Country People Book Club Questions & Discussion Guide

About this book

When Kate lands a one-year visiting professorship at a Vermont college, she moves her family across the country from California, including her husband Miles, a folklorist perpetually late on a dissertation about Russian folktales. In their new rural surroundings Miles falls in with a cast of eccentric locals and an old, half-believed local legend, and the family finds itself caught between logic and magical thinking. Comic and lyrical, from the author of North Woods, it is a warm, sly novel about belonging, curiosity, and what a place can do to the people who wander into it.

Discussion questions

1. A California academic family lands in rural Vermont for a year. What was your first impression of Miles and Kate, and did the fish-out-of-water setup win you over?
2. The novel is discursive and comic, with side stories and eccentric locals. If the meandering ever tested you, what pulled you back, the humor, the characters, or the mystery humming underneath?
3. Miles is a doting father and endless enthusiast who has been "working on" his dissertation for over a decade. Did you find his drift endearing, frustrating, or both, and what did the move reveal about him?
4. The book sets logic against magical thinking, the known against the unknown. Where did you land on the locals' stranger beliefs, and did the novel take them seriously or gently mock them?
5. Beneath the comedy, the book is about belonging and what a place does to the people who move into it. What did it ultimately say about outsiders, community, and finding where you fit?
6. Mason threads in eccentric voices and side tales, including a rural call-in radio show. How did those interludes shape your experience, and did they pay off by the end?
7. Vermont is drawn with real affection and a raised eyebrow. How much was the place a character in its own right, and did the novel earn its warmth toward "country people"?
8. This has the sly, wandering humor and folkloric edge of the author's earlier work. What did it remind you of, another comic novel, a place you have moved to, or a community that surprised you?
9. The novel is curious about the beliefs we hold that outsiders find strange. Has anyone at the table ever moved somewhere new and had to learn its unspoken rules and lore?
10. Who would you hand this to next, the reader who loves a lyrical comic novel or someone drawn to quirky small-town stories, and who might find it too meandering?

Themes to listen for

• Belonging and what a place does to newcomers
• Logic versus magical thinking
• Curiosity, enthusiasm, and midlife drift
• Community and the people we dismiss too quickly
• Folklore and the stories a place tells about itself

If your club liked this, try…

• North Woods by Daniel Mason
• Less by Andrew Sean Greer
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
• The Guncle by Steven Rowley

Where to get it

• Check availability at your local library
• Find it on Bookshop.org
• Listen on Libro.fm

Practical notes

Best for clubs that enjoy a lyrical, comic literary novel and do not mind a wandering, discursive pace. Reading the eccentric side stories as part of the whole pays off. A good pick for a book that rewards a slower, savoring read.