How To Read A Book by Monica Wood. New York: Mariner Books, 2024. 280 pages. ****
Synopsis from Amazon
"Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher.
Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest.
Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn’t yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.
When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland—Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman—their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways."
How to Read a Book is my Book Club's choice for January. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. I am a fast reader, the result of wanting to read many books and feeling pressured by time. Wood gives me pause in the way I read and skim passages, she says it best " The writer writes the words. And the book, the unique and unrepeatable book, doesn't exist until the given reader meets the writer on the page." This heartwarming story of friendship, forgiveness, and second chances, provides many topics for book club discussions. Harriet's (affectionately called Bookie by the inmates) love of books and reading is evident in her quest to choose the "right" books to engage the inmates. She lives by example to the women she leads in the group. I recommend this book for all adult readers.
MONICA WOOD is a novelist, memoirist, and playwright; the 2024 recipient of the Sara Josepha Hale award for excellence in New England literary arts; the 2019 recipient of the Maine Humanities Council Carlson Prize for contributions to the public humanities; and the 2016 recipient of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Distinguished Achievement Award for contributions to the literary arts. She lives in Portland. For more info - http://www.monicawood.com/about.html
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Henry the Highland Coo has joined the girls in reviewing books for 2025!
