Please note: these readers’ group questions may contain spoilers.
- The collision of the wooden passenger steamer the Princess Alice with the steel-hulled coal carrier the Bywell Castle could be seen as a metaphor for two different aspects or ways of life that coexisted, sometimes uneasily, in Victorian London—pleasure versus work, an agrarian economy versus an industrial one, and the crowds of people on the steamship deck versus the faceless prow. How do you see these and other various dualities playing out in the novel?
- By the mid-1800s, London was a bustling, industrialized city. One of the fears people had about modernity was that individuals would become anonymous cogs in the wheel. The passengers on the Princess Alice are anonymous because there is no manifest, and the corpses pulled out of the Thames have no names until they are claimed by family members. Similarly, the dead man on the stairs is anonymous until Corravan and Stiles discover his iden- tity. Aside from the practical concerns, does the act of recovering names have symbolic meaning within the larger context of the novel?
- As in Down a Dark River, the newspapers have a significant role in this story. In the 1720s, there were only twelve London news- papers and twenty-four provincial ones. In the early 1800s, there were fifty-two London papers and a hundred elsewhere. In 1846, when Charles Dickens became editor of the Daily News, there were 355 papers in London. By 1870, when he died, there were nearly a thousand papers. This was due in part to the removal of a tax on newspapers (in the 1850s) and in part to rising literacy rates. How do the newspapers function in this novel? What role do they play with respect to the public and to the police? Do you see any similarities with situations in the media today?
- As a financially independent woman and an author, Belinda Gale is an outlier for her time, although she takes her place in a tra- dition of women authors extending back to Aphra Behn in the 1600s. Belinda has a significant personal life aside from Corravan, with family and friends, her writing, travel, and social commit- ments. What traits do you see in her that come into play in her relationship with him? Where do you see her challenging Cor- ravan, and how does that help or hinder him?
- The letter that Tom Flynn quotes in Chapter 6 was in fact written by Benjamin Disraeli under a pseudonym. Here is a more complete passage from it:
The Irish hate our order, our civilization, our enterprising industry, our pure religion. This wild, reckless, indolent, uncertain, and superstitious race have no sympathy with the English character. Their ideal of human felicity is an alternation of clannish broils and coarse idolatry. Their history describes an unbroken circle of bigotry and blood.
Were you aware that there was such virulent anti-Irish sentiment in England? In what ways does racism today draw on similar tropes and misinformation?
- Readers are introduced to Harry Lish, in Down a Dark River, as a young man who has come to London to find a place to live after his father dies. He doesn’t appear as frequently in Under a Veiled Moon, but he has found his place as an apprentice to Dr. James Everett, with aspirations to study medicine. For readers of Down a Dark River, how has Harry grown and changed? In this book, what similarities and/or differences are revealed in the early scene between Harry and Corravan that enable Harry to reassure Cor- ravan in the final chapter, in a way that Corravan needs to hear? Do you see Harry, Colin, and Corravan as foils for each other? Why or why not?
- At the end of the novel, Corravan is told that he may be able to find out what happened to his mother, who vanished when he was young. In some ways, her vanishing with no explanation has shaped his psyche; for example, in Down a Dark River, he admits that “missing people claw at him worse than murdered ones.” But her vanishing is not the sole defining event in his life. His years with the Doyles presented an alternative to a relationship that ended in uncertainty and abandonment. How do the scenes with Elsie and Ma Doyle and even Colin reflect that? Do you have early experiences that offer two or more models for the ways families function or that provide a variety of beliefs or ways of behaving that conflict?
- In the second novel in my previous series, A Trace of Deceit (2019), my heroine, Annabel Rowe, delves into her brother’s history and realizes that perhaps all her memories from their shared child- hood carry a trace of deceit in them; memory is by its very nature problematic and flawed and incomplete. Corravan’s memory of his time with the Doyle family is similarly imperfect. Why does he not remember young Colin the way Elsie describes him, until she reminds him? Does he have some emotional stakes in not remembering, or are his memories simply limited by what he understood at age nineteen? How do our memories change as we grow and find new ways to interpret past events?
- The second epigraph for this novel is a quote from a novel by Disraeli: “Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.” Corravan isn’t “old,” but at the end of the novel, Corravan comes to the real- ization that while regret might bring shame, it can also be of some use. Indeed, our memories, heavy with regret, might be a powerful guide. Do you agree?
- In this novel, Corravan and the reader “read” the newspapers simultaneously and discover the mix of truth and falsehood. Does that make you, the reader, feel more sympathetic with Corravan, as he tries to solve the case? Where in the novel do you feel most sympathetic? Least sympathetic?
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