The questions and discussion topics that follow are intended to enhance your reading of Penny Vincenzi’s An Absolute Scandal. We hope they will enrich your experience of this mesmerizing novel.

1. What were your first impressions of the characters? How did your opinion of them shift throughout the novel? Which characters captured your imagination the most?
2. What are the main differences between Nigel and Blue? Why was Lucinda drawn to each of them, in different ways? How important is it for a couple to share similar economic and social backgrounds?
3. How does Flora’s personality affect her son’s marriage? Were you more sympathetic to Debbie or to Flora? What is the ideal role for in-laws and grandparents?

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A number-one bestseller from one of Britain’s most popular novelists, Sheer Abandon is an all-consuming story revolving around the consequences of a desperate act…Here are some questions for discussion.

1. We join Martha, Jocasta, and Clio at Heathrow Airport a year before a baby is born to, and abandoned by, one of them. And then get to know them a little better in the early chapters. Purely on the basis of their personalities, which of them seemed the most likely to have done something so shocking and wretched; and why?
2. Did you guess correctly? Did you spot the qualities that made such a course of action possible? And if you were wrong, what specific things misled you?
3. Did you sympathise with the woman who abandoned her baby? What would drive someone to such desperate actions? Can you imagine a situation or a time in your life when you might have done something equally devastating? Can anyone (mother or child) ever recover from such an event? (more…)