The Book Club has been lying low since the pandemic hit, but it is time to rise from the ashes, phoenix-style.

If you wish to join the Book Club, please drop a line in the comments section below. The dates of the Book Club meetings are listed in Upcoming Events in the side panel. The selected books are posted on this website a month in advance of the next meeting.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Our first group read in our new, virtual form, was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020, and was a Times, Guardian, Sunday Times, Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, Red, Good Housekeeping and Cosmopolitan Book of the Year 2020.

Description:

A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local

high-end supermarket. The store’s security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix’s desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone “family,” and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.