Jeannette Haien trained as a concert pianist before turning to fiction. In what ways might her musical sensibility be said to shape the architecture of the novel? Use specific examples from the text.

Consider the encounter between Father Declan’s priestly worldview and Enda’s account of her own life. What do you make of the moral pressures each places on the other, and where, if anywhere, does the novel seem to locate its own sympathies?

Enda has been described by some readers as a “static” character whose function is to catalyze change in Father Declan. Do you find this reading persuasive? What might be gained or lost by reading her instead as a figure who is herself altered by the act of telling “the all of it”?