1. Before reading The Date, had you ever heard of Prosopagnosia (Face Blindness?) How hard do you think it would be to adjust to a loss of facial recognition?
2. How did your perception of the characters change throughout the book?
3. ‘I can see the ghost of our family picnicking. Mum stating if I ate my crusts my hair would curl; Iris promising everything would be ok.
Those little white lies that bind a family together. The lies told to reassure. The lies we tell because the truth is just too ugly. Too cruel.’
If a lie is told with the best of intentions, is it forgivable?
4. Who did you think was tormenting Ali?
5. ‘I won’t find the sense of safety I was seeking here, among the secrets and lies and the tangled, torturous past. Stupid to ever think that I could.’ Did you feel Ali had managed to move on from her past until she went on her date?
6. ‘You don’t want to go to the police, Ali. You’ve got blood on your hands.’ Could you empathise with Ali’s reluctance to talk to the police? What would you have done in her situation?
7. Did any of the theories you formed throughout reading the story turn out to be correct?
8. ‘In a desperate situation, are we all capable of monstrous acts? It’s incomprehensible we can reach inside the darkest depths of someone else’s mind, when we ignore the blackness lurking in our own.’ Can we ever really know someone properly? How well do we know ourselves?
9. When Ali’s secret is revealed, how did you feel about her?
10. What do you think the future will hold for Ali after the Epilogue?