Exit Lines: Reader's Guide

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1. Which of the four friends is your favourite? With whom do you identify most, and why?

2. Were you surprised by Ruth’s request? What do you think is really driving her wish, given that she’s not experiencing a medical crisis?

3. Why do you think each of the friends agreed to Ruth’s request? Would you, in their shoes? What is the biggest favour you’ve ever asked of a friend?

4. What techniques does Barfoot use to build suspense? Consider, for example, the inclusion of the “At three in the morning . . . ” chapters. How did they affect your reading experience?

5. Each of the four friends has developed strategies (whether consciously or not) for handling some pretty large secrets. What is your opinion of the way each copes?

6. Sylvia is withholding a major piece of information from her daughter, Nancy. What do you think of this choice? Can a secret be too dangerous to ever be told?

7. Sylvia finds comfort and humour in the invisibility of old age, “at the useful camouflagings of age and its occasionally happy invisibilities, which is how it can keep secrets, and even some kinds of freedom.” (p 17) What are your thoughts on this statement?

8. Ruth thinks about the hours she has wasted in her life — amounting to eight years by her estimation — and wishes she could have saved them for Bernard to use. (p 91) If you could make up for lost time in your own life, what would you do?

9. Ruth equates her state of loneliness with her previous description of herself as “empty of longing.” (p 313) What do you think she means? Do you think it’s possible to come to the end of longing? Would it be a good or bad thing, in your opinion?

10. What did you think of the pact the four friends make at the end of the book? How do you imagine this agreement might turn out? Would you ever consider such a pact?

11. How did the book’s conclusion make you feel? How would you describe each character’s mental state at the book’s conclusion? What is George getting at when he reflects on the phrase “for the time being?” (p 320)

12. Why did Joan Barfoot select this title for the book? Consider in particular the final sentence of the novel in the context of the title.

13. Have you ever visited a retirement home, on behalf of a loved one or in contemplation of your own future? What are your thoughts on the good or bad points of this option? How do you intend to age? What is your opinion of how society treats old people, and what possibilities might you choose for yourself?

This month's book is Exit Lines by Joan Barfoot. Here is an interview I found with the author:

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What inspired you to write Exit Lines? Is there a story about the writing of this novel that begs to be told?

Like a lot of people, I found myself spending quite a lot of time a few years ago visiting someone I love in a retirement home. Watching the events and the chemistries there, I was captured by how brave humans have to keep being, creating lives from new situations right up to the end; and also how annoying it must be to be treated with the condescension I heard in so many staff and visitor voices. I thought how badly I myself would react to that. And I also thought, this is a bit tragic, what’s happening here — but resistance and sedition could be pretty funny, as well.


What is it that you’re exploring in this book?

Control, I suppose. The right (or lack thereof) to authority — and how far that authority can go — over one’s own body and life. I’m in the boomer generation, and we’ve been pretty spoiled, and adamant, about making our own decisions and being in charge of ourselves. So I suspect operators of retirement homes are going to be in for some surprises in a few years. The people in Exit Lines are much older than boomers, but the principle remains — or as Sylvia says in her straight-to-the-point way, “We’re just old, we’re not morons.”


Did any of the characters become a particular favourite of yours?

I’m fond of them all, for different reasons — they’re like any group of friends in which each person brings something valuable and unique to the table. But Sylvia probably comes closest to my own voice — I like the very crisp way she assesses and expresses various observations.


Are there any tips you would give a book club to better navigate its discussion of Exit Lines?

Well, from the book clubs I’m aware of that have already discussed Exit Lines, there’s not only conversation about characters, themes, plot and dilemmas, but mixed with all that, often, too, an intense and quite powerful discussion about personal relationships with the old, and people’s own desires, fears and intentions. Certainly there are some people who resist looking at these subjects at all, which any group has to respect, but most people seem to demonstrate a kind of relieved pleasure, even joy, in having a frank, sometimes funny, unveiling of what's been tucked nervously away in a whole lot of minds.


The Idyll Inn feels eerily familiar. Did you base it on experience?

People all over the country have recognized The Idyll Inn. So I’m pretty pleased that wherever it is, it’s apparently everywhere — which is gratifying to me as a writer, although otherwise slightly alarming.


A reviewer in the Toronto Star described this book as that of a new genre, which she called “death comedy.” What do you think of this description?

“Death comedy” is cute, and apt enough although like even the happiest catchphrase, incomplete. But I like the idea of a “new genre” that will approach aging from a whole lot of fresh perspectives, and I do think that Exit Lines is more or less at the front of what’s coming as people feel more and more comfortable, curious and bold about ways to get old. I certainly hope that comedy is well-embedded in the serious themes of the novel — much as most serious aspects of life have their comedic, or at least absurd, aspects.


Has your former work as a journalist influenced your work as a writer of fiction? Do you find any overlaps in the careers?

Journalism is always about questions — more and more of them, about everything. So is writing fiction. Both are — or should be — sort of like being two years old again, hammering on (sometimes annoyingly in the case of two-year-olds) about what and why, what and why, what and why. Trying to unfold the next layer, then the next.


Did your own ideas of aging evolve as your wrote this book, or did you start writing with these ideas fully formed? Do you find your opinions change as you write?

Often enough I write partly to help myself figure stuff out. So as Exit Lines evolved, so did my own ideas and perceptions about the possibilities involved in getting old — not just the losses, difficulties and invisibilities, but the powers and some of the pleasures. I hope that having written it will remind me to be more graceful in old age than I might otherwise have been — but equally I hope it’ll remind me to employ a certain enjoyable disgracefulness, also.


From the Hardcover edition.