When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
A hundred years ago, when I was a young editor, I had the great pleasure and honor of editing a first collection of stories called, Naked to the Waist by Alice Elliott Dark. Even at the beginning of her career, she was a fully fledged literary writer with tremendous control, sophistication and incredible poise in describing the layers of meaning and emotion between people. You can feel everything in her stories.
Now, she has written her masterpiece, Fellowship Point. I’m no longer Alice’s editor, but I remain a devoted friend and fan. The novel is about two women in their eighties, lifetime friends, whose lives took different paths. A lifetime of accommodations, rivalries, intimacies, and devotion is described in gorgeous page-turning prose. If you have a chance, treat yourself.
“Enthralling, masterfully written . . . Fellowship Point is a novel rich with social and psychological insights, both earnest and sly, big ideas grounded in individual emotions, a portrait of a tightly knit community made up of artfully drawn, individual souls.”
–Kate Christensen, New York Times Book Review
“Fans who devoured ‘In the Gloaming’ and other, earlier works, rejoice. Striking from the first for its clear, sharply intelligent voice, streaming wisdom and wit on nearly all of close to 600 pages, Fellowship [Point] embodies a magnificent storytelling feat.”
—Boston Globe
“Exquisitely written, utterly engrossing . . . Fellowship Point has the complexity, pace, and length of an absorbing 19th century epic . . . [and its] various plotlines dovetail with amazing grace, culminating in a moving, well-earned climax . . . This magnificent novel affirms that change and growth are possible at any age.”
–Heller McAlpin, Christian Science Monitor
What’s your summer read?
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Betsy Lerner 
I’d say this will be my summer read. Sounds wonderful!
Same!
“What’s your summer read?”
David Bentley Hart’s translation of The New Testament.
Various sections of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entries on quantum mechanics.
More legal cases (primarily, lately, on matters of res judicata and statutory construction) than you could bang a gavel at.
Yes, I do enjoy other subjects, but the above items are where I’m at now.
This is a book getting lots of buzz. My fingers hovered over the buy button a few weeks ago when a writer friend of mine mentioned she was reading it. Instead, I ended up buying Young Mungo and Shadows of Pecan Hollow. But now given your endorsement here, I’ll be off to buy Fellowship Point.
I just finished The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai which I loved, and now I am on a Nell Zink kick, halfway through Doxology. I need to pick up Lidia Yuknavitch’s new book Thrust too. So many books to get to!!!
-Lyra
This book looks good. I recently read a novel you suggested some months ago: The Good Women of Safe Harbour by Bobbi French. So good! Please keep the book suggestions coming. You have great taste!