In the two novels, what events and characters lead Edouard and Wayne-Annabel to their

perceptions of their own identities? By what means are these perceptions changed over time?

“We cannot control the world we are born into, but we can control the people we become.” –

Sarah Gadon, defending Annabel in CBC’s Canada Reads debate.

Can Edouard and Wayne control the people they will become? Is it naïve to say the worlds outside

and inside us can be kept separate in this way?

Both novels address the idea of confronting the ‘other’ within ourselves. Do you identify with

Wayne-Annabel or with Edouard? In what ways?

How are the two dance scenes (The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré, pp.180-188; Annabel, pp. 272-

282) used to develop the characters of Edouard and Wayne-Annabel?

The narrator of The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré says: “In exploring Edouard’s death, I began to search his life. It is the only part worth saving. I see now that I only coveted and possessed him.” Characters in both novels are invested in ‘possessing’, or exercising a certain ownership of, both Edouard and Wayne-Annabel: Doctor Death, the travelling sideshow and circus owners, the narrator Jean; Treadway, Thomasina, Derek Warford. What are the functions of this investment in each novel?

Wayne-Annabel becomes a ‘teaching case’ for a specialist and his eager interns in St John’s. Edouard’s body is being investigated by an anatomist determined to discover the physical reasons for his condition. Compare the ways in which medicine intervenes in Edouard’s and Wayne-Annabel’s lives. “Gaspard had always loved his son. He wished then that he had never spawned a giant.” In what ways do you think Gaspard, Edouard’s father, and Treadway, Wayne-Annabel’s, try to separate ‘who’ their children are from ‘what’ they are?

“…I think 10 years from now we’ll be in a place where this story might seem…hopelessly old-

fashioned. But it might not, either…in ordinary life, in 10 years’ time, I don’t feel that we will have

evolved in the same way that I feel the general, overarching cultural perspective will have evolved.

To be a kid growing up in a small town school…It’s worse than it was, not better, if you don’t fit into

the norm.” – Kathleen Winter

In Edouard’s time, being a ‘freak’ has a different connotation from in Wayne-Annabel’s time. How

might their stories be different had they been born in a different time? How are the words used to

describe Edouard and Wayne-Annabel evocative of the times in which the stories take place, and

how do you as a reader react to those descriptions?

In The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré, the narrator’s friend Christien wonders, “What are you

trying to save him from?” Are the authors trying to ‘save’ Wayne-Annabel and Edouard?

The 2014 Canada Reads theme was books that have the power to change us. Do you feel

‘changed’ by Annabel and The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré? In what ways?

Reading Guide produced by Coteau Books, 2014

More from House of Anansi on Annabel

More from Coteau Books on The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré