Discussion Questions
for The Silence Between the Notes
- The titles of novels often highlight key themes or motifs. What is the significance of the title? How does it guide what you notice while reading the novel? How is music used to deepen Claire’s characterization in the novel?
- At the start of the novel, Claire has no friends her own age but she is blessed with many caring adults. How do Emile, Mrs. Teal, Papa, and Mama each support her and challenge her?
- On the surface, Truccian society appears peaceful and prosperous. However, Claire’s mother teaches her to see “what isn’t there.” For whom is Truccian society a utopia? For whom is it a dystopia? Does Truccia remind you of specific historical periods or other literary portrayals of repressive regimes? In what ways might it mirror our own society?
- Ancient Ameringia is referred to at various points in the novel as a lost civilization. While Tom Swafford and the Lord Director wish to recreate the technological wonders that may have led to its downfall, Claire and her parents wish to restore its values of freedom, personal dignity, and democratic rule to benefit the people of Truccia. Ameringia, which was said to have lasted 300 years before it collapsed, bears a striking resemblance to America. America will celebrate the 300th anniversary of its founding in 2076. Do the parallels between Ameringia and America enrich the novel for you?
- How is the repressiveness of the Lord Director’s regime revealed in the scenes which focus on the Youth Directorate? Is it more menacing because we, as readers, see the dynamics played out among teenagers?
- Tolly and Claire’s early courtship occurs through letters. They end each letter by sharing five things they love with each other. What do these lists reveal about Tolly and Claire? How do these lists create and sustain intimacy even though Claire and Tolly are separated throughout the week? If you made a list of five things you loved or appreciated today, what would they be?
- Eugenia has a ventricular septal heart defect and anisomelia (one of her legs is shorter than the other), while Claire experiences panic attacks. How do these conditions shape them and their experiences? How do these conditions affect how others treat them? Are these conditions portrayed as defects or as unique characteristics? In a society that values mental, emotional, and physical fitness and eradicates those who do not measure up, how do Eugenia and Claire defy these standards?
- Verdant Park and the palace garden are places of peace and contentment as well as creative open-ended play in the novel. How does the palace garden inspire Claire and Eugenia in different ways?
- Kings and peasants, a strategic game much like chess, is referenced throughout the novel. Claire is not a good kings-and-peasants players, while other characters, such as the Lord Director, Eugenia, Papa, and Tolly, are. What are the benefits and drawbacks of strategic thinking? What is required to use it ethically?
- Claire creates a role-playing game for Eugenia called Fate, Chance, & Free Will. Why does the game have such a profound effect on Eugenia? Do you see the concepts of fate, chance, and free will in other aspects of the novel? Eugenia and Claire share the game with the palace staff, who share it with others, until soon the whole city is playing it. Why do Eugenia and Claire have such different reactions to the Ministry of Arts & Propaganda selling copies of their game?
- The girls decide to lift the color ban. The freedom to wear colors other than orange and green makes the Truccian citizens happier, kinder, more hopeful. However, it was only fear of not being deemed patriotic enough that stopped people from wearing other colors previously. In what ways might we be censoring ourselves, like the Truccians who only wore orange and green? Can you think of relatively small initiatives or changes to our society, our family life, or our workplaces that might lift people’s spirits in a similar way?
- How do Claire and Eugenia grow and change in relation to each other? What does each lack that the other supplies? Do they, in fact, heal each other’s hearts?
- Claire seeks wisdom in other people’s stories. Over the course of the novel she listens to the love stories of her parents, Emile and Quentin, Col. Markham and Noor Nayak, Tolly’s parents, and the Lord Director and Dorothea. How do each of these stories portray love? How do they enrich Claire’s understanding?
- Mama and Papa have created a network that uses ingenious methods to undermine the Lord Director and help those suffering under his rule. Claire notes that the network is incredibly fragile because it is built on favors and trust, while Tom Swafford accuses Mama and Papa of propping up a regime by helping the few, when they could use more drastic, perhaps violent means, to dismantle it. Tom is equally critical of Claire’s hope that Eugenia will be a better ruler than her father. Who is right? What is the best way to create political change in these circumstances? Should Claire have allowed Tom Swafford to disrupt the Lord Director’s broadcast? Should she and Eugenia have put their faith in Col. Markham’s coup?
- At the Grand Exhibition, the Lord Director unveils inventions that we are very familiar with (radio, telephones, electric light, record players) but which are brand new to the characters. Claire is troubled by how little control she has over how her photograph is used and how her music is sold to the public. She dislikes being hounded by the press. Newspaper accounts cause tension in her relationship with Tolly. However, she sees the potential the new technology has for uniting people, even though her parents worry about its use for surveillance. How does this relate to media and technology in our modern world? Does the portrayal of these issues within a fictional context in which people are grappling with them for the first time help you perceive them from a new perspective?
- Alistair gives Claire hothouse roses with no scent. Their boating “excursion” is not on a real lake but set against a photographic backdrop. How is this a metaphor for their relationship? As a reader, do you blame Claire for leading Alistair on? Could she have acted any differently under the circumstances? To what extent is Alistair to blame for how things ended between them? Is he redeemable?
- Claire seeks solace and clarity in the silence. But when a crucial decision must be made, she feels betrayed when the silence does not provide counsel. Likewise, she feels that she failed in befriending Alistair, after she believed the silence was urging her to give him a second chance. How do we see Claire’s spirituality develop over the course of the novel? Are her doubts realistic? How are other characters sustained or betrayed by religion in the novel?
- Claire’s parents have sheltered her from the truth, but Claire’s mother worries that the half-truths they have told her have been more damaging than telling the whole truth would have been. Claire tells Eugenia that though it is sometimes safer and kinder not to tell the truth, the truth often gets revealed in the end. How does the novel portray the dangers inherent in telling or not telling the truth? How does this relate to the ways you reveal or conceal the truth in your own life?
- Emile urges Claire to choose music AND life, but doing so requires Claire to make numerous moral compromises. She worries she has not lived up to Quentin’s courageous example. What has Claire accomplished by the end of novel and what has she left undone? Were the moral compromises she made worth it?
- The reader may figure out one of the novel’s secrets before Claire does. Does this heighten dramatic tension and make you anticipate her reaction when she finally discovers the truth or do feel that Claire should have put the clues together sooner? Why doesn’t she?
- This novel is the first book in a planned trilogy. What lingering questions do you hope will be answered in the next books? Do you have any predictions about what will happen next?
Food For THought
I’ve posted a recipe for chocolate cranberry scones, much like the chocolate lingonberry scones Claire and Eugenia make in the novel. You can bake a batch and eat them with your book group while you discuss the novel.
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Sarah B. Mohler 
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