Around the table with my book club

This episode takes you, the listener, into a question based book discussion about the book So Long See You Tomorrow, by American author William Maxwell.

The book is now available in a Vintage Classic, published by Penguin Random House UK. Originally published in 1980, it won the American Book Award and in 1995, William Maxwell received the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the short story.

I was joined in the studio on a Saturday morning by three loyal members of the public book club I host at 44 Stanley, at Saint-Germain: Denise Alexander, Daniel Greeff, and Odette Graskie. Instead of dinner with wine, we had coffee and cake. A setting that reminded me of the familiar coffee-table gatherings in the Netherlands.

Through a series of prepared questions, we explore the world Maxwell created in this short but moving novel.

Denise shares that she noticed how in this novel “people keep quiet, they just carry on with life and they don’t voice anything.” We talk about the meaning of the title and the presence and meaning of the artwork 'The Palace at 4 a.m.' by Alberto Giacometti. Odette, who had researched the artist, describes the sculpture in detail for us, “It is made of just these sticks and could fall apart any moment”.

We discover what it means to describe this novel as quiet, frail, or tragic. For example, Daniel Greeff shares that he realised, thinking about this book, that “the bravest thing one can do is admit to one’s frailty”. I share my own fascination with what is biographical and what is imagined. This question is based on a part of the introduction of the Vintage Classic that is written by Ann Patchett.

This conversation is an example of what we can discover together when we ask each other questions about literary tools and share our personal reflections.