Book Club Discussion Questions
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
-
All That I Am deals with a part of history that has slipped into obscurity for many of us. Does the novel suggest that we've failed to learn the lessons of this history?
-
The author has invented a plot using elements which are real, but it points to different causes for certain events, particularly those in the room in Bloomsbury, from which the real-life inquest drew another conclusion. To what extent to you think that Funder has written All That I Am as a kind of detective work? Can it be argued that the work of a novelist and a detective are similar, both having to imagine the motivations of others.
-
Consider the ways in which the novel addresses the act of seeing – of looking, engaging, perceiving, misapprehending, ignoring, intuiting, interpreting...
-
Anna Funder has said of her characters that sometimes people have so much courage they don't know how to save themselves. What relevance does the novel's insights into courage and cowardice have for the contemporary world?
-
To what degree do you think the characters in All That I Am are ordinary people doing extraordinary things? Is your reading of the novel affected by knowing that some of the characters are based on real people?
-
One of the ideas this novel implicitly returns to is responsibility – both in the sense of the ability to respond in a given situation as well the sense of liability. How responsible – in both senses – is Ruth? Do you think she's too hard on herself?
-
With reference to Toller, Dora asks Ruth, 'Do you think if you love someone there are parts of them you should pretend are not there?' How does the novel deal with the way in which loving someone can blind you to the reality of them?
-
When Ruth is given painkillers after her accident, her sense of what she knows and what she believes she knows becomes increasingly fluid. How does this merging of her realities play out in the novel?
-
Towards the end of All That I Am, Ruth comments, 'Imagining the life of another is an act of compassion as holy as any.' Do you agree?
-
A reviewer in The Spectator wrote: 'Funder has not merely told the story of these forgotten people … It is not just a book about German political exiles in London. It is a novel about confronting grievous loss, and the horror of realising, as history closes over you, that you will never be understood. It is a magnificent irony that, by rescuing those brave people with such consummate artistry, Funder has enabled them to reach into the future after all.' Do you agree that this is 'a magnificent irony'? Why?
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Harper. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
.png)
