1. Augusta's story moves easily between the present and the past, yet the whole story takes place in a single day -- the day of a journey by train that is also Augusta and Karl's 48th wedding anniversary. How do the train and the anniversary serve to allow for the novel's movement in time? How does the train metaphorically illuminate the story of their lives?

2. How important to Augusta are the communities in which she lives? In what ways does the novel address the idea of "community" and how our lives are affected and moulded by the communities we are part of? You might consider the farming community, the town, the seniors' centre, even the bees.

3. Rose, Joy, Karl and Olaf all express their distaste for Augusta's tendency to be open with strangers. How does this trait of Augusta's clash with the expectations of others, and set her on various courses in life? Consider the old man with his beautiful garden as well; how does his secret behavior both irk and entice Augusta?

4. Gail Anderson-Dargatz's writing is acclaimed for how very sensuous it often is. How are all five senses employed in A Recipe for Bees? "[Augusta] had to believe God was a sensualist who enjoyed a good tomato." (pg. 37) "The sense of smell seems particularly pervasive: from flowers, hives." "They deduced the type of flower the dancing bee had located by the scent of it still lingering on its body." (pg. 39) Even Gabe, "When he handed Augusta her tea -- had left the sweet maple-syrup scent of foundation on the cup. She had inhaled the scent with every sip." (pg. 21) How does this sensuality enrich the novel and our appreciation of Augusta? Consider also a sixth-sense: Augusta's second sight. Is it a curse or an inexplicable, even annoying fact of life, as Manny's reactions would indicate? Or a gift, as Reverend Lakeman thinks? (pg. 120) Why do you suppose Gail Anderson-Dargatz chose to give her character this ability?

5. Compare Augusta's relationship with Helen and Manny to Joy's with Augusta and Karl. Do you see Augusta as a "good" mother? Consider the teddy bear scene (pg. 224). What do you suppose accounts for Augusta's behavior?

6. How does Augusta inhabit the places she lives? What does she do to make them her own? She's very comfortable out of doors, as one would expect in a woman raised on a farm. When does she seem happiest?

7. Flowers, bees, even Karl's missing thumb perhaps, carry symbolic weight in A Recipe for Bees. What are the images that recur most often? In what contexts? And how are they effective?

8. It may seem to the reader that Augusta dreams only of small things. She is excited by the freedom of a weekly drive to Kamloops, for example (pg. 126). Do these little things demonstrate the same lack of imagination of which she accuses Karl? It was "as if he didn't understand that she, too, could be occupied by pleasure." (pg. 208) Or does Gail Anderson-Dargatz show us that it is the little things as much as the magic and the dreams that are the stuff of which life is made?

9. There are moments of cruelty in the novel: when Manny kills a horse (pg. 166); when Helen shoots a porcupine (pg. 169); when Augusta hurls a kitten against a wall (pg. 197). Life and death are portrayed as part of the ebb and flow of life on a farm, but in these instances, the author seems to be suggesting that something else is going on. Consider these events in the contexts in which they appear.

10. The publisher's jacket copy refers to the novel being in part about "the life, death and resurrection of an extraordinary marriage." How does Karl and Augusta's marriage manage to endure?

11. The narrator of A Recipe for Bees describes farm marriages this way: "Husbands and wives were married to the land as much as to each other. A different sort of love arose from that kind of necessity; it wasn't romantic or lustful, but it was steady. It was a love they manufactured each day, so that they could carry on." How do you think this kind of love is reflected, or not, in the marriages of Karl and Augusta; Manny and Helen; Olaf and Blenda?

12. The novel's title comes from Virgil. How does the passage quoted from Virgil (pg. 258 to 259) illuminate the novel's central concerns? Remember that a slaughter has had to take place in order for the bees to come alive. Consider that fact in relation to the story of Augusta and Karl.

13. While with her daughter, Augusta muses that she and Joy could be taken for sisters, then she catches a glimpse of herself reflected in a mirrored cabinet: "The tart red of her lipstick couldn't conceal the fact that she was a much older woman, neither could the outrageous purple of her blouse, nor the brightly patterned scarf she's used to pull the hair from her face. All the colour in the world wouldn't rejuvenate the withered skin of her neck...; her usefulness was all but over." (pg. 19 to 20). Although no longer young, Augusta seems to have a sense of peace in her old age. What do we learn about the inner life of an older woman through Augusta?

14. Gail Anderson-Dargatz does not romanticize farm life, but there's a lot of romance in the novel. Consider how the romance is sometimes connected to farm life, and at other times distinct from it.

15. Were you moved by the novel? When? Did you ever laugh? When? Remember the opening line: "'Have I told you the drone's penis snaps off during intercourse with the queen bee?' asked Augusta." How did you react to that opening and what does it tell you of the wholehearted life of Augusta?

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