People Know Nothing: Reading group questions

The title, People Know Nothing, acquires different meanings as the novel progresses. What do you think it ultimately means? Is it primarily about how little we know about other people, or does it suggest that the characters also misunderstand themselves?

Which character did you feel you understood most deeply by the end of the novel, and which remained most elusive? Did your sympathies towards any character change significantly once you encountered their perspective?

Samuel’s murder is central to the novel, yet the book is not really a murder mystery. What function does the murder serve? Would the novel work without such a dramatic event at its centre?

How effectively does the multiple-perspective structure work? What does the reader gain by repeatedly encountering people from the outside before – or after – being allowed into their private thoughts?

Leon, Archie, Mariusz, Bert, John and Tony are very different men, but each struggles in some way with vulnerability. What does the novel have to say about masculinity and the ways men conceal fear, grief, loneliness or inadequacy?

How important is the Edgware Road to the novel? Is it simply the place where these characters happen to live and work, or does its mixture of communities, generations, wealth and poverty become part of what the novel is about?

Several characters are lonely despite living in one of the busiest parts of London. Why? Which forms of loneliness in the novel did you find most affecting?

The leisure centre eventually brings together people whose lives have been intersecting without their knowledge. Did their convergence in the changing room feel inevitable, coincidental or somewhere between the two? How much coincidence can a novel like this accommodate before it begins to feel contrived?

Which characters judge other people most harshly – and how often are those judgements wrong? Are there moments when you found yourself making exactly the same mistake as the characters?

Bert’s memories stretch the novel backwards through the history of the neighbourhood, while characters such as Mariusz and John are preoccupied with uncertain futures. What role do memory, ageing and generational change play in the book?

Ishmina occupies an unusual position: she observes everybody but knows very little about what has actually happened to them. What does her final section add to the novel? How does her instinct to construct stories from fragments resemble what the reader has been doing throughout the book?

At the end of the novel, do you feel the characters have genuinely changed, or have we simply come to understand them better? And does the encounter in the changing room create any lasting connection between them, or are they destined to return to their separate lives?