Hachette Livre

Hachette Livre Reading Group Guides

Welcome to our Reading Group guide for The Keep by Jennifer Egan. We invite you to consider and discuss the following questions when reading this book:

  1. What happens when you discover that Danny, in whose story we are immersed from the opening pages, is actually a character in the story being written by Ray, who is in prison? As you proceed, does your involvement in both Danny’s story and Ray’s story remain equal, or does one plot become primary and the other secondary? How does Egan navigate the transitions between these two plots?
  2. Jennifer Egan said in an interview in The Believer that The Keep arose from a visit to a medieval castle. “The revelation was: This is something new to me, something different. I just want to be here for a while. I want this feeling. And for me, that sense of time and place—of atmosphere—predates a character, a story, everything else except a few abstract notions that I want to explore.” Consider how the setting and situation affect you in the opening chapters. What is the feeling they evoke? How does Danny’s very modern voice affect your response?
  3. Guilt plays a large role in the lives of several self-destructive characters in The Keep. How does guilt for past actions shape the present lives of Danny and Holly?
  4. The Gothic novel is a genre that emerged in the eighteenth century with Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto. Gothic novels often included crumbling ruins, dark secrets, imprisoned heroines, hidden passages, and so on. Why does Ray choose to write a modern Gothic novel, and how do elements like the castle, the baroness, and the drowned twins resonate against the hyper-modernity of the information age that Danny has so reluctantly left behind?
  5. What does the catalog of Danny’s scars and injuries tell us about him? Is he particularly accident prone? Does Danny’s character change over the course of the story?
  6. Danny is officially disconnected from his known world when his satellite dish, laboriously carried from Manhattan, falls into the castle’s “Imagination Pool.” Why is this funny? What are some of the other comic scenes in the novel?
  7. The Keep allows us to watch the process of someone becoming a writer. Ray listens to “ghost words” from his fellow convicts’ former lives, writing them down “because every one has the DNA of a whole life in it, a life where those words fit in and made sense. . . . I save up those words and later on I open up the notebook where I’m keeping the journal Holly told us all to keep and I write them down one by one. And for some reason that puts me in a good mood, like money in the bank”. What does this suggest about close observation, words, and meaning in daily life?
  8. The Keep is filled with imagery of doors, windows, towers, tunnels, and stairways. Characters climb in, climb out, explore, are locked in, emerge into the light. Why is this imagery used so consistently, and whose imagination is creating or projecting it? Another major image is the pool: “There was the pool: round, quiet, black. The Imagination Pool”. How are these symbolic elements related to one another?
  9. Drug use plays a significant role in the story, with Mick, Danny, Holly, Ray, and many of the prisoners all having been serious addicts or occasional users. How is drug use related to the main ideas in the novel? Can drug use be seen as a corollary to writing in the ways it alters perception and reality?
  10. Can writing—and the imagination—be redemptive? Ray is serving time for murder; yet as he presents himself to us, it’s difficult to detect any evil in him. Is he a reliable narrator, or not? Is he a likable and even lovable character? Is Holly a reliable judge of character, and does her love for Ray influence your feelings about him?
  11. In their shared obsession with castles, dungeons, and the seductive powers of the imagination, are Danny and Howard both interested in reliving their pasts? Does the past return? Does Danny redeem himself for what Danny did to Howard when they were boys?
  12. Can you imagine visiting a hotel such as Howard’s? Might the principles underlying the hotel actually be attractive to busy people in the world we now live in? Does Howard’s real power lie not in his money, but in his belief in the imagination, and possibly in his ability to provoke people to change their lives? Is The Keep in part a serious critique of American culture’s obsession with superficiality and the distractions of the moment? The Keep tells the stories of three main protagonists: Danny, Ray, and Holly. Whose story is most compelling, and why? Does the final chapter resolve or leave unsettled your understanding of the relationship between these characters? What happens to the two distinct plots—the story of Ray and the story of Danny—at the end of the novel? What happens when Holly dives into the pool in the final scene?

Current Reading Group Titles

  1. Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat
  2. Radiance by Shaena Lambert
  3. Rose of Sebastopol by Katharine McMahon
  4. The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell
  5. Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott
  6. The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle
  7. Golden Age by Tahmima Anam
  8. Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
  9. The Keep by Jennifer Egan
  10. The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther
  11. Pirate’s Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson
  12. The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani
  13. April in Paris by Michael Wallner
  14. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday
  15. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
  16. Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet
  17. Red River by Lalita Tademy
  18. The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox
  19. Rosetta by Barbara Ewing
  20. The Mathematics of Love by Emma Darwin
  21. The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld
  22. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell

Suggested Further Reading