Dear Bookclub,
The Mission Inn's Festival of Lights may have burned out before we were ready for the darkened state, but the experience left the glow of friendship and the season. Riverside's power outage booted us home yet we'd explored, indulged and appreciated.
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| Duane's |
An outdoor round table breakfast Wednesday morning hosted the Maggie Shipstead's "Great Circle" discussion. An uninspired editor led us to circle about the fabulous story Shipstead craftily created. Bogged down by the length, buoyed by the poetic writing, impressed by the intricate plot, eye-rolled for the all-inclusion, we gratefully received the experience and are eager to move on. As the writer Lynn Steger Strong aptly observed:
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| Aless MC |
"In grad school, I had a professor who used to warn against “starting too high.” She’d hold her arm up in the air and tell us: “If you start here, you have to know that’s where you have to stay.” The start of Shipstead’s book — her third, after “Seating Arrangements” in 2012 and “Astonish Me” in 2014 — is thrilling and complicated, with many different threads laid out and back stories carefully and richly wrought; for the next 500-odd pages, I felt the fear I feel when a student’s work starts strong, when other novels open high — knowing that, more often than not, lofty heights can’t be sustained. But “Great Circle” starts high and maintains altitude. One might say it soars."
from her review in the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/02/books/review/the-great-circle-maggie-shipstead.html
An ambitious novel indeed that our ambitious group enjoyed.
Terry's suggestions for an upcoming read:
"The Lincoln Highway" Amor Towles *chosen
"Small Things Like These" Claire Keegan
"The Guncle" Steven Rowley
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| Wednesday evening |
Up next:
Happy reading,
LK
