The Valentine - Book Club Questions

Warning! These questions contain spoilers!

 

1. Discuss the effect their parents marriage and its consequences have had on Tamara and Ali into adulthood.

2. What is the hold Dale has had over Tamara for so many years?

3. Is there any justification for Tamara’s actions?

4. We women should stick together. Not go after each other’s husbands. Talk about what Ali said to Rachel. What motivates a woman to pursue a married man?

5. Discuss Martin’s state of mind with regard to his fixation on Dale and then Tamara.

6. Stalkers are encouraged to attack and threaten. Discuss with reference to the reluctance by the police to intervene in a situation where no one has yet been physically threatened.

7. Try to imagine what Martin’s Valentine’s Day evening expectations might have been.

8. As alluded to in the story, do you think Valentine’s Day is a load of commercial nonsense?

9. Talk about the differences between Ali and Tamara and how their lives have ended up.

10. What are your feelings about the twist right at the end of the story? Discuss why Tamara and Ali’s mother carried the blame and took a prison sentence her daughter should have served.

11. What should Ali do now – now that she knows the truth about her mother?

12. How might life look for each of the characters in the aftermath of this story?