Guest Post – Alison Pick

Alison Pick is the author of Far To Go, a book inspired by her own grandparent’s experiences during World War 2. It tells the story of the Bauer family, and their attempt to flee Nazi occupation, and you can read our review here.

Alison has spent this week on a blog tour, sharing thoughts on various subjects. You can read yesterday’s blog post over at Get On With It, and today Alison shares her thoughts on visiting book clubs…

I’ll be honest. Book clubs make me nervous.

I love them, I do. Since the publication of FAR TO GO in the fall of 2010 I’ve visited probably twenty. Groups of mothers, exhausted at the end of a busy day, who want to drink wine and chat while their kids slumber. Groups of voracious readers who fall immediately upon the book like a pack of dogs on a steak, tearing it hungrily to pieces. Truthfully, I always have a blast. It’s such a true, incredible pleasure to hear directly from the readers who, most of the time, tell me how much they loved the novel.

Still, I worry. What if they’re just pretending? What if they really hated it? What if they really hate me?

I’ve never been in a book club. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing I’d like more. Writing is such a solitary profession. I spend all day alone at my desk moving words around. To discuss literature aloud rather than in my head is a remarkable relief. Still, though, writers make very particular readers. If a book is really good, I can let myself be swept away in it, but as soon as I’m done I turn back to page one to see how the heck the writer managed to pull it off. I’m interested in the technical elements of a book, like narrative point of view and plot device. Also, I like to read exactly what I want exactly when I want to read it, often in service of whatever it is I’m writing at the time. So, you can see my problem.

If I could join a book club, though, it would be the Books and Bites Club in Guelph, Ontario. The group meets once at the beginning of January to decide the entire year’s reading list. Then, at each meeting, they share a potluck—but not just any potluck. The dishes must be somehow inspired, literally or imaginatively, by that month’s book. My novel FAR TO GO is set is Czechoslovakiabefore the Second World War, and it is full of food. When I visited Books and Bites our discussion was followed by a veritable feast. We ate cumin soup with vermicelli from page 7, and medovnik from page 27, and latkes and apple sauce from the Chanukah scene. Someone had even put together the exact picnic that my character Pepik had taken with him on his train trip out of Nazi occupiedCzechoslovakia.

It was startling to see my own book laid out in such a banquet. It made me a little teary. Not to mention hungry.

Which was a good thing. As we sat down to eat together, in the spirit of companionship and literature, I felt comfortable with my readers. I felt I was one of them.

I don’t want to know what they said when I left.

Thank you to Alison for sharing that, and I hope the tour has gone well. To celebrate the week, Headline are kindly giving away a summer goodie bag for one lucky reader. This super prize will contain a selection of Headline’s summer paperbacks, so make sure you take part. To do so, simply leave a comment here, and check back on Sat 28th to find out if you’ve won. (UK only.)

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