Discussion Questions: Book One
- The title of the book is All Who Are Lost. In what way does this apply to the living as well as the dead? Who among the living characters can be described as “lost”?
- Per the author, the chapter titles often carry secondary meanings. Pick a chapter title, and describe its hidden meaning.
- Richard and Laura have different ideas about what really transpired at Ash Marine eleven years before. What do you think, and whose perceptions come closer to reality?
- Diana was the only witness to her mother’s death off the Irish coast in 1970. She has told only Richard, and he has sworn to keep the secret. What do you think happened? Did Dominic really kill the girls’ mother?
- The first thing Diana says about herself is that she is “no good with the truth.” What is Diana lying about? Can we believe anything Diana says, or is she an unreliable narrator?
- Richard resurrected and rebuilt the Folly at Ashmore Park. In what way does this mirror the rebuilding of his life after his own great folly?
- What do you think lies beyond Julie’s playacting?
- The author has stated her interest in the Myers-Briggs classification of personalities and discusses the character types of the main characters (see Psyching the Characters on this site). Richard (INTP) and Laura (INFJ) are very compatible, where Richard and Diana (ISFP) are not, even though they too share only two of the four major characteristics. Based on MBTI classification alone, why is Laura better suited to Richard than Diana?
- Richard and Lucy seem to be exact opposites, and Richard finds Lucy’s tendency to meddle irksome, to the point where he describes her as “Miss Infernal Busybody.” Why do you think they remain so close when they have such different personalities?
- Richard’s hero is Thomas Jefferson, and he shares many of the same characteristics, tastes, and flaws. Like Jefferson, Richard is a religious skeptic. How does the crisis precipitated after his great failure change him?