Universal Harvester (Darnielle) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Universal Harvester...then take off on your own:

1. Why might John Darnielle have chosen a sleepy, small town in the middle of Iowa as his setting for this novel?

2. How would you describe Jeremy? Consider, for instance, the fact that better job opportunities pass him by. Or that fact that he falls for girls but never pursues them. What does all this suggest about Jeremy? What about Jeremy's father? What is their relationship and the quality of their life as together as father and son?

3. What role does grief play in this novel, and how does it affect the various characters? In what way does grief, perhaps, unite them thematically?

4. Why does the author provide separate versions of reality, one in which Jeremy moves to a bigger city and finds a better job, and one in which Jeremy stays pub at the Video Hut?

5. What were your original expectations of, or ideas about, the clip embedded into the Target videotape—the dancing woman, the hand painting the hood, the door which gets flipped on its side, and the snippet of speech, "Wait. I did't..."? Did you come to understand what it was about by the novel's end?

6. After her trip to Collins, Sarah Jane talks to Jeremy about her anxiety.

The house,” said Sarah Jane, reaching back into her purse and retrieving the printout of the frame from when my hand slipped and the front porch came into view.

What was your response to the shifting point of view—from third- to first-person—in that passage? What does it do to your sense of Sarah Jane, or your understanding of the novel's narrator?

7. The novel feels like a horror novel without actually finding a monster. In an NPR interview, Darnielle said that he wanted to write about "that moment of dread" that occurs right before "the thing you don't want to see happens." Reading Universal Harvesters, were you gripped by those moments of dread? If so, when did that feeling overtake you?

8. What do you think of the book's ending? Were you satisfied...or let down?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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