53 pages • 1 hour read
Benjamin StevensonEveryone in My Family Has Killed Someone
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Essay Topics
The title’s proclamation—Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone—turns out to be true. How do the “killings” differ from each other? Which ones are justifiable or forgivable, and which are not? Support your argument with evidence from the text.
Ernie, in breaking the fourth wall, explicitly calls attention to the trope of the unreliable narrator. To what extent is he trustworthy? To what extent is Ernie able to be objective, and where does his involvement in the events of the plot prevent him from being completely impartial?
How does the setting impact the novel’s plot? Consider not only the action’s location but also the time of year and other shifting factors.
As the plot unfolds, Ernie offers clues that are essential in solving the mystery. Which of these details are explicit clues when the reader first encounters them? Are there clues that are only detectable in hindsight? What information does Ernie intentionally withhold from the reader, and why?
How would the novel’s plot or conflict shift if conveyed through a different narrator? Which of the Cunninghams would you choose as this alternate narrator, and why?
Jeremy Cunningham attempts to justify his murders as his way of truly joining the Cunningham family. How is his approach to integrating into the Cunningham family flawed? Consider his murders and how he processes them in light of the theme of Familial Loyalty and Betrayal.
At the end of the novel, Ernie says, “I’d been so desperate to make a family, to force Erin to make me one, that I’d forgotten the one that had formed around me” (355). How does the novel define “family”? How does each family member’s distinct perception of what family means contribute to that overall definition of “family”? How does Ernie’s definition of “family” shift over the course of the weekend?
Consider how compassion and empathy are at work in the novel. The Quest for the Truth is applicable not only to the main surface-level mysteries but also to the emotional mysteries of each family member. How does the Cunningham family change overall from the start of the novel to the end?
One of Stevenson’s aims for the novel is to create a modern version of well-known mystery novels, such as those by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ronald Knox, and Agatha Christie. Read a novel or set of short stories by one of these writers. What changes would need to be made to that specific work in order to modernize it? How might that be achieved?
Among the Cunninghams are four married couples. Choose one of the novel’s key themes—The Quest for the Truth, Familial Loyalty and Betrayal, or Righting Past Wrongs—and discuss how the dynamics of this theme differ between two or more sets of married couples. How does marriage add a layer of complexity not present in other relationships in the novel?
