None of them is, “What does it mean?”
You’ve just finished a novel. You want to put your thoughts about it in writing. What questions can you ask to best help you do that
In one word, what is this novel about?
It could be love, war, money, adventure, freedom, addiction, or survival. Limiting yourself to one word will force you to think about the concept of the story, not just its plot. A novel isn’t “about” a man and a woman falling in love and then getting separated by war. The novel is about “love.”
What one passage from the novel best demonstrate what the novel’s about?
Your first question is a clouds question. This next question gets you into the dirt. You’ll have to engage with the particular words from a particular page from the novel. If your one word is appropriate, you should have plenty of scenes to choose from. Now, you’re trying to figure out what your novel’s author had to say about that word. Is romantic love a good thing? Does it come with its own troubles? Is war worth fighting? Is survival only possible if you have love? Finding a particular set of lines from the novel and engaging with the author’s words will help you answer these questions.
How does the passage connect to the rest of the novel?
You don’t have time to write about every single piece of the novel. Instead, you’ve picked one passage to represent the novel as a whole. Still it’s important to zoom out to catch a glimpse of the entire novel after you’ve done a deep dive on a single scene. How exactly did that scene contribute to the novel’s overall effect? If you can go from clouds (one word) to dirt (one scene) to clouds again (the novel as a whole), you’ll have done the reflection necessary to making the most of the novel you’ve read.