YPL Book Group, led by Leslie Altman, meets the 3rd Thursday of the month at 2 PM. Newcomers always welcome! No meeting in December.
April: Wednesday, April 19th at 2 PM. (Note date change.)
Fresh Water for Flowers by Valerie Perrin and Hildegarde Serle
A #1 best-seller in France and in Italy, where it was dubbed Italy’s favorite “lockdown novel,” Fresh Water for Flowers is an intimately told story about a woman who defiantly believes in happiness, despite it all.
Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Her life is lived to the predictable rhythms of the often funny, always moving confidences that casual mourners, regular visitors, and sundry colleagues share with her. Violette’s routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of Julien Sole—local police chief—who has come to scatter the ashes of his recently deceased mother on the gravesite of a complete stranger. It soon becomes clear that Julien’s inexplicable gesture is intertwined with Violette’s own complicated past. ______________
FYI: Past YPL Book Group picks include:
March: The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina
February: The Leavers by Lisa Ko
January: Horse by Geraldine Brooks
November: Trust by Hernan Diaz
October:The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris
September: The Midnight Library by Matthew Haig
June: The Promise by Damon Galgut
May: The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
April: The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah ______________
Looking Ahead: YPL Book Group:
May: Thursday, May 18th at 2 PM.
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell ______________
June: Thursday, June 15th at 2 PM.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Neighborhood Book Group, led by Rick Woods, meets the 2nd Thursday of the month at 4 PM.
April: Thursday, April 13th at 4 PM.
The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina On a windy hill in Japan, in a garden overlooking the sea stands a disused phone box. For years, people have travelled to visit the phone box, to pick up the receiver and speak into the wind: to pass their messages to loved ones no longer with us.
When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she is plunged into despair and wonders how she will ever carry on. One day she hears of the phone box, and decides to make her own pilgrimage there, to speak once more to the people she loved the most. But when you have lost everything, the right words can be the hardest thing to find . . .
Then she meets Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of their loss. What happens next will warm your heart, even when it feels as though it is breaking...
Call the library for contact information and further information. ______________
FYI: Past Neighborhood Book Group picks include:
March: The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
February: Stolen by Richard Bell
January: The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
December: Empire of Deception by Dean Jobb
November: Horse by Geraldine Brooks
September: The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made by Walter Isaacson
June: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson _____________