Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

The first book club I belonged to was in Israel. There was a core group of seven women, originally from the US and England, who were living in the Tel Aviv area (most of us had been living there for years). In the summer months (which means May to October), we would meet monthly on the beach. We would take white plastic chairs from a beachside café and place them in a circle on the cooling sand steps away from the gentle waves of the Mediterranean. The slowly dissipating heat of the day as dusk arrived would provide a soothing backdrop to our book discussions, amongst other things.

This was a group of non-conformists (perhaps that is the reason why we had all left our home countries in the first place): at our first meeting it was decided that there would be no assigned books. A few of the women were adamant about not being pressured into reading something that they did not want to read or according to a schedule that might not suit them. Instead of being a book club, we became a book exchange club. Each month we would bring in the book or books we had read that month, and give a synopsis and explain why we did or did not like the book. It was always interesting to see that one woman’s bad read was another woman’s anticipated read. We would each end up with one or more books to read for the coming month; we generally received books from family or friends abroad, or purchased them on our trips back home, or bought books in an English-language used book store, or, on occasion, splurged to buy a new book at the Israeli bookstore chain, Steimatzky’s.

In the beginning we sat next to the friend who had brought us into the group; my friend was a work colleague who was also from New York and who was a member of the book group gone wrong. (The one which, apparently, caused the protestation for having no assigned readings in this newly-formed group, absent some key members of the original group, who, I assume, were the book dictators.) As time went on, or, rather, as our conversations unbound us, we became a group, not a collection of separate friendships. That process took months of sitting on the sand, and then moving to coffee houses around Tel Aviv, and talking about books.

But what are books if not lives writ in 10-point font? And so our meetings became gatherings and the work of the group transformed from lending library to lending ears, for the lives we began unfolding were our own, and not only those of the books we had read.

I know life is supposed to have purpose, and we are supposed to accomplish great things, and seek to alleviate the pain and suffering in the world, but sometimes the distillation of life can be seven friends sitting around a table, drinking tea and coffee, and talking about their lives. What more could a woman ask for? There is validation for who she is and what she has done and what she is living through; there is compassion for the dips her life and those of her loved ones have taken; there is joy for the successes and happinesses that she has wrought and which are wrought in her; there is commiseration, for no story is truly isolated and isolating. When I left Israel, I think I was saddest about leaving my book club, my community. Those two hours on the sand once a month gave me a stability that I needed; a stability that was missing, perhaps, because I didn’t have any of my family nearby, and because I needed to be encompassed in only English every once in a while.

About six years after I returned to the states I joined another book club. It has been slow going for me to transition from my first book club to this one; I think I resisted joining emotionally because I remained loyal to the vision of that first book club on the beach. It was not the same. It took a while to realize that different is good, not in the sense that one is better than the other, but in respecting each for the unique community that is created.

We have been meeting every other month for about a year and a half. There is an assigned book, but we vote on the book from a list of, usually, three suggestions. The meetings are on a rotating basis at our homes (I can’t wait till I can host a meeting, when I am in my own place and can happily invite guests in); there is a book discussion; and there are nine women who are finding a place of comfort in the community that we are creating through books. That must be the power of the book club, and why so many women join them. Creating community through books.

Some Book Club II Books

The Good Women of China by Xin Ran

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver,

Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

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