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 The Bone Garden:
1. Talk about the characters in this book. Do you feel the major ones are fully developed? How would you describe Rose Connolly and Noriss Marshall, for instance? What about the inclusion of the real-life character, Oliver Wendell Holmes?
2. The Bone Garden's historical story is framed by a modern story. Do you find the frame—Julia Hamill's story—as interesting, or less so, than the historical mystery? Did you enjoy the way the book moves back and forth between two time frames—or was it distracting for you?
3. Some readers feel the book's sections on autopsies are overly graphic. They are certainly not for the faint-of-heart. How do you view those passages, especially the one with the maggots leaping from the cadaver to the living person? Or the episode of the students-gone-wild when the professor leaves the room? Are those sections gratuitous (included for sensationalism) or do you find them necessary to the plot?
4. Has this book exposed you to the state of early modern medicine—its shortcomings...and the progress we've since made? What surprised you most about medical practices in the early 19th-century?
5. Talk about the class divisions in Boston in 1830. How does Gerritsen portray the differences between the Irish immigrant slums and the high society mansions—and, of course, the people who lived there? Are we as divided a nation today as we were nearly 200 years ago? Or have the class distinctions disappeared?
6. If you have time, do some research on the real Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh, Scotland, on which this mystery is based. How much does the author borrow from the real-life history...and how skillfully does she interweave the historical elements into her fiction?
7. Ultimately, does this book deliver? Did you find you find yourself reading compulsively, unable to put the book down? Were you surprised by the twists and turns of the plot? Or did you find it all rather predictable and/or manipulative? In other words, how did you experience the book?
8. Have you read other books by Tess Gerritsen? If so, how does this book compare to her others. If not, does this book make you want to read her other works?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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