The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman
Laurence Sterne
Book Club
The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman
8 ways to start a deeper conversation.
Contains spoilers for the entire book.
Discussion topics
Topic 01 of 08
A man not yet born
How did you respond to a memoir in which the narrator is not born until the third volume?
Keep the conversation going
- Why does Tristram begin with the moment his mother asks about winding the clock?
- Is the book about Tristram at all?
There is no single right answer. Bring your own reading.
Discussion topics
How did you respond to a memoir in which the narrator is not born until the third volume?
Keep the conversation going
- Why does Tristram begin with the moment his mother asks about winding the clock?
- Is the book about Tristram at all?
What are the hobby-horses of Walter and Uncle Toby, and why does the book find them so endearing?
Keep the conversation going
- What is your own hobby-horse?
- How do their obsessions keep the brothers apart and together?
Why is Uncle Toby one of the best-loved characters in English fiction?
Keep the conversation going
- What does the scene of him releasing the fly show about him?
- How does his wound, and his bowling-green battles with Corporal Trim, shape his life?
What did you make of Walter's theories about names and noses, and of the accidents that ruin them all?
Keep the conversation going
- Why does fate keep mocking his plans for his son?
- Is Walter a fool, a philosopher or both?
How did you get on with the book's endless digressions?
Keep the conversation going
- Why does Tristram call digressions the sunshine of reading?
- Is there an order beneath the apparent chaos?
What did you make of the black page for Yorick, the marbled page and the blank page for the reader to draw the Widow Wadman?
Keep the conversation going
- Why does Sterne play with the physical book?
- How does that make the reader part of the story?
How does the shadow of death, from Yorick to Tristram's own illness, run beneath the comedy?
Keep the conversation going
- Why is Tristram racing time as he writes?
- How did you respond to the story of Le Fever?
How did you feel about the ending, with its story of a cock and a bull?
Keep the conversation going
- Is the novel unfinished, or finished in its own way?
- Why do you think readers today often call it surprisingly modern?
There is no single right answer. Bring your own reading.