Red Garden (Hoffman)

Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Red Garden:

1. What is the symbolic significance of the red garden at the center of this collection of stories? And why red? What are all the permutations of the color red which turn up in this story (e.g., the Boston Red Sox on tv)?

2. In its review of Hoffman's book, BookPage says that the author "manages to communicate a yearning interpretation of the life we all live...." What is the yearning that's referred to in the review? How does Hoffman use magical realism to examine yearning, open it up, or fulfill it? How is yearning evidenced in The Red Garden? Or another question:  why does Hoffman use magical realism in this novel? What does she use it to express?

3. Consider the town of Blackwell as a character. How is it fleshed out in the book—describe the town's characteristics and the ethos of those who live there, present and past. How does it change over time?

4. What are some of the themes that tie these stories together—the central ideas they share with one another or that are carried from one story to another? Consider, say, love and loss, or connection of the present with the past. How are those—and other—ideas developed?

5. Follow-up to Question 4: What is the idea behind the bear? And how is the idea of the bear transformed, by time and repetition, so that when it's finally uncovered, it has attained a different, larger significance than it had in the initial story?

6. Ghosts play a recurring role in these stories. Explain their presence in each story...and the reasons Hoffman might be using them? What is she getting at?

7. At one point, in the first story, Hallie often "gazed out the window, as if there was someplace she wanted to be, some other life that was more worth living." What makes Hallie long for a different life? Do you ever have a desire similar to Hallie's? What life do you long for?

8. Many of the stories are concerned with the human connection to the natural world. How would you describe that relationship, how does it change over time in this book? Or does it change?

9. What about Hoffman's blending of fictional characters with real historical figures—the appearance of Emily Dickenson and Johnny Appleseed. Why might she have incorporated them into her story? For what purpose?

10. Of the 14 stories, which story do you like most? Which do you find most intriguing ... or magical ... or moving? Do any disappoint you?

11. Alice Hoffman has always been hailed as a remarkable prose stylist. What passages of particular beauty, or keen insight, struck you as you read this book?

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