Welcome to Quill Quotes Book Club’s discussion of The Last Conversation by Paul Tremblay! We hope you enjoyed the book. Note, that this discussion covers the full book and will contain spoilers, so if you haven’t finished reading yet you may want to go back to The Forward Collection Summary Page for the other book discussions.
Brooke’s Thoughts
I didn’t hate this one but I didn’t love it either. It was very middle of the road for me. I wasn’t surprised that he was a clone or that she had cloned him multiple times either. I did find it interesting that she asked for consent every time and every time he said no but she did it anyway. While this story wasn’t my favorite I would potentially try another of Paul Tremblay’s books. I think I was looking for more horror so I gave this story 3 stars. Steven Strait has a nice voice so I enjoyed the narration part at least.
Favorite Quote
“Soon. You keep saying ‘soon.’ I don’t think you and I share that word’s meaning.”
– Paul Tremblay, The Last Conversation
Kevin’s Thoughts
The author is very descriptive and I found it easy to picture the scene and his thoughts, so I enjoyed that. However, I also found him being a clone or experiment of some kind predictable and it was pretty clear he wasn’t the first. It seemed like Anne was somehow involved in the research that created the pandemic, so I hope her cloning experiments are also searching for a cure at least. She’s also likely been alone a long time to have built nearly a whole replica house. I’m not a big fan of horror so was glad this story wasn’t scary. This one’s my least favorite of the collection so far and I gave it 3 stars.
Favorite Quote
“You keep asking because you don’t like her answer. You keep asking because maybe you are not asking the correct way. This is your fear: you are not asking the correct questions and you will remain in this room until you do so.”
– Paul Tremblay, The Last Conversation
The Last Conversation Discussion Prompts/Questions
Feel free to comment whatever thoughts and questions you have! But if you aren’t sure where to start, consider some of the prompts/questions below:
- Should you be able to clone yourself? Do you need consent to clone someone else?
- Was the book scary to you?
- At what point did you predict he was a clone?
- Did you read or listen to the book? Which do you prefer? Did you like the narrator?
- Share a favorite quote
Commenting
We can’t wait to hear from you in the comments! Be aware, some comments may be held for our review to reduce spam and won’t appear on the site right away, but we’ll do our best to review quickly. If you have any trouble commenting, please let us know on social media or via email to hello@quillquotes.com so we can try to help.
If you’d like to keep track of the discussion or replies to your comment via email, be sure to change the dropdown above the Post Comment button. You can also use the checkbox to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us if you haven’t already! You should receive an email to confirm, so please check your junk/spam folder and add hello@quillquotes.com to your safe-sender list if you don’t receive anything.
We hope you enjoy this discussion and join us again next week!
I feel like we’re missing something. She seems to genuinely care whether or not he consents to be cloned, and to be angry that all of his previous copied selves also said no. What if the original was the only one who said yes, and she’s working her way through the limited number of copies she has (“blanks”), running out of time, looking for one that will consent to a next generation of clones? Doesn’t quite make sense, but it seems like it must be something like this.