A Book Club, Downtown (ABCD)

[RESULTS of the poll for this event]

ABCD Reads AND Watches "Hamnet", a novel by Maggie O'Farrell, and a theatrical release directed by Chloé Zhao.

Join us for an outing to watch the just-released "Hamnet" movie: ABCD Watches "Hamnet"

:: ABOUT THE BOOK ::
"Drawing on Maggie O'Farrell's long-term fascination with the little-known story behind Shakespeare's most enigmatic play, Hamnet is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.
Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.
Award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell's new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes, and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history." (from Goodreads)

(NOTE: Some versions of the book carry the alternate title "Hamnet & Judith".)

:: ABOUT THE MOVIE ::
"In William Shakespeare’s day, the names Hamlet and Hamnet were interchangeable. The newest film by Chloé Zhao, director of TIFF ’20 People’s Choice Award winner Nomadland, also an Oscar winner, uses that context as the basis for a tender exploration of Shakespeare’s domestic life, connecting a family tragedy to one of his most famous works. Maybe we can better understand Hamlet, Zhao suggests, if we consider that it was developed while the most famous writer in the Western canon was mourning the death of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet.
Based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet’s main character isn’t The Bard — played here by an impressive Paul Mescal — or even the child who gives the film its name. Hamnet belongs to Agnes, Shakespeare’s thoughtful wife, played by an enthralling Jessie Buckley, who bathes the film in her warmth.
Many historical accounts preface reports of Hamnet’s death with statistics about how common child mortality was in the 16th century, as though it barely made an impact. Hamnet rejects that premise, presenting Shakespeare not as a distant, untouchable genius but as a real man whose literary prowess was irrevocably impacted by his domestic life.
Grief is a theme here, but Hamnet is not just a film about death. Like any family story, this one contains joy alongside sorrow." (from TIFF.net)

:: ABOUT THE EVENT ::
Instead of just reading the book as usual, this time we're asking that you also watch the movie adaptation. During our discussion, we'll explore the strengths of both the book and the movie, evaluate the adaptation's effectiveness, and touch on any other topics that arise.

You are welcome to arrive 30 minutes before the event and stay 30 minutes or longer afterward to connect with other attendees outside the book talk.

Please ensure you have read the book and watched the movie before attending (though finishing either is not a barrier to participating, as long as you don't mind spoilers).

First-time attendees can join for free. If the event is full, we maintain an unofficial waitlist. Please send Michael a direct message for more information, in either case.

We request a $3 contribution from regular attendees to help cover our monthly meetup costs.

:: ABOUT OUR NEXT READ&WATCH ::
At the end of each event, we will ask for nominees for our next Read & Watch (date TBA). If you have a good pairing in mind, please ensure that the book is between 200-400 pages long, available from the Toronto Public Library, and counts as contemporary literary fiction (though these are not hard and fast rules), and that the movie or TV-series is readily available. When enough nominees are collected, Michael will send the members a direct message with a link where you can vote.

ABCD Reads James by Percival Everett.

[RESULTS of the poll for this event]

:: ABOUT THE BOOK ::
"A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view.
When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature." (from the Goodreads)

"“James” is the rarest of exceptions. It should come bundled with Twain’s novel. It is a tangled and subversive homage, a labor of rough love. “His humor and humanity affected me long before I became a writer,” Everett writes of Twain in his acknowledgments. “Heaven for the climate; hell for my long-awaited lunch with Mark Twain.”
Everett does not reprint the famous warning that greets the reader at the start of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”: “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” Motives, morals and plot are here in abundance, of course. And Everett shoots what is certain to be this book’s legion of readers straight through the heart." (from New York Times)

:: ABOUT THE EVENT ::
You are welcome to arrive 30 minutes before the event and stay 30 minutes or longer afterward to connect with other attendees outside the book talk.

Please ensure you have read the book before attending (though finishing any book is not a barrier to participating, as long as you don't mind spoilers).

First-time attendees can join for free. If the event is full, we maintain an unofficial waitlist. Please send Michael a direct message for more information, in either case.

We request a $3 contribution from regular attendees to help cover our monthly meetup costs.

:: ABOUT OUR NEXT BOOK ::
At the end of each event, we will ask for nominees for our next book. If you have a good one in mind, please ensure it is between 200-400 pages long, available from the Toronto Public Library, and counts as contemporary literary fiction (though these are not hard and fast rules). When enough nominees are collected, Michael will send the members a direct message with a link where you can vote.

ABCD Reads "On Beauty" by Zadie Smith.

[RESULTS of the poll for this event]

:: ABOUT THE BOOK ::
"This wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars-on both sides of the Atlantic-serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent." (from Goodreads)

"The opening sentence of Zadie Smith's glorious new novel announces the book's provenance: "One may as well begin with Jerome's e-mails to his father" -- an echo, of course, of the opening sentence of E.M. Forster's 1910 novel, "Howards End," which began, "One may as well begin with Helen's letters to her sister."
Although the plot of "On Beauty" hews remarkably closely to "Howards End," Ms. Smith has managed the difficult feat of taking a famous and beloved classic and thoroughly reinventing it to make the story her own. She has taken a novel about Edwardian England -- about class and the competing claims of idealism and money, about a country on the brink of the social upheavals of World War I -- and used it as a launching pad for a thoroughly original tale about families and generational change, about race and multiculturalism in millennial America, about love and identity and the ways they are affected by the passage of time." (from The New York Times)

:: ABOUT THE EVENT ::
You are welcome to arrive 30 minutes before the event and stay 30 minutes or longer afterward to connect with other attendees outside the book talk.

Please ensure you have read the book before attending (though finishing any book is not a barrier to participating, as long as you don't mind spoilers).

First-time attendees can join for free. If the event is full, we maintain an unofficial waitlist. Please send Michael a direct message for more information, in either case.

We request a $3 contribution from regular attendees to help cover our monthly meetup costs.

:: ABOUT OUR NEXT BOOK ::
At the end of each event, we will ask for nominees for our next book. If you have a good one in mind, please ensure it is between 200-400 pages long, available from the Toronto Public Library, and counts as contemporary literary fiction (though these are not hard and fast rules). When enough nominees are collected, Michael will send the members a direct message with a link where you can vote.

ABCD Reads "Heart the Lover" by Lily King.

[RESULTS of the poll for this event]

:: ABOUT THE BOOK ::
"For its first half...a wry, witty, exquisitely evocative campus tale, a fevered fiction of a youthful love triangle, and a reflection,...on the growth and development of a writer. By the end, it stands as one of the most emotionally devastating and soulfully wise novels I have ever read ... Literary without pretension, emotional without maudlin sentimentality. It must be said, however, that King skirts perilously close to the latter in Part 3, and it is a tribute to the power of her moral vision, the precision of her prose, and her animating empathy that the novel avoids bathos and pulls off these wild swerves convincingly ... Heartrending, swoonily romantic, rigorously clear-sighted." (from The Boston Globe)

"Our narrator understands good love stories—their secrets and subtext, their highs and their free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the simple rules.
In the fall of her senior year of college, she meets two star students from her 17th-Century Lit class: Sam and Yash. Best friends living off-campus in the elegant house of a professor on sabbatical, the boys invite her into their intoxicating world of academic fervor, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. They nickname her Jordan, and she quickly discovers the pleasures of friendship, love and her own intellectual ambition. Youthful passion is unpredictable though, and she soon finds herself at the center of a charged and intricate triangle. As graduation comes and goes, choices made will alter these three lives forever.
Decades later, Jordan is living the life she dreamed of, and the vulnerable days of her youth seem comfortably behind her. But when a surprise visit and unexpected news brings the past crashing into the present, Jordan returns to a world she left behind and is forced to confront the decisions and deceptions of her younger self.
Written with the superb wit and emotional sensitivity fans and critics of Lily King have come to adore, Heart the Lover is a deeply moving story that celebrates love, friendship, and the transformative nature of forgiveness. Wise, unforgettable, and with a delightful connective thread to Writers & Lovers, this is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today." (from Goodreads)

:: ABOUT THE EVENT ::
You are welcome to arrive 30 minutes before the event and stay 30 minutes or longer afterward to connect with other attendees outside the book talk.

Please ensure you have read the book before attending (though finishing any book is not a barrier to participating, as long as you don't mind spoilers).

First-time attendees can join for free. If the event is full, we maintain an unofficial waitlist. Please send Michael a direct message for more information, in either case.

We request a $3 contribution from regular attendees to help cover our monthly meetup costs.

:: ABOUT OUR NEXT BOOK ::
At the end of each event, we will ask for nominees for our next book. If you have a good one in mind, please ensure it is between 200-400 pages long, available from the Toronto Public Library, and counts as contemporary literary fiction (though these are not hard and fast rules). When enough nominees are collected, Michael will send the members a direct message with a link where you can vote.