“The Reading Circle”
Author: Ashton Lee
Publisher: Kensington Books
Pages: 234
Price: $15.00 (Trade paperback)
In a recent comic novel, “Love’s Winning Plays,” in which he dared to satirize SEC football, Inman Majors also made fun of book discussion groups. He has his lonely hero, Raymond Love, join one in order to meet women. It sort of works; book club membership is overwhelmingly female.
Majors goes on to make fun of the discussion questions often included at the back of the paperback: “reveal an intimate story about yourself to the group; one you have never told anyone else before.” “This book has no recipes… did this absence make you think of books that did include lots of food descriptions?” “Love is difficult. Why do you think that is?”
“The Reading Circle,” a novel about a book club, is no satire, trust me. One of the characters is a pastry chef and there are six recipes at the end, mostly for dessert. The egg custard pie looked good. There are also discussion questions: “Which character annoys you the most?” “Of all the couples in the … [novel] who do you think has the most realistic, well-adjusted relationship?”
“The Reading Circle,” by Mr. Ashton Lee, is straight up, enjoyable, sweet tea, unabashed, no apologies, high fructose corn syrup chick lit, but a quick enjoyable read, if it is to your taste.
Although it is the second in the series, if you missed number 1, “The Cherry Cola Book Club,” do not despair. Exposition brings you up to speed in two pages. Plucky small town librarian Maura Beth Mayhew of Cherico, in the northeast corner of Mississippi, saved the library from being closed by pompous egocentric and not overly honest city councilman Durden Sparks. She has gained a one year reprieve.
Sparks and his compliant fellow councilmen, “Chunky” Badham and “Gopher” Joe Martin, want to use the money to build the Durden Sparks Industrial Park. The lawyer in the novel is Curtis L. Trickett.
(Most of the hay in this novel is down where the horses can reach it.)
Maura Beth—both names please—hopes an active book club can help save the library. In the first novel, they discussed, called here “reviewed,” “Gone with the Wind” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Now they plan to review Welty’s “The Robber Bridegroom,” but a couple of husbands want the more manly novel “Forrest Gump,” ’cause Forrest played football for The Bear. And besides, their discussions are accompanied by a book-themed potluck supper and if they discuss “Forrest Gump” the evening would include lots of shrimp and other seafood. The men prevail—the women agree that Groom has “captured the South,” and the discussion is lively, if sometimes wandering, as is too often the case. To demonstrate the near-religious importance of football in the South, Becca Brachle tells of the three LSU alum husbands who take their Bama alum wives to the championship game in New Orleans and then, when LSU loses to Bama, 21-0, they all grumpily withhold sex from their Bama alum wives. Football is important. And, as a kind of religion, apparently on occasion celibacy is imposed.
The novel explores, shallowly, a spectrum of romantic /relationship difficulties. Maura Beth, 28, works to get Jeremy to the altar. A delicate soul, he teaches English at New Gallatin Academy in Nashville and is upset because money he needs for his “Living the Classics in the Real World” trip to take students to Faulkner’s Rowan Oak, in Oxford, is used for the football program.
A married man fears his heart is not in fact strong enough for sex. His wife wants him to seek counsel. Another man is sterile and he and his wife are distraught.
A retired couple’s life has no purpose. They drift, but find meaning.
Periwinkle Latimore, owner of the Twinkle Restaurant, is considering remarrying her philandering ex. A much older man in love grapples with his memories of his deceased wife. Would remarriage be infidelity?
(Ex-wives are usually remembered as deeply flawed; deceased wives are saints. )
As in a Shakespearean comedy, these couples will all make their way to their respective literal and figurative altars, no surprise, but there are some gentle smiles along the way.
This review was originally broadcast on Alabama Public Radio. Don Noble is host of the Alabama Public Television literary interview show “Bookmark” and the editor of “A State of Laughter: Comic Fiction from Alabama.”
