Swan Song

Before you opened the book, what was your own first memory of Diana (a photo, a broadcast, a magazine on a kitchen table), and what mood does that memory carry for you?

Settle in with your mug for a second: which small, ordinary detail of the Spencer siblings' childhood (a room, a pet, a game, a nickname) made you smile most?

This is a brother remembering a sister rather than a historian remembering a princess. How did that change the temperature of the reading for you, and did it feel like being let into a family kitchen or into someone's private diary?

Charles Spencer writes about the particular closeness and friction of siblings. Which passage sent you straight back to your own brother, sister, or cousin, and what did you want to tell them afterward?

Big houses can be grand and lonely at the same time. Where in this book did you feel warmth and where did you feel a draft, and did any of it match a house from your own childhood?

The book moves between a private girl and a public figure. What in these pages comforted you about her, and was there anything you found yourself quietly protective of while reading?

Memoirs written long after a loss are partly an act of repair. Where did you sense the author writing to set something right or to say something he wishes he had said sooner, and did reading that feel healing or tender-sore for you?

By the time you closed the book, had your sense of Diana shifted from icon toward sister, or did the two stay separate in your mind? What do you think you will carry from this reading in a year?