. 131). Do you agree with Hannah? Or are Hannah and Tom meant to be together? Discuss the role of free will versus fate in the novel.
13. During the war, Hannah decides that if the war were to end she would “read no more books. She would avoid art of any sort. She would not cultivate her mind. Nothing in books was true. Art was not true” (p. 124). What does she mean? And why doesn’t she keep her resolution? What does art and the cultivation of the mind come to mean to Hannah?
14. How do you feel about art exploring the Holocaust? Is writing about the Holocaust different now from what it was in the middle of the twentieth century? If so, why? Do you think this novel is still relevant for readers today?
15. How did you feel about the ending of the novel? Were you surprised?
Š Jeremy Dillon
A Conversation with Robert Hillman What inspired you to write this novel? All my novels are about love and its trials; a venerable theme in literature, as it must be, since love reveals so much of the soul. In this book, the trials that love faces are about as piercing as they can ever get. In the way of novelists, I set up a dramatic situation that at first seems to have no possibility of resolution. I wanted to see what sort of story might emerge if I followed my instincts as a writer. My two central characters, Tom and Hannah, come to love each other, and the question for the reader that emerges is this: What can love achieve? Everything? Nothing?
You write beautifully about Tom’s farm
Hannah’s story of surviving the Holo-
and the landscapes of Australia. Why did
caust and making her way to Australia
you decide to set the novel in rural Austra-
is heartbreaking. What kind of research
lia? Have you yourself lived on a farm?
did you do to write her journey?
I grew up in rural Victoria, surrounded by hill pas-
I have written the biographies of three survivors of
tures and grazing sheep. I lived in the township but
the Holocaust over the years, all women. Some hun-
came to know farm life whenever I visited relatives
dreds of interviews were required. I came to know
with spreads up in the hills. My particular trove of
more about the three women—Vera, Diana, and
sights and sounds was built in childhood, and I make
Baba—than I knew about people I’d seen each day for
hefty withdrawals of treasure whenever I intend to
decades. I gave Hannah some of the experiences of
write something that I can put my heart into.
my three Holocaust survivors, and fashioned a family life for Hannah that drew on the family background
The issue is not “recovery” but whether a commitment to life might allow a person to bear a terrible burden and still see the poetry in the world.
of Baba and Vera especially. Further research and my reading over the years contributed to my portrait of Hannah. I told Vera, Baba, and Diana that I wanted to give a character in my novel some of their experiences, and they were wary but came to approve.
Why did you want to write about a bookshop? Do you have a favorite bookshop of your own? Hannah grew up in the thrall of literature. That she should conceive of opening a classy bookshop
Tom and Hannah are so vibrant and real on the page. Are they based on anyone real? The face and form and character of Tom are closely related to the looks and manner of a young farmer from my hometown’s region. I was only a kid when I knew him. I had thought for years that I would one day find a role for him in a novel. Hannah is related
in a cheerfully philistine Australian town suggests something quixotic in her character, but it stands for something else, too: victory. In the life of all Jews who outlived those who wished to murder them and found the courage to embrace life again, a victory is recorded. For me, every lovingly maintained bookshop is also a victory over all that is dowdy and dumb in the world.
in her beauty and spirit to a German Jewish woman
Trudy ultimately leaves Tom to join a
who came to my high school from Europe to teach
Jesus Camp. Is this camp based on a real
music in 1962. She was in her forties. At the time, I
organization? Why did you want to write
gave no thought to all that a Jewish woman who had
about Jesus Camps? What do you think
survived the war in Europe might have endured, but by the time I introduced Hannah to Tom on the page,
American readers should know about
I knew.
the topic to understand your novel?
I feel confident that US readers will grasp what a
tor. Life is more about coping with disappointment
place like Jesus Camp is all about. We’re talking of
than enjoying an unbroken series of triumphs, since
a fundamentalist Christian community, and in all
we can all imagine greater happiness than we can
fundamentalist communities—Christian and oth-
ever realize. Tom and Hannah adopt the only pos-
erwise—the agenda tends to become dominated by
sible strategy for dealing with disappointment: find
the personality of the community’s leader. Although
the courage to persist.
there is no equivalence of suffering, Jesus Camp echoes across the years to the camp in which Hannah was imprisoned. Pastor Bligh, corrupted in spirit by the power he wields, comes close to condoning
Without giving anything away, did you always know how the novel would end?
murder. Australia is home to a number of funda-
No, I didn’t know how the novel would end until I
mentalist Christian communities. Most abide by the
came to write the third to last chapter. Once a charac-
broader laws of the land. Some do not.
ter is living and breathing on the page, he or she will resist bullying. I attempted to take Tom’s life in a dif-
The novel explores the difficulties of
ferent direction only to have Tom tell me, as it were,
loss, both personal and global. Do you
“I’m not doing that.” I listened, and the right ending
think that Tom and Hannah’s suffering can be compared? No, it would be grotesque to suggest that the suffering of Hannah at the hands of the SS could be compared to Tom’s sorrow when Peter is taken away. People can recover from a broken heart, but the particular circumstances of Hannah’s heartbreak—no. The issue is not “recovery” but whether a commitment to life might allow a person to bear a terrible burden and still see the poetry in the world.
While the novel is set in 1960s Australia, there are many parallels for today’s world, too. What do you hope readers in the twenty-first century take away from Tom and Hannah’s story? Suffering caused by violence has been with us in all seasons, in all centuries. It may be the outcome of ungovernable loathing, as in the Holocaust, or of an obscure program of revenge, as at Sandy Hook. But most suffering is less dramatic, unrelated to violence: unrequited love, bad news from the doc-
revealed itself.
What’s next for you? Next is The Bride of Almond Tree, a novel set in rural Australia during the years of World War II and the five years following. It centers on a farming family of husband, wife, and six daughters.
The All-Important Trifle “Who can make it?” said Hannah. She was baffled by the importance placed on the trifle. “Bev’s going to make the trifle. She’s famous for trifles.” Hannah said she would watch. If a trifle was like this, more important than God, she would have to make it herself for Tom sometimes.
12 sponge fingers or 1 sponge cake 1 packet raspberry gelatin 1 cup frozen or fresh raspberries 2 tbsp custard powder 2 cups milk 1 cup canned or fresh peach slices ½ cup thin cream, whipped Grated chocolate, for topping • Line the base of a glass bowl with 3-4 sponge fingers. If you have a larger bowl, use a single layer of sponge on the base and the sides. • Dissolve gelatin powder in boiling water and then add cold water. Stir in raspberries and place in fridge to set (frozen raspberries speed up this process). • Prepare custard by dissolving custard powder in half a cup of the milk. Heat the remaining milk in the microwave or in a small saucepan until near boiling. • Stir in the custard powder mix to the milk and continue to cook for another 2-3 minutes until thick. Cover with plastic wrap and cool in the fridge. • Chop up set raspberry gelatin and pour over sponge. Add another layer of sponge (if using a small bowl) and top with peach slices. Add another layer of sponge and pour in custard. Top with whipped cream and grated chocolate. • Refrigerate until just before serving.