The Long Way Home

At first, Peter’s failure to return to his wife is not necessarily suspicious. Is Clara justified in insisting on finding out what happened to him? How does Penny create an increasingly suspenseful and ominous mood in the novel?

The novel’s plot involves characters moving from place to place as they try to track down clues about Peter’s whereabouts. How do the different settings, including Three Pines, Toronto, and Baie-Saint-Paul, create different moods? Do some characters function more effectively in some settings than others?

Peter does not directly appear in the novel until close to the end. How does Penny develop his character without depicting him? Do different characters have different ideas about what kind of man Peter is?

It has been many years since Peter and Clara studied at art college, but central aspects of the plot are rooted in the time they spent there. What does Penny suggest about the impact of education and teachers? Where else in the novel do we see characters teaching or learning from others, and how are these events depicted?

How do Clara and Gamache share leadership and control during their search for Peter? How do their strengths and weaknesses complement one another? Identify one example where Clara and Gamache come into conflict with one another and analyze the impact of that conflict.

Much of the novel revolves around visual art, and Penny must conjure up images of this art using language. What techniques does she use to do so? As a reader, could you imagine the paintings referred to in the novel? If you could have an accompanying image of one artwork described in the novel, which would you most like to see?

Professor Norman is significantly misunderstood and vilified for most of the novel. What aspects of his character and personality lead other characters to make negative assumptions about him? Is he decisively repositioned as a victim by the end of the novel, or does he remain a villain?

Compare and contrast the relationships between Clara and Peter, and Gamache and Reine-Marie. How do the two couples function as foils to one another? What strategies allow Gamache and Reine-Marie to act as partners to one another?