Book club meeting

[pegkerr]

The night before last I drove out to one of the suburbs because I'd been invited to be the guest at a book club discussing The Wild Swans. This was fun; I've done it before. I was prey to my usual anxieties that a) I wouldn't be able to find the address and b) I would talk too much. I did find the address--although I feared I was lost at one point and almost turned around--and I was on time for the meeting. And perhaps I did talk too much, but the book club didn't seem to mind and asked many questions. I asked my usual questions of them in return. As I have come to learn, the fairy tale "The Wild Swans" isn't as well known as I had thought it was when I started writing the book, and several of them had never encountered it before. Not all the parallels that I'd attempted to draw were seen by the readers in this group, either, i.e., Bill is William's doppelganger, Patty is Patience's, and the nettle coats = the squares of the AIDS Quilt. One reader figured things out about William rather quickly, but for the rest, the truth was revealed to them in the gaol scene, at the same time that William figured it out himself. I've had a range of responses from readers on that one, and so it sounded about right.

Discussion was lively and lasted until 10:00. As a thank you gift, they presented me with a little book, Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies of the Spring, and a little fairy statuette.

I do enjoy doing book club meetings.

Comments

[liadan-m.livejournal.com]

will do.

We're all a bit odd, so somehow its not surprising we're doing something like using an unusual book. Now, if I can convence them that we need to do this sometime before finals...