Farewell Trip - your next Book Club choice!

I (Gary) used to be in a book club. Usually four, sometimes five, occasionally six, ex Lampeterians met up each month in a different London boozer and threw our thoughts about a book into the mix of beer, sarcasm, football and scoff. We chose some good novels along the way, and some shockers. Usually the book didn't delay us much, assuming we'd even read it, but sometimes we got our teeth into one. As I remember it the best conversations we had were on Julian Barnes's England England and John Lanchester's Mr Phillips, though I'm undoubtedly being biased as I picked both.

Now news reaches me that two separate (female) book clubs are doing Farewell Trip as their latest choice. In both cases the book has been inflicted upon the group by an ex Lampeterian, which strikes me as very pleasing indeed.

And I couldn't help thinking of things people might want to chat about over the white wine and cake when talking about Farewell Trip. How about these?



Did you treat Ruth and Trip equally or did you find yourself taking sides?

Do you think Ruth ever reads Trip's last letter?

What happens to Ruth afterwards? Is her restaurant a success? Does she speak to Laura again? Does she settle down with someone else relatively quickly?

Trip says several times he was born aged 35. Are we all born a certain age?

Who should play Ruth and Trip in either the BBC series or the Hollywood blockbuster?

Why do so few people collaborate on writing novels?


If anyone is thinking of picking our book we'd love to know how it went and what you thought. And if anyone out there wants any particular question answered before, or as a result of, their book club just message either of us. We'd be honoured to help.