April 24 - Someone Like You
At our March 27th meeting, we discussed Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. We had a good turnout but the book didn't resonant with our members. Some didn't like the topic of loss while others felt the volume of Korean dishes mentioned was too far outside their limited knowledge. The generational gap between the author and our group members was also very apparent. A similar title, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, might have been a better pick for us. Overall, we rated the book as average.
Someone Like You Summary: Maddie Baxter West is shaken to the core when she finds out everything she believed about her life was a lie. Her parents had always planned to tell her the truth about her past: that she was adopted as an embryo. But somehow the right moment never happened. Then a total stranger confronts Maddie with the truth and tells her something else that rocks her world--Maddie had a sister she never knew about. Betrayed, angry, and confused, Maddie leaves her new job and fiancé, rejects her family's requests for forgiveness, and moves to Portland to find out who she really is.
March - Crying in H Mart
At our book club meeting on February 27th, we discussed Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. All members were surprised that this was Wilkerson's debut novel since it is so cohesive and well written. She is quite the storyteller! Even though there are many characters and points of view, everyone really enjoyed the book. We had strawberries (it was national strawberry day!) and English biscuits but no black cake ;-)
Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday, March 27th at 3pm and the book is Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. Copies of the book are available at our front desk and the ebook and eaudio is available to LME Library patrons through ADML or eRead IL. The discussion sheets can be picked up with the book or viewed here. Summary of Crying in H Mart: "From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean-American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity. In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread."
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