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This reading group guide for A Sudden Light includes an introduction, give-and-take questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Garth Stein. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We promise that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

Introduction

When 14-year-old Trevor Riddell and his bankrupt father arrive at Riddell House on Puget Sound, Trevor knows petty about his father's family or the history of the spectacular, decaying mansion. He knows only that his parents have separated and they must convince his grandfather to allow them to sell the house if there is to be any chance of reuniting his parents. But he soon learns that the Riddell family unit secrets are equally numerous every bit the house'south underground rooms, and that there is something—or someone—in the house with an agenda counter to his father'due south. Information technology becomes clear to Trevor that generations of Riddells are in in need of redemption before the family tin be lifted from its collective guilt. Trevor may be the simply ane who can save them and, in turn, salve himself from this oppressive cycle.

Topics & Questions for Discussion

1. The novel is narrated by Trevor every bit an adult looking dorsum on his time at Riddell House. How does his adult signal of view shape the narrative? Why do yous recollect the author chose to frame the novel this way? How would it accept been different if the story were told from Jones's perspective?

2. Jones tells Trevor that they are going to Riddell Firm so they can convince Samuel to sell it. What other reasons does Jones have for returning? What does he really hope will come of their visit?

3. What sort of adult female is Serena? Why do you think she never left Riddell House? In what ways does she control the family narrative? What are some of her redemptive qualities?

4. Grandad Samuel talks about what his wife, Isobel, knew: "If you feel you don't have enough, y'all hold on to things. Merely if you lot feel you have enough, y'all let become of things." Do you agree? What does each character in the novel hold on to and how does it motivate their actions? Who is most willing to let get?

v. A Sudden Light features generations of men. Other than Serena, the women in the story play a relatively small-scale part yet often have a lasting bear upon. How did Isobel, Rachel, and Alice influence the men in their lives?

vi. Consider the theme of redemption in the novel. What drives Elijah'south and Benjamin's wish to render The Northward Manor to its original wild wood? What exercise they take to atone for? Will returning the state to wilderness redeem them?

7. Why was Benjamin and so conflicted during his lifetime? Is his internal conflict a effect of his upbringing or education or sexuality? How much of it is a product of the place and fourth dimension in which he lived?

viii. What is the significance of the carving of a hand holding a globe that Harry fabricated for Riddell House? What does the carving symbolize to Benjamin, Isobel, Samuel, Jones, and Trevor?

9. The "eternal groaning" is one of the characteristics of Riddell Business firm. How are Riddell Firm and The Due north Manor used as characters in the novel?

10. The beauty and power of nature securely move Benjamin and Trevor. What do they experience while climbing the great tree near Riddell House? How is Trevor transformed by the climb? Accept y'all felt something similar in nature?

eleven. Trevor tells Dickie that he chooses truth over loyalty. Exercise you think seeking answers makes Trevor disloyal to his family? When Trevor reveals what he has learned to his father, what happens?

12. How does the author's portrayal of ghosts and spirits differ from other ghost stories you've read? Did the distinction of ghosts versus spirits brand sense to you? Why were Trevor and Samuel the only ones who could see the ghosts?

13. In what way was Jones'due south death an act of love? How was it a promise he had to fulfill?

fourteen. Elijah Riddell wrote: "no man is across redemption equally long as he acts in redeemable ways" and Ben wrote: "It is non prayer, simply in deeds that nosotros find absolution." What burdens have Elijah, Ben, Samuel, Jones, Serena, and Trevor each carried? Was each a permanent obstacle to success in life? Were the characters able to modify their fates?

15. What does "faith" hateful in the context of this novel? Are organized religion and belief the aforementioned matter? How would y'all answer the question: "How do we reconcile the differences between what we see and what nosotros know?"

Enhance Your Volume Club

1. The writings of John Muir play a central part in A Sudden Low-cal . Research John Muir's life and read some of his works. Talk over the influence Muir had on Benjamin and on this novel.

2. Choose an outdoor setting—such as a fellow member's backyard, a local park, or a eatery patio—for your volume gild meeting in which to discuss A Sudden Low-cal .

three. If there a mansion or estate in your area that is open to the public, consider touring it with your grouping and learning about the history of the house and those who built it. What would the country take looked like before it was developed? What touch did the house'south owner have on your local area?

A Conversation with Garth Stein

What inspired you to write A Sudden Light?

I originally wrote about these characters in my play, Blood brother Jones , which was produced in Los Angeles in 2005—its one and only product. The idea for the play came to me in a dream. Seriously. I had a dream about a house that was live—haunted by the ghost of a expressionless ancestor—and communicated with its citizenry through creaks and groans. I wrote the play over a hazy few months, working from 9:00 p.m. to ii:00 a.m. while listening to a CD of R.Due east.M.'s Life's Rich Pageant set on countless repeat. When I was writing the play, sometimes (usually after midnight) I felt like the characters were standing behind me, talking into my ear. I was agape to turn effectually and await.

So the ideas of an old house, bequeathed spirits, timber, and assisted suicide collided in my dream. And when that sort of thing happens, a author has to starting time taking notes.

How do the play and the novel differ?

Theater is well-nigh the immediacy of drama—the at present of drama. Any the baggage of the characters, it's about the characters interacting on a phase in front of us, and it can be quite explosive and energetic and passionate. With novels, on the other hand, we have time to delve into the history of the drama—how we got to the now .

My play was about a family that had grown dysfunctional over generations. Yet, it was about the immediate family—the latest generation. When it was time for me to write a new novel, I wanted to revisit that family, simply I wanted to really delve into their history and explore the previous generations. So the novel A Sudden Light is much more expansive in terms of bringing the characters to life, as well as bringing the surroundings of The Due north Estate to life.

What was your biggest challenge in writing this novel?

My biggest challenge was finding the narrative voice. My story is so large in scope—five generations of a wealthy and influential timber family—it was difficult to find a way to tell the story without it condign unwieldy. And that's when Trevor came into the room and I realized that telling the history of the family unit through the eyes of the youngest member was a peachy way to unfold the drama.

When I first started writing, I tried to tell the story from fourteen-twelvemonth-old Trevor's betoken of view, with the story unfolding as he discovered things in the business firm. It almost worked, but I institute it difficult to have Trevor wade through volumes and volumes of journals and letters and documents. Past adding the lens of Trevor as an adult recalling a summer from his childhood, I was able to create a perspective that a 14-year-old could not have had at the time. From Trevor's adult perspective, he tin can point us to the specific diaries, journal entries, and letters nosotros need to know to sympathise his story. In other words, all stories have a narrative indicate of view—a narrative bias—every bit does mine. By choosing this narrative path, I was to tell the intimate story of a 14-year-old kid who was trying to effigy out his place in the world, while also relating the epic story of the Riddell family unit.

The novel has a significant historical component. How did you prepare to write virtually Elijah and Benjamin Riddell and the timber industry?

I did quite a fleck of reading about the Northwest and the timber industry. It's a meaty history, and so I was able to grasp the broad sweeps of it pretty quickly.

I absorbed another historical chemical element a little more organically: I grew upward down the hill from The Highlands, a wealthy enclave in North Seattle upon which I based The North Estate. When I was a kid, my begetter drove our family by the Seattle Golf Lodge all the time. And I spent my summer days walking the railroad tracks or playing at Boeing Creek, the northern border of The Highlands. The old Boeing mansion loomed over us, perched loftier on the bluff.

I also did some field inquiry for A Sudden Light —I climbed copse with the help of climbing guru Tim Kovar. Tim uses a minimally invasive rope technique to climb very tall trees. Simply recently, he and I climbed an 8-hundred-year-old redwood in California. It's really a spectacular feel: the concrete aspect of being then high in a tree, besides as the spiritual connexion a climber develops with the tree equally he climbs. The tree, a living organism, reveals its personality as one spends more time in its cover.

The conflict between industry/development and conservation underpins the novel. Is this something yous feel strongly well-nigh? How do nosotros residual the need for resource and development with conservation?

I do experience strongly that we have to live thoughtful, considerate lives. This doesn't mean that development and conservation cannot alive together. On the contrary, it ways both can thrive as long every bit each motility is enlightened and respectful of the other.

The disharmonize betwixt industry and conservation is intrinsic to our developing civilization, and it certainly was evident in the building of the western United States. To build houses and businesses and cities, we needed wood. Wood was abundant in our forests. I tree—two chiliad years old or more—could build many houses. And when the houses and businesses and cities built from this old tree burned down, every bit they inevitably did (e.g., the great fires in Seattle, San Francisco, and other cities), enterprising people could always discover more than two-yard-year old copse to cutting downward.

But at some bespeak we begin to destroy the very things that make u.s.a. potent. When that happens, we are faced with the truth: we must moderate our growth and at the same time make a deliberate and considered plan for utilizing our natural resources.

Ii men from very wealthy families—1 of them a timber family—understood this thought earlier others did, and they implemented a conservation plan that has provided the public with our much cherished National Parks: Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot.

Family relationships, especially male parent–son relationships, are at the middle of this novel. Why do the Riddells have such difficulty relating to one another?

I think that inside our families we have expectations for behavior. We wait that all of our agendas volition synchronize and work toward a common goal. But that's never the case. A son has unlike ideas from his male parent. A sister has goals dissimilar from her blood brother. The tension comes, then, when our desire to please our family conflicts with our desire to please ourselves.

I call back this is common in families, and most families bargain with it in a more than or less functional way. The Riddell family, still, is comprised of farthermost personalities and extreme desires, so the conflict becomes much more than explosive.

Yous write beautifully about Benjamin and Trevor's experiences in the woods. Have y'all experienced something similar? What is your favorite identify to spend time outdoors?

I grew up in the Northwest, and spent much time in the wood exploring, riding my bicycle through the back roads of Washington and camping ground out with a proficient friend of mine, sailing on Lake Washington, so forth. So I feel a special attachment to nature, as practise most of us who grew up in Pacific Northwest. Things are dissimilar at present than they were when I was a kid, and the quietude of nature can be more difficult to detect. Still, I love walking in the Grand Forest on Bainbridge Isle or spending fourth dimension at the little cabin we have in that location. I love taking my boys on a hike up to Mount Si or Rattlesnake Ridge or to Denny Creek. And if none of these ideas for getting abroad work, information technology's e'er good to climb loftier into a tree!

How much of Trevor's fourteen-yr-onetime self is based on your own experiences? Did you wish to be a author when you were a teenager?

Keep in mind that questions like this imply that the author has a certain level of self-reflection that he probably doesn't have, or else he wouldn't be writing books about fictional families with long histories. In other words, Trevor isn't based on my experiences at all, only at the aforementioned time, he's based entirely on my experiences. I similar to call up of my immature self as inquisitive, clever, skilful with the timely antiphon, passionate, honest, and truthful. I was probably more brash and impulsive, and more abrasive than funny. But, aye, I wanted to be a writer when I was a teenager.

Yet this is an of import thing to remember: old Trevor is telling the story of young Trevor, and, as we are told in the preface, time and the retelling of stories distort those stories. So in the relating of Trevor's summer, old Trevor has judiciously edited and crafted the story, no dubiety irresolute some details and compressing some moments for dramatic purposes. Possibly sometime Trevor deleted some of young Trevor's brash and impulsive qualities in order to make young Trevor seem more clever and passionate; maybe old Trevor was able to provide immature Trevor with retorts nosotros e'er wish nosotros could have delivered in the moment, if we had just had thought of them! In my listen, young Trevor spent days and weeks going through old journals for evidence of his family unit's history. Merely in the retelling of the story—through old Trevor'south eyes—we skip all the superfluous stuff and cut to the good stuff; the embellishment of the storyteller is certainly felt.

What is your favorite volume with a similar narrative structure to yours: an older person narrating his own childhood?

Two books that I really enjoyed reading—possibly so much that I looked to them for their guidance—are A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, and Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick. Both of these employ an adult character relating a story from his youth. In Owen Meany , information technology'southward completely transparent and we are reminded of it throughout; in Wonderful , the structure is suggested in the beginning, just then plays out as a reveal in the stop. I chose to straddle both worlds with subtle reminders that the story is being told by adult Trevor, while also allowing the narrative to indulge in young Trevor's voice at times.

What do y'all think connects the novels yous've written? Are in that location themes or topics y'all find yourself returning to?

My books all deal with families and characters faced with extreme circumstances. I believe when a person is pushed to his limits—or beyond those limits—his true character is revealed. So Jenna in Raven Stole the Moon , Evan in How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets , Denny and Enzo in The Fine art of Racing in the Rain , and now Trevor and his family in A Sudden Light , all must dig deep to notice their inner strength.

Other themes I like to explore are spirituality, redemption, faith, perseverance. I too like to play with magical realism to more or less of a caste. I firmly believe that novels are more powerful if they go beyond a uncomplicated representation of the world around us. I believe that novels should exist constructed very carefully to provoke thought and emotion in the reader, and then I hope that someone who reads 1 of my novels will ultimately await at the world a piffling differently.

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Source: https://www.garthstein.com/works/a-sudden-light/reading-group-guide/