Discussion Questions

Juliet, Saskatchewan, is a blink-of-an-eye kind of town -- the welcome sign announces a population of 1,011 people -- and it’s easy to imagine that nothing happens on its hot and dusty streets. Situated on the edge of the Little Snake sand hills, Juliet and its inhabitants are caught in limbo between a century -- old promise of prosperity and whatever lies ahead
But the heart of the town beats in the rich and overlapping stories of its people: the foundling who now owns the farm his adoptive family left him; the pregnant teenager and her mother, planning a fairytale wedding; a shy couple, well beyond middle age, struggling with the recognition of their feelings for one another; a camel named Antoinette; and the ubiquitous wind and sand that forever shift the landscape. Their stories bring the prairie desert and the town of Juliet to vivid and enduring life.
This wonderfully entertaining, witty and deeply felt novel brims with forgiveness as its flawed people stumble towards the future.
About the Author
Dianne Warren is the author of three books of short fiction and three plays. Her play Serpent in the Night Sky was shortlisted for a Governor General’s Award for Drama in 1992. Her most recent collection, A Reckless Moon, was a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2002, and in 2004 she won the Marian Engel Award for a woman writer in mid-career.
Discussion Questions
1. What do you feel is the significance of the introductory story about the hundred-mile horse race and Henry Merchant?
2. How do Vicki and Blaine manifest their anxieties about their financial hardship? What type of understanding do they come to at the end of the novel about their situation?
3. What does the burning of Willard’s fence and, finally, drive-in movie screen, mean to you?
4. How important is the setting to the novel’s central themes? What influence does the setting have on the inhabitants of Juliet?
5. The characters have expectations about one another that, as the novel progresses, are often proven wrong. Discuss a few examples.
6. When Lee is riding through the desert on horseback and watching the sand shift in the wind, he thinks, “You could stand out here and watch your own footprints disappear.” How does this statement relate to the novel as a whole?
7. How do money and class affect the characters?
8. Norval shows up at the hardware store just after Daisy spilled the red paint. What does this incident mean to you? Why do you think Norval insists on helping clean up?
9. How do some of the characters change over the course of the novel? What turning points for each of the main characters spur them to change? Are these changes for the better or the worse?
10. Why do you think Norval favours the Weather Channel?
11. What do you think the image of the buffalo stone represents? How did you feel when Hank and “TNT” tried to blast it and only cracked it in half?
12. What is the novel’s overall attitude toward the past and the future? Does it take an optimistic or pessimistic view of the future (or a bit of both)?
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