Just Last Night(107)

This is all quite heavy—if you discuss my story in a book group, I hope it’s a fun evening, even if there are sad themes!

Following are the conversation points I would pick, but I’m sure yours will be as good if not better. Also, have wine. Susie would.

Love,

Mhairi x



Reading Group Guide

The principal friendship group in the story has a special bond, in part because they met as teenagers. You “can’t make new old friends,” as the saying goes. “They know all the versions of you. They know how you were built. They have a map for you,” as Ed says in the eulogy. Do you think long-standing friendships are different from friendships you made later in life, and if so, how? Are old friends worth hanging on to, or can they hold you back?

So I’m an overthinker and often a fence-sitter, like Eve, but Justin and Susie are the type to be emphatic and certain. Justin declares: “Nobody gets a reputation by accident,” and yet we find out Finlay has, if not a reputation by accident, a reputation that isn’t fair. Have there been times you’ve judged too harshly or too fast? Should we always wait to hear the other side? Does social media make the tendency to pass a verdict at a distance or on hearsay worse?

At the start of Just Last Night, Eve is still in unspoken love with Ed. She’s thought about him, and their situation, endlessly—though she discovers new perspectives on it during the story. She’s devastated to discover his and Susie’s involvement. Secrets are a theme in the book, whether among friends, family, or lovers. Would Eve have been better off not reading the letter that led her to unravel what had gone on? Why do you think Susie did it? The story offers a variety of explanations, but the woman herself can never provide one so Eve will never have a definitive answer.

Eve and Finlay get off on the wrong foot, but as time goes on, they find they’re both sensitive and thoughtful and have more in common than they thought. Was the revelation about Finlay what you expected? Have you ever changed your opinion of someone to a dramatic degree?

Before writing this, I didn’t realize the pub quiz is a British institution that isn’t as common in the States. Which British traditions would you import to America if you could, and which can we definitely keep?