The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

 

 

It was The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes for our February pick~ up next for March is The Girl in Building C by Marilyn Barnes. We have made it down the current reading list far enough that it's time to start looking ahead to next year's list! We would like to get all the nominations collected on or before our next book club meeting on March 9th, 2021. You can submit those nominations personally by stopping into the library, or via phone or e-mail to either Susan or myself. Once the deadline has passed, we'll work to get those book nominations organized and out to you within the following two weeks, so you'll have some time to prepare for the vote during our April 13th book club meeting. Then, the new reading schedule will be distributed at our May 11th meeting and away we go!

 

A couple notes about next year's reading list: 

* We have decided to give some dedicated categories a try this next round. Those 5 dedicated categories are: Minnesota Author, Memoir, Mystery, Classical, and Young Adult/Juvenile. The remaining 7 slots are being left open for nominations of any genre. 

* You do not have to nominate books into these 5 designated categories (although some of the nominations may naturally be put into these categories based on their subject material), but you will need to vote for at least 1 title out of the 5 dedicated categories when we vote. 

* If there aren't enough books nominated into the designated categories to offer some good variety, we'll add them in. 

Please feel free to reach out with any questions~ or comment down below!

Without further delay~

Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically.

The leader, and soon Alice’s greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who’s never asked a man’s permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky. 

What happens to them–and to the men they love–becomes an unforgettable drama of loyalty, justice, humanity and passion. These heroic women refuse to be cowed by men or by convention. And though they face all kinds of dangers in a landscape that is at times breathtakingly beautiful, at others brutal, they’re committed to their job: bringing books to people who have never had any, arming them with facts that will change their lives.

I looked back on the previous year's book club picks and I didn't see a time, in recent history, that we have all liked a book so much collectively. As far back as I dug, we've never awarded a book a higher score of 3.5~ that's impressive! There were a handful that really loved the book, and couldn't find a thing they'd change about it. Respectively, there were also a small few that really liked it, but found it lacking in a few places. Most of our members were somewhere in the middle, they thoroughly enjoyed the read themselves and could relate to both sides. We found Moyes's writing style superb. She can illustrate a scene, a character, and a feeling like few can. It was also interesting to learn of, for some, and to learn more of, for others, about Eleanor Roosevelt's reading initiative, The Pack Horse Library, introduced into deep Appalachian Kentucky in the 1930's as part of the "New Deal" project, implemented by the Works Progress Administration.  

It was the part about Alice and her impending divorce from Bennett, along with Clem's daughter, Verna, promptly deciding to not only testify on Margery's behalf, but also that the ridiculous story she concocted to do so was accepted as truth and ultimately freed Margery of all the charges, that a few members found hard to believe. 

 

Questions surrounding these events for your consideration are:

    1. Why couldn't Alice have filed for an annulment/divorce on her own in Kentucky? Why did she feel like she had to go back home to England and employ the help of her parents to do so?

    2. Alice spoke and felt so warmly about the life she had made for herself in Kentucky, post-separation from Bennett, that it was hard to accept that she didn't try harder to stay with these good friends, this good job, and this new love she had found. Or that they didn't make more of an attempt to find a way to help her stay. She spoke so despairingly about having to return home to England and her family there, that it was surprising there wasn't more of an effort put forth to resolve these things in her current time and place.

    3. What ultimately motivated Verna to not only speak to Kathleen about her father's death, but to then immediately decide to go into town, a place she's never been before, to falsely, and outlandishly, testify on Margery's behalf, in front of a group of people she doesn't know, and whom deeply denounce her. Why did those people so willingly accept her testimony?

Bonus questions! 

    4. Do you feel like the ending was a little bit too tidy/unbelievable with the extraordinary developments surrounding Margery's release? Margery swiftly deciding to marry Sven, and then build a small cabin next to her home to house Verna and her sister, Neeta~ whom will babysit for Margery while she continues her work with the Pack Horse Library? Or Van Cleve Sr. suddenly agreeing to the annulment between Alice and Bennett immediately following him losing in court? 

    5. A couple of our members have read both, The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes (published in 8/2019), and also a book entitled, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Richardson (published in 5/2019), both books reference the same historical era and events, while offering different plot lines and characters. There has been a bit of controversy about Moyes replicating Richardson's original work. If you've read both titles, do you agree with the claims against Moyes? Do you prefer one book/author's storytelling over the other?  

Let us know below!

 

At the end of every book club discussion we ask three questions and track the average answers:
Would we recommend this to another book club for discussion?
"YES"
Would we recommend this to a friend to read? 
"YES"
Rate the book 1-4 stars with 1 being the lowest rating: 
 3.75 stars