1. Discuss Herculine's journey and the American setting of SPIRITS. Also, what role does water, or the sea, play in the novel? What might such a "border element" represent?
   
   
2. How does Herculine evolve as a character? How do you see Herculine—as primarily male, female or a mixture of both? How does her adoption of male and female attire affect your perception of the character? Does Herculine's behaviour change in accord with her dress? When—if ever—is Herculine in disguise?
   
   
3. How do the historical figures in SPIRITS affect your reading of the novel? Who are those figures? Does the melding of the historical and the fictional enhance or detract from your enjoyment of the novel?
   
   
4. As a reader, do you find yourself more drawn to the urban or rural settings of the novel? Explain.
   
   
5. List some of the gothic elements of SPIRITS. How do such elements—be they character types, settings, language—contribute to the story? Detract from it?
   
   
6. Discuss THE BOOK OF SPIRITS in terms of its sets of characters. For example, in THE BOOK OF SHADOWS, there were Mother Marie-des-Anges and Sister Claire de Sazilly, Father Louis and Madeleine, and Asmodei and Sebastiana. In SPIRITS, which characters comprise similar sets?
   
   
7. Though SPIRITS is written in a nineteenth-century style, does it feel modern? How might Herculine—of any of the other characters—differ if the story were set in the 18th century, or today?
   
   
8. Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea is, on one level, the story of a fisherman's struggle with his catch; but on another, deeper level, the book asks much weightier questions of the reader. Discuss the character of Herculine as a metaphor? What might hermaphrodism and witchcraft mean in the context of the novel?
   
   
9. Who are the "spirits" referred to in the novel's title? Are they comparable to the "shadows" of the first novel in the trilogy? Making use of another definition of the word, what is the "spirit" of the sequel? Is it embodied in Herculine, solely?
   
   
10. Where do you see the story going in the final book of the trilogy? Where do you imagine Herculine as the third book begins? How would you like to leave her at its end?