READERS GUIDE
Reader’s GuideA Rare Find by Joanna Lowell
Discussion Questions:
1. As childhood neighbors, Elf and Georgie think they know a lot about each other’s motivations and the meanings behind their actions. What experiences lead them to rethink what they thought they knew? Have you ever been very wrong in your assumptions about who someone else really is?
2. Elf is deeply focused on, even obsessed with, archaeological pursuits, and rarely leaves her family’s crumbling property. Georgie lights up every room but can’t stay in any room for too long. Why do these opposites attract? What does each one have to offer the other?
3. Elf’s inadvertent discovery in the pergola leads her to new territories of sexual possibility. What unexpected discoveries have you made that opened new possibilities for you, sexual or otherwise?
4. What kind of buried treasure would you be most excited to find?
5. Georgie, Phipps, Anne, Rosalie, and multiple other characters have powerful reasons for wishing to live outside of heterosexual marriage, and they find various solutions to the pressures of their time. What other possibilities might have been available to them, beyond the arrangements discussed in the book? What relationships have you seen in today’s world that are more complicated than they appear at first? Which have you seen work particularly well, and why?
6. Elf idolizes her father, and her greatest passion is to work with him. How does she come to see him differently, and how does this change her relationship to her work?
7. How do Elf and her father remember his parents differently? Are there members of your family who look very different depending on who is telling the story?
8. Why does Elf see something different in her grandmother’s writing than her father does? How might her experiences in the world as a young woman enable her to see different things in archaeological digs and writings than the men of the Albion Society?
9. Archaeology requires a special way of seeing, to notice the traces of a wolf pit in a field or a barrow on a moor. What have you learned in your life that has given you special ways of seeing?
10. Agnes may finally be able to realize her dream of going to London and having a Season. What do you think she will find when she gets there? What successes and challenges might she have?
11. Georgie thinks they are a city mouse but comes to realize that they may be a country mouse after all. What aspects of city life do you miss when you are in the country, and vice versa?
12. Do you think any of the nuns at the abbey fell in love with each other?
13. Georgie says there are “two kinds of fashionable,” one “everyone agrees on” and one “everyone disagrees on.” Which do you prefer, and what are your favorite things to wear to demonstrate this preference? If you could try the other style for a day, or perhaps for a London
Season, what would you wear?
14. Do you have a favorite riddle?
15. Why was Elf’s birthday present to Georgie so risky for her? What is the most romantic place you have ever kissed?
16. Which would be worse: being buried in a cave under a mudslide or spending the same amount of time listening to a sixteen-year-old play and sing their own romantic songs on the lute?
