Welcome winter! Thank goodness for Zoom and the ability to join a book club meeting from home when the weather outside is frightful! Thank you to everyone who attended Tuesday's meeting, regardless of where and how, to discuss The Book of Lost Names, by Kristin Harmel. We are so thankful for our members!
Our January 10th selection is The Ursulina, by Brian Freeman, and as a special treat, we have arranged for Mr. Freeman to join our discussion via Zoom. If at all possible, we'd like to ask our members to hang back a few minutes after Mr. Freeman signs off to cast our votes. Please bring your questions and comments along to the meeting~ it should be a great time!
Without further ado!
Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in
Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a
photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image
of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.
The
accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis
across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and
the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago.
The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text
thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is
one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und
Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but
researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only
Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old
memories and help reunite those lost during the war?
I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of attending members really liked the book, with a small sprinkling added in who didn't care for it, on a variety of levels. Fans of the book said they really enjoyed Harmel's writing, noting that they appreciated the supplemental fictional parts about romance and family drama, as a means to take away from the awful reality that was the Holocaust. They felt like they learned a little something more about the different roles and skill sets of the network of activists during World War II.
Those who didn't care for the book felt like the read was predictable in some places and entirely unbelievable in others~ along with holes in the plot here and there along the way. Everyone agreed Eva's mother's angst was over the top and she was a poorly written/conceived character. No one liked or believed the ending~ it was a little too neatly tied up with a pretty bow for us. Eva heinously leaving the four children put in her (and Remy's) personal charge at the last minute at the crossing, to instead indulge in an intimate, overnight stay with Remy was also mentioned as a largely distasteful, if not unbelievable segment as well.
There was an interesting concept illustrated during the meeting regarding historical fiction that bears sharing. Within the really liked and really didn't like book camps, there was another set of opinions that broke down and illustrated how the two sides come at the genre in the first place. One side likes the added in bits that take away from the grit and sting of the painful situation(s), they like that it's a kind of distraction from the heavy content. The other side prefers the real in all it's forms. They like fictional places and/or characters that they can relate to and empathize with, but they must stay relevant, and therefore, believable... maybe sourced from past journals or letters or newspaper articles. Without all the legitimate pieces, they don't feel like we can truly experience, appreciate, and/or grasp circumstances/points of view/conditions.
As a further example, group one obviously prefers books like The Book of Lost Names. Group two, however, would rather read something like The Four Winds, by Kristin Hannah, or Dead Wake, by Erik Larson. (All previous, and current, book club books!) Make sense?
Which do you prefer? Let us know in the comments below! 👇
Did you enjoy The Book of Lost Names? Fans of the book also enjoyed: The Rose Code, by Kate Quinn, The Four Winds, by Kristin Hannah (a previous book club read!) and The Paris Library, by Janet Skeslien Charles. All of these titles are available in Viking~ reserve your copy today!
At the conclusion 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 1-5 stars, with 1 being the lowest rating:
3.5 stars
