Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Notes

Want to read with us? Our Fall Schedule

A little background: Our book group’s origin was my final course before full retirement from Mills College in the Spring of 2020; it was a wonderful collaboration between a Mills English course “Coming to Age” and the Downtown Oakland Senior Center, in which students and seniors met together. The pandemic cut short our in-person discussions, and we turned to Zoom. After the semester ended, members of the senior center proposed we continue on Zoom on our own.

At first, I continued to select the books and was responsible for coming up with discussion prompts, but over time our process changed in wonderful ways. For example, at each meeting now, every member shows up prepared to call our attention to a particular passage or to consider a question or theme. We never know in advance where our discussions will lead, and it is wonderful to note the similarities and differences between what captures our attention and how we have responded to the passages, and texts, we have chosen.

We meet in sessions that generally run about eight meetings (or four per month). We meet twice a month over the session, and we all participate in selecting books. Before the end of each session, we all submit titles and brief descriptions of two or three books we have read and recommend. Two members, Patricia and Carole, helpfully type up the list and send a group email. Then, at the session’s final meeting, we vote to select eight books for the next. 

We focus primarily on fiction (novels or short story collections)by women  that feature an old woman as protagonist. Occasionally,  we select fiction by a man or we digress from fiction to a collection of essays. However, over the five years we have been meeting, most of our selections fall into our original category: fiction by women with older women protagonists.

If you’d like to read along,  our fall/winter session is August 11-November 24.

August 11:  Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame by Olivia Ford. 2024; 384 pages.

August 25:  Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon. 

2018; 372 pages.

September 8:  Erotic Stories of Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal. 2017; 304 pages.

September 22: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. 2012; 389 pages.

October 13:  Cat Brushing and Other Stories by Jane Campbell; 2022. 245 pages.

October 27: Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt; 2021. 208 pages.

November 10: An Unnecessary Woman by Rabith Almeddine; 2012; 291 pages.

November 24: Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. 2024; 320 pages.

Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Chat

Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy (2024)

Following the loss of her husband and son, 83 year old Helen Cartwright returns to the village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss. She retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit: “Each day was an impersonation of the one before with only a slight shuffle–as though even for death there is a queue.”

Then, one cold winter night, a chance encounter with a mouse sets Helen on a surprising journey. Over the course of two weeks in a small English town, this reclusive widow discovers an unexpected reason to live.

A Southern Review of Books reviewer notes that “Booy depicts aging and atrophy, loneliness and invisibility, with compassion,” and we largely agreed. Our responses to the book were mostly positive, from simply loving it to enjoying its fairytale qualities. The least positive was “I didn’t hate it” from a reader who prefers more character development and would have liked to know more of Helen’s inner life. 

A  reader in the group pointed out the effects of the author’s portrayal in minute detail of the repetition in Helen’s day, including the order of TV shows, the blurring of news from which she feels disconnected. We brought in many of our own observations about the invisibility of the elderly,  the difficulty of making new friends late in life, and the value of community.

It is no longer Helen’s world to think about. And in her mind it is the same news over and over again, with the only difference being that people think they’re hearing it for the first time. When there is a string of robberies in the village, Helen thinks, “But what does she have to steal? This is a place where everything of value has already been taken.”

We were surprised when we learned Helen had been a famous cardiologist in Australia, and we wondered what prompted her to return to her birthplace after so many decades. We wondered if she had friends, and noting Helen’s remarks about Dr. Jamal’s kindness as so different from her own way with patients, we considered that she may have been as single minded and unkind as Dr. Swenson in State of Wonder.

I think we all found her relationship with the small mouse heart warming, regardless of its probability. We may have laughed a bit at her sudden conversion to vegetarianism, but we agreed on the need for relationships with other people and were happy to see her come out of her depressive isolation and desire to die.

Stories such as Sipsworth can transport us away from the quotidian dailiness of our lives, just as the mouse transports Helen, opening us to delight and hope beyond the chaos of the broken world.  Like the fairytales of our childhoods, such stories, however fantastic, can awaken us to the power of kindness and connection and care,

We were a bit amused that this series included three tales of elderly women and animals from the octopus of Brightness to the parrots of How to Read a Book to the small mouse of Sipsworth. Common to all three of these very different stories was a move, through a connection with the animal, from loneliness and loss to newfound community and possibility.

Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Chat

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett’s sixth novel, State of Wonder (2011), tells the story of a pharmacologist, Dr. Marina Singh, who travels into the Amazonian jungle to spend time with the indigenous Lakashi people and search for information on her colleague who has been reported dead.

State of Wonder is heavy with literary parallels (to Henry James, to Greek myth), but its strongest literary links are to Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel (also the basis for the 1979 film, Apocalypse Now) which follows riverboat captain Marlow on his voyage through the African Congo at the height of brutal European colonialism, obsessed with meeting Kurtz, the trader who violently abuses his power. Patchett replaces Conrad’s cast of male characters with women. (Dr. Swenson is her book’s Kurtz and Dr. Marina Singh its Marlow).

Dr. Singh is a research scientist who does unremarkable research on cholesterol in Minnesota and is having an unremarkable affair with the company’s C.E.O. On the book’s second page, she learns that her research partner, Dr. Anders Eckman, has died of a fever in a remote part of Brazil.

The New York Times notes how “crystalline and exquisite” Patchett’s prose can be:


Marina suddenly grasps why people faced with sudden shock are often advised to sit down. “There was inside of her a very modest physical collapse, not a faint but a sort of folding, as if she were an extension ruler and her ankles and knees and hips were all being brought together at closer angles.”

I first read this novel on a family vacation soon after its publication. I read it at the urging of each of my daughters–who are separated in age by 15 years. By the second page, I was enthralled in the plot and the prose. Over a decade later and now dependent on audio books, I was delighted when our book group chose to read a novel which I thought I remembered completely. In listening, I became aware of just how much had slipped my memory, and I enjoyed revisiting Patchett’s glorious prose.

I really enjoyed the discussion of the novel with the book group, as each reader called attention to details that lingered in our minds. We raised questions, including whether or not Marina was pregnant when she reached home (Patchett in a UTube lecture at Duke University commented that the hint in the novel is Marina’s switch from craving the tree bark to leaving it behind when she left the Amazon as Lakashi women lose their craving for the bark when they become pregnant).

We discussed the conclusion’s inconclusiveness: wondering if Marina would continue working with Anders; deciding she would never tell him the child might be his; assuming the bland affair with Mr. Fox ended when he spoke of possibly losing two employees in the Amazon, revealing no differentiation between her and Anders.
We talked a bit about the young Bohemian couple whose job was to protect Dr. Swenson from the outside, particularly from the pharmaceutical company providing her funding.

While we were glad Dr. Swenson finally praised her former student, we judged her sharply for her lack of empathy and for her single minded focus on the Amazon research of her own menter, Dr. Rap.

Patchett has revealed in interviews that she wanted to write a novel with strong female characters that was not about romance or victimization. She wanted to portray a relationship between a student and her mentor and to leave her readers with unsolved questions about ethics and morality. 


Like the Times reviewer, we were, however,  in large part most taken not by the plot, or even these large questions, but by Patchett’s writing itself, which we found luminous and powerful. We agreed we were glad we read this novel, and we all preferred it to Tom Lake which we read last year.

Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Chat

How to Read a Book: A Novel Monica wood

“The perfect pick to really light a fire under my book club, and yours….A reminder that goodness, and books, can still win in this world.” —New York Times Book Review

Monica Wood’s 2024 novel of fresh starts follows Violet, a 20-something woman fresh out of prison; Harriet, a retiree who leads a book club inside the women’s prison; and Frank, the retired machinist whose wife was killed in the hit-and-run for which Violet served time.

When I asked our book group what word they would associate with Wood’s novel, the first word was “forgiveness.” 

Reading about Harriet’s careful preparation for her weekly book group discussions in the women’s prison, I initially felt somewhat self-conscious about my comparatively less arduous preparation. Harriet prepared discussion questions and tried them out on her niece Sylvia. She even began each session with a short affirmation. 

But then I reassured myself that the members of the Downtown Oakland Senior Center book group are experienced readers. Our meetings follow a structure we have found useful: everyone in our group shows up prepared to call our attention to a particular passage, whether a favorite or one they find confusing or frustrating, and explains why we chose it. I am the convenor, but I do not control the conversation.  

What both groups have in common is the ability to escape into a book, to treat the characters as “fellow creatures” in Harriet’s words, and to respect one another and our differing opinions, in our case less from radically different life experiences, although certainly we have different paths, but more from our differing responses to the reading. It is interesting to consider, despite the general contours of our lives, how those responses are shaped by experience.

We appreciated Wood’s characters with their resolutely human gifts, kindnesses, and flaws. We appreciated that no characters are presented as completely evil or saintly, allowing us to experience them as fully realized.

  We liked the portrayal of second chances, not only for Violet but also for Harriet and Frank, both widowed, both capable of mature love with partners less judgemental  than their original spouses. Although Violet’s sister and Frank’s daughter both misjudge them, we have a sense they too may eventually be able to forgive. 

As in Beautiful Creature, we were taken with the non-human creatures as well, in this case African grey parrots. After her release from prison, Violet is hired as a lab assistant for  a research professor who studies  African grey parrot parrots, known for their amazing ability to mimic human speech and capable of memorizing hundreds of words. One of the delightful features of the novel is its description of the parrots, and Wood provides bibliographic links for readers who want to learn more about these fascinating birds.

The two novels are also similar in the way the authors tie up loose ends in the conclusions: both provide happy endings that, however improbable, are satisfying and just within the realm of the possible, avoiding the saccharine, thanks to realistic characterization. Violet’s coda at the end of the novel, with its account of her failed early marriage and the professor who takes advantage of her, reminds us not to give up on ourselves or others. Violet’s eventual contentenments–her much happier second marriage, three children, and grandchildren who all enjoyed Ollie–are pathways that seemed impossible in her early life.

I may investigate Wood’s other fiction when I yearn for kindness in ordinary fellow creatures and the possibility of second chances and forgiveness and love in our harried, chaotic and often callous world. 

Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Chat

Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine  (2023)

  • Winner of the 2023 Khayrallah Book Prize
  • Finalist for the 2024 CLMP Firecracker Award for Debut Fiction
  • Shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing

Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine’s debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In ten excellent stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more.

The New York Times review beautifully articulates how I feel about these stories of immigrant experience:

Dearborn’s characters are split on what part of America is worth acquiring, what part must be resisted and how deep anyone is allowed to dream at all.

We had a good discussion, as always with this terrific group, and we agreed that these compelling stories drew us in, and we all wanted to know more.

However, I needed more help than usual from the group. My beloved dog scratched my eye, a particularly frustrating event given my already poor vision, so I could not manage taking notes on this collection, leading discussion, or taking notes on the group chat for this blog post. After the discussion, I asked people to send me notes and this blog is a group effort!

Patricia, to whom we are indebted for her recommendation of the book, opened the discussion; and several members sent me notes afterward. This week was even more than usual a clear demonstration of the value of community, an apt theme for this collection!

Several members talked about the way the author uses humor even when his stories deal with pain and regret. All of us were struck by the story of “Speedo” with its portrayal of humor and nostalgia as well as the charm of a modern “peddler” con man. Members reminded me how we appreciated, as a group, the “diversity of ethnic background, circumstances and personalities presented in the stories” and reminded me how we applauded the refreshing frankness about sexuality coupled with humor. We discussed the complex portrayals of marriages in the stories, which while located in specific local space, varied as in all spaces and groups between the good, the meh, and the abusive and ugly.

We discussed the stories’ references to the recent past, when Dearborn was a typical mostly white suburban town and barricaded itself against protests in Detroit in contrast to its now status as a vibrant community with a large immigrant population. The references to ICE are chillingly current.

The collection includes a variety of immigrant experiences and attitudes: from those who are able to return for a visit to their home country, those who cannot, and those who have no desire — either to return or in some cases, of the generation born in the states, to visit a country they have never seen. We hear of the longings of place: whether a past homeland or a dreamed future one, in Manhattan or Los Angeles.

The collection provides food for thought regarding traditional values and social relationships as they shift between nations and generations. We wondered about the effects — both toward less and more tolerance–as people navigated different value systems. We considered the ways the collection invites us to consider how success is valued in different cultural spaces. Does the desire for economic power motivate moving? Or is it created by being in the US? Or both?The collection presents such questions and issues without editorial judgment. Instead, the confident narrative lets us see how the characters are feeling.
Despite our varying connections with Lebanon, most of us knew little of the Lebanese community in Dearborn.

The two collections of short stories in our current series veer from our usual selections that focus on older female protagonists. Although we intend to return to that early focus, we all agree that these stories led to important insights both about immigrant communities, whether in Danticat’s portrayals of the Haitian diaspora or Zeineddine’s stories of the Lebanese diaspora, and about the ways in which cultural values shift, personalities abide, and community and tolerance and care are essential.

Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Chat

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez 2019 Virago

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When the narrator unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the large Great Dane he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, and by the threat of eviction the dog harbors, as dogs are prohibited in her building.

Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog”s care, and determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, the narrator comes dangerously close to unravelling, but, unsurprisingly perhaps, the novel is about the deep bounds of friendship its title suggests.

This book received a hugely positive critical response: it was listed as one of the New York Times Best books of the 21st century; won the 2018 National Book award, and was described generally in superlatives as a moving novel of grief and emotional depth, a delightful and delicious read.

And reader, upon first listen? I did not like it one bit.

When I noted my lack of enthusiasm, someone suggested that since the writing had been compared with that of one of my most favorite writers, Virginia Woolf, they were surprised I had such a grumpy reaction to it.

Both Woolf and Nunez write about death, about grief, and ultimately about writing itself. What appeals to me in Woolf’s characters, the artist Lily Briscoe and her plight, and not Nunez’s unnamed writer? Initially, I thought perhaps it was a matter of character development. Woolf’s Mrs. Ramsay and Lily interact, seem real somehow in a way Nunez’s narrator did not for me.  But is that really true? I am not sure. 

Perhaps it is a matter of prose style, or referentiality. I was a bit irritated at the abundance of literary allusions, even though I recognized most of them; however, some of the group enjoyed them. 

Perhaps, and here I am most sure, it was the masculinist space of the writing world she describes. The novel is fully engaged in the world of the professional writer and the profession of writing and teaching writing. I was both put off and bored by the male womanizing writing professor and the near fandom of his many students, particularly the women. This reminds me of a world I have been proximal to but have never been interested, let alone been fascinated by. I find the heated self conscious and self important literariness decidedly unerotic and intellectually dull. I cared only about  Apollo, the great Dane rather than any of the human characters that populated the novel.

In contrast, some members appreciated the friendly relation between the woman and her mentor, a friendship primarily based on intellectual conversation and shared intelligence. Despite, or perhaps because of, their different professional alignments, many found relatable truths in the novel’s portrayals of the friendship of a writer and her mentor. 

While I remain unmoved by the mentor relationship or the literary world the novel engages, with some consideration and attention to the groups’ insightful observations, I began to realize I had missed what most interested them, and what in retrospect I realize is the novel’s great strength: its meditations on grief, and particularly its moving engagement with grief after a suicide. Here are two quotes about grief that moved readers:

Nothing has changed. It’s still very simple. I miss him. I miss him every day. I miss him very much.

But how would it be if that feeling was gone?

I would not want that to happen.

I told the shrink: it would not make me happy at all not to miss him anymore.

What we miss – what we lose and what we mourn – isn’t it this that makes us who, deep down, we truly are. To say nothing of what we wanted in life but never got to have.

It is this thematic center of the novel that touched most of the group.

On the whole, members of the group are glad we read this novel, and because our experiences differed so much, our discussion was lively. 

Some members considered the entire account of Apollo a narrative conceit to make sense of her mentor’s suicide attempt and are convinced the reality is the embedded account of her visit to the man with the dachshund who survived the attempted suicide and spent time in a psychiatric hospital. 

This is a novel about writing and what it does; passages comment for example on the role of writing and memory:

You write a thing down because you’re hoping to get a hold on it. You write about experiences partly to understand what they mean, partly not to lose them to time. To oblivion. But there’s always the danger of the opposite happening. Losing the memory of the experience itself to the memory of writing about it. Like people whose memories of places they’ve traveled to are in fact only memories of the pictures they took there. In the end, writing and photography probably destroy more of the past than they ever preserve.

We talked about the many ways we use writing to process and record our experience and feelings, from private diaries and journals to memoirs or for accounts we have inherited or are creating for others.

The Friend touched each of us and led to lively discussion. I may even need to read it again.

Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Chat

Edwidge Danticat Everything Inside (2019)

Set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, the short story collection Everything Inside, explores how people come to terms with death, both their loved ones’ and their own. We agreed with the publisher’s comment that the collection offers “vividly imagined stories about community, family, and love” 

Danticat is a two-time National Book Award finalist, MacArthur Genius fellow, Neustadt laureate, and winner of scores of other prestigious literary honors. NPR describes the book as “ a stunning collection that features some of the best writing of Danticat’s brilliant career.”

We had decided that each of our group members would choose one story on which to comment. When we met, we discovered that our choices were split mostly between two stories: “ Sunrise, Sunet” and “Seven Stories.” All of us commented that the story we chose was so heartbreaking that we almost did not return to read more, but, we all would return, compelled by Danticat’s beautiful prose, her precise descriptions, her memorable characters. 

We talked about our observations of how she created male characters striking for their gentleness. For example, in “Sunrise,Sunset” the elderly grandfather lovingly tried to protect his wife and hide her dementia from others and the young husband tried to understand his wife’s disinterest in their baby, though he had no understanding of what we recognized as post partum depression. We shared our experiences with the ravages of dementia on families, and we recalled a similar kindness in our own lives or in other literature; for example, in the Madonnas of Leningrad which some of us read in the group some years ago. 

Each character, no matter how flawed, was legible in some way that did not exclude them from care. We considered how Danticat’s portrayals are kind, even loving, and noted that, like Tillie Olsen’s portrayals of suffering characters, Danticat cares about her characters; none are villains or beyond compassion.I have often encountered the notion that reading fiction helps to create empathy. Whether or not that is true, we discussed how we felt that Danticat’s stories insist on our empathy not only for her specific characters but for our communities.

We were delighted to have a visitor join our discussion: Oakland librarian Nabilla Mohamed, who helps our members locate books, sometimes even having them delivered to the member’s local branch. Nabilia read Danticat’s stories and shared her insights about the experience of homelessness that haunts every person who has moved from a homeland to a new country, whether by choice or necessity. She shared about attempts to maintain the best of one’s homeland culture, the values, the foods and spoke of the experience of always feeling to some extent as an outsider in both places even when one has the means to return for visits. We all wanted her to join our group despite her young age, and assured her she would always be a welcome guest.

The LARB review comments of the collection that “This is existentialist fiction: everyone is exiled in their own suffering, we can’t fully know another’s pain although we can touch it briefly, and our full essence — everything inside — is not manifest until the moment of death.” While this failure of total knowledge is of course true, that “brief touching” is meaningful, and we were grateful for the ways Danticat’s collection both exemplified that meaning in prose and in our own personal experiences that her prose invited us to share. 

Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Chat

February 7 2025

Our winter 2025 season opened with a lively discussion of A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman (2012), a novel about which a number of members shared strongly held opinions. One reader pointed out her disappointment—-not only in the novel but more importantly, its divergence from the stated original focus of our book group: the book is neither written by a woman nor focused on an old woman. When I admitted that members had recommended two few on-topic books for t this season, she reminded me that she submitted a lengthy list. She had been unaware that we only consider books a member has read (we diverged from this “rule” when we agreed, prior to its publication, to read Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything because we so loved her other books. 

Our resultant disappointment in Strout’s most recent novel coupled with a discussion regarding our shifting from our founding goals resulted in our determination to dip into that lengthy list of on-topic books prior to our next round of selections.

To that end, please send me your suggestions of books you discover that are written by women and focus on older women! You can see our list to note what we have read previously.

Now back to A Man Called Ove,originally published in Sweden In 2012  and then translated by Henning Koch and published in English in 2013. The novel was on the New York Times best seller llist for 42 weeks. It has been adapted for two films, one in Swedish and a second in English.

The story follows a miserable, grumpy, elderly man living alone on a suburban street. Bitter over and still grieving the loss of his wife, Ove, alone and misanthropic, is disillusioned with the modern world and determines to end his life.  Described by his neighbors as “the bitter neighbor from hell” he eventually strikes up a friendship with a boisterous young family who moves in next door. His pregnant neighbor Parveneh, keeps interrupting his solitary life with her daily challenges. As you may anticipate,these multiple interruptions eventually re-connect Ove with the joys of human connection. The plot is obvious from the beginning, and members either  found it boring and derivative or appreciated the ease with which the plot  structured reading and the promise of a feel good ending..

The Kirkus review notes: “The book opens helpfully with the following characterizations about its protagonist: ‘Ove is fifty nine. He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars  and his forefinger a policeman’s torch.’ What the book takes its time revealing is that this dyed-inn-the-wool curmudgeon has a heart of solid gold.

We generally sympathized with Ove and the hardships he had endured since childhood: the loss of both his parents, his loss of a job for refusing to be a snitch, the loss of his house to fire,his unborn child, and finally the loss of his beloved wife, Sonja whose upbeat personality balanced his curmudgeonly take on life. Some of us attributed his attitudes to grief; others said he was born into the wrong time, and we agreed that as readers “of a certain age,” we shared some of his complaints about the ineptitude of ordinary people to make their own household repairs, to mend a bicycle, or to back up a vehicle. We applauded his integrity and disagreed some about whether he had a heart of gold or just a sense of responsibility

The general tone of many reviews and the views of many of our group align with this feel good take on the novel. However, some members of our group wholeheartedly disagreed, frustrated with how the novel removes his own responsibility for his emotional disconnection, and provides little reason for his wife to have loved him except a tired adage that she saw something underneath his surface lack of empathy or kindness.  The novel also leverages the stereotype of the repressed, isolated Swede enlivened by the warm, open woman of color and her “chaotic” energy. 

The discussion was lively, and we all agreed that in this exhausting moment, the sort of “gentle ease” of the novel made it an easy read. We agreed that we will continue to look for books by women that focus on “old ladies” as we had decided to do five years ago, when the group began.

Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

THE WINTER & SPRING LIST

Winter/Spring 2025 Downtown Oakland Senior Center Book Group with Dr. Ruth Saxton

Thanks to Carole Glanzer for organizing!

January 27- May 12 (8 meetings) 2nd and 4th Mondays of each month. 1:00- 2:30 PM on Zoom  Note: First session: January 27

1/27    A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, 2019, 368 pgs. A grumpy 59-year- old man learn that life is worth living, even in the face of loss and adversity. A testament to the power of friendship and community. Rave reviews.

2/10    Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat, 2019, 240 pgs. (stories) Danticat is a master of economy, with a remarkable ability to build singular fictional worlds in a matter of sentences. Examines how migration to and from the Caribbean shapes her characters.            Spare, evocative, moving.

2/24    The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, 2018, 224 pgs. Quietly brilliant and darkly funny, aggressively unsentimental interrogation of grief, writing and the human-canine bond.

3/10    Dearborn by Gassen Zeineddine, 2023, 240 pgs. (stories) Stories full of humor and warmth about an Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan. Irresistable, warm, funny and unrelenting voice.

3/24    How to Read a Book by Monica Wood, 2024, 283 pgs. After accidentally causing the death while driving , a Maine woman does time in prison. The prison bookclub and its members are her solace before she reestablishes her life and defines herself on the outside. A finely wrought story, beautifully told, with deeply memorable characters.

4/14    State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, 2011, 368 pgs. A pharmacologist travels into the Amazonian heart of darkness in this spellbinder. Nail-biting action scenes are balanced by contemplative moments that give this gripping novel spiritual and    metaphysical depth, right down to the final startling plot twist. Thrilling,            disturbing and moving in equal measures

4/28    Ladies Who Lunch by Lore Segal, 2024, 128 pgs. (stories) These deceptively simple stories, about older women who meet for lunch, glide with a clear-eyed calm and the grace of a writer’s lifelong career to inform them. Gemlike stories from a master of the form.

5/12    Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy, 2024, 240 pgs. Apparently, it takes a village to care for an abandoned mouse with breathing issues, and to lure an elderly woman out of isolation. The Washington Post calls it “a deep, moving and vibrant saga.”

Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Chat January 2025

Tell Me Everything (2024) by Elizabeth Strout

“A generous, compassionate novel about the human need for connection, understanding and love, and the damage that occurs when those things are denied.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters — Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and others. In this novel, the community must navigate a shocking crime in their midst.

Our book group previously had read Strout’s Olive Kitteridge at my suggestion. I had taught the book at Mills, and the students found the stories engaging and thought provoking. The book group agreed, and we eagerly returned to Strout’s characters in Olive, Again, Oh, William, and Lucy by the Sea, so when we saw the announcement of Tell Me Everything, we immediately added it to our fall 2024 reading list. We anticipated Strout’s familiar conversational style, her quirky characters, with a central plot threading together all the bits and pieces. dWe were surprised by the larger cast of characters, the multiple plot lines, and we were a little disappointed.

We had not been put off by large casts of characters or multiple plot lines in other books, and we wondered why this book, well reviewed as the Chronicle quote above indicates, did not sit well with us.

Perhaps we expected her more familiar form. Unlike novelists whose books do not return to the same places or characters, Strout’s connected novels, while not formally a series, create a fictional world that invites readers to return to a place they know well, offering new surprises and plots but within an expected structure. So the shift in structure, as it did not have a clear point–was not obviously making an argument via form–put us off a bit.

We also had feelings about the characters’ fates. We have leaned into novels with tragic or or unhappy outcomes, but here we were invested in the characters across a series of stories, and so our reactions and expectations differed. Perhaps we were perplexed by the choice to make Lucy remarry William, whom none of us really like. One group member wondered why she built up the intimacy between Lucy and her friend Bob Burgess only to alter it so abruptly. We speculated that Lucy married William to force herself to loosen the ties to Bob. Our reaction, as if these are people we know, is fascinating to consider. For example, long after my initial reading and weeks after the group discussion, I still feel the initial burst of satisfaction I had when Olive’s good friend in the memory care section of their shared nursing home defied her daughter’s insistence to move across the country near family and insisted she needed/wanted to stay close to her best friend, Olive.

Strout’s characters always feel “real,” and her writing is always strong, but I wonder about the dangers of writing a series of linked novels, as well as the pleasures. I did not, finally, enjoy this novel nearly as much as the previous ones. I’d love to know what you think!