Book Group Recommendations

This might be subtitled “Everything you want to know about Custer’s Last Stand and the kitchen sink too.” Hefty historical tomes don’t usually appeal to me, but the peculiar virtue of this book is that once you surrender to Connell’s discursive style, you find yourself very viscerally on the scene of that tragic day and see it happen through eyes on all sides.  –Seana

If your book group craves fiction with a great story and perceptive social critique, you can do no better than The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood tells us of a world where misogyny has gone to the extreme: a police state bent on reinforcing singular roles for women. As the novel spirals around how society snapped overnight into an oppressive patriarchal regime, Atwood alerts us to the pieces of our world that could make this book less fiction than reality. –Kate

It took me a while to get to this memoir, quite frankly. It wasn’t the fact that it records the year after Didion loses her husband to a heart attack, while her daughter is gravely ill in the hospital, though that might have been enough. I’d been warned off because some found it too distanced and clinical in its approach. Although this is understandable, I found Didion’s grief to be quite transparent despite her style. Book groups may find it interesting to discuss how the style strikes each of its members.  –Seana

Why live? This book focuses on that question. On New Year’s Eve, four people find themselves atop a building that is one of London’s top suicide spots. Instead of jumping, they end up forming an unlikely alliance. Hornby’s great gift is that in clear and simple prose, he can write a novel that is by turns funny, sad, and in the end, very wise. And if you like Nick Hornby, don’t miss his new novel, Juliet, Naked. –Seana