The Official Book Club Guide: The Rules of Seeing

Published by HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright to extracts from The Rules of Seeing © Joe Heap 2018

Copyright © Kathyrn Cope 2018

Cover design by Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com

Kathryn Cope asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008309756

Version 2018-11-23

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Joe Heap

Plot Synopsis

Style

Characters

Themes & Imagery

Discussion Questions

An Interview With Joe Heap

Quiz Questions

Quiz Answers

Further Reading

Bibliography

About the Author

About the Publisher

There are few things more rewarding than getting together with a group of like-minded people and discussing a good book. Book club meetings, at their best, are vibrant, passionate affairs. Each member will bring along a different perspective and ideally there will be heated debate.

A surprising number of book club members, however, report that their meetings have been a disappointment. Even though their group loved the particular book they were discussing, they could think of astonishingly little to say about it. Failing to find interesting discussion angles for a book is the single most common reason for book group discussions to fall flat. Most book groups only meet once a month and a lacklustre meeting is frustrating for everyone.

HarperCollins Book Club Guides were born out of a passion for reading groups. Packed with information, they take the hard work out of preparing for a meeting and ensure that your book group discussions never run dry. How you choose to use the guides is entirely up to you. The author biography and style sections provide useful background information which may be interesting to share with your group at the beginning of your meeting. The all-important list of discussion questions, which will probably form the core of your meeting, can be found towards the end of this guide. To support your responses to the discussion questions, you may find it helpful to refer to the ‘themes’ and ‘character’ sections.

A detailed plot synopsis is provided as an aide-memoire if you need to recap on the finer points of the plot. There is also a quick quiz - a fun way to test your knowledge and bring your discussion to a close. Finally, if this was a book that you particularly enjoyed, the guide concludes with a list of books similar in style or subject matter.

Be warned, this guide contains spoilers. Please do not be tempted to read it before you have read the original novel as plot surprises will be well and truly ruined.

Joe Heap was born in Bradford in 1986, the son of two teachers. In 2004, he won the Foyle Young Poet award, and his poetry has been published in several pamphlets. He studied for a BA in English Literature at Stirling University and a Masters in Creative Writing at Glasgow University. Joe lives in London with his long-suffering girlfriend, short-suffering baby, and much-aggrieved cat. The Rules of Seeing is his first novel.

PART ONE – SHAPES

Square

January

On New Year’s Day, Kate Tomassi is in the kitchen of the flat she shares with her husband, Tony. When Tony takes his wallet out, Kate notices a white square of paper flutter to the floor and picks it up. Desperate to retrieve the piece of paper, Tony lunges towards her, and Kate defensively steps back, tripping over a box of wine bottles. She falls and is knocked unconscious when her head hits the kitchen floor. Later, Kate wakes up on the sofa with a throbbing head and realises that Tony has left her alone in the flat.

Meanwhile, Jillian Safinova (known to almost everyone as Nova) meets up with her brother, Alex, who is a doctor. Nova has been blind since birth and Alex excitedly tells her about an innovative new operation that could cure her blindness. Although the operation has an 80 per cent success rate, Nova is ambivalent about the news, questioning whether people who have had the surgery are ‘happy’.