Hello friends! For our November meeting, we met at the library to discuss The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride. Up next for December is Untamed, by Glennon Doyle. As always, if you are able to obtain a copy of Untamed elsewhere, we would encourage you to do so, as our copies are limited. Also, we'd like to remind our members to please be intentional about reading through the book club books and returning them to library in as timely a fashion as possible to help us be as efficient as we can in distributing the copies we are able to secure~ we appreciate your help! If you don't need a copy of Untamed, and you haven't already let us know, would you please leave us a note down below? Many thanks!
To the read!
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow
lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served
the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants,
helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who
integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a
deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized,
Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a
local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy
safe.
As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people
of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white
Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be
to a community.
With the exception of a small few, the group liked this one. They really loved McBride's writing, specifically how intricately he would describe a character, or a scene. They appreciated learning something new about Jewish culture, mixed in with sharing a community with people of color. In the end, they were inspired to read more of McBride's work.
On the other hand, those in favor of the book could agree that there were far too many plot lines and characters to keep track of (even though reading the descriptions of some of the characters was fun). It was said that McBride would go to great lengths to describe a character, then use them for a brief moment in a brief scene, only to never mention them again. We also weren't sure that some of the plot lines were even clear, or necessary. Lastly, a few of us weren't crazy about the ending, it felt rushed and thrown together, unlike all the time and attention McBride gave to the rest of the book.
What did you think of the read? Let us know below! 👇
Did you enjoy The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store? We've heard good really good things about McBride's book, Deacon King Kong. Fans of the book also enjoyed, The Berry Pickers, by Amanda Peters, The Frozen River, by Ariel Lawhon, and Hello Beautiful, by Ann Napolitano. All of these titles are available within the Viking Library System~ reserve your copy today!
The votes are in!
Would we
recommend this to a friend to read?
"YES"
Would we
recommend this to another book club for discussion?
"YES"