On or about April 29th, 2020, we held our second virtual
book club on facetime due to the Covid 19 lockdown.
We welcomed Laura Derrickson to our discussion hoping
she would be inspired to join our club and she said yes.
I believe that all the members participated because lets
face it we have no commitments and plenty of time to read.
I think everyone had read the book and I did not hear any
negative reviews but heard that we all enjoyed and found the
book a delight. We discussed the protagonist Eleanor in depth.
She is a lonely girl without friends who works in a creative firm
in the accounting department. She struggles with human contact
and her life consists of routine, vodka, pizza and weekly talks
with her Mommy who is an abusive woman whom we are
led to believe is locked away in prison. Eleanor is so sad and
lonely she has been planning a suicide by pills and vodka.
She forges an unlikely friendship with Raymond from her
IT department at work and they save an old man named Sammy
who had fallen in the street. Eleanor starts interacting with people
and is saved by Raymond's big heart. Eleanor is able to find a way
to repair her heart and ditch her mother's voice who we come to
find out is actually dead and only lives in Eleanor's head.
The writer is good. She develops her characters very well and her
vocabulary is vast and learned. She is funny while writing about a
very sad subject. What a wonderful debut novel. This will soon be movie
as it was picked up by Reese Witherspoon who is now producing and
directing movies.
We chose May 27th for our next meeting to discuss Marsha's
book choice entitled "My Stroke of Insight", by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.
