Reading Groups

Object Lessons: Novels of Urban Domesticity with Jennifer Stock

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3 Sessions Thursdays, 6:00 pm EDT - 7:30 pm EDT February 19 to April 9, 2026

The Center for Fiction

The ‘With Books’ option includes the titles required for this group at a 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Meeting Dates:
2/19, 3/19, 4/9
In Person at The Center for Fiction

In this reading group, we’ll consider three novels that anatomize the lives of young urban professionals, each casting an anthropological gaze at the objects and rituals the characters use to enact their desires for stability and meaning.

We’ll start with Georges Perec’s Things, a classic short novel from the 1960s that offers a near-inventory of the lives of a Parisian couple. Our second novel, Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection, refigures Perec’s novel in the era of Instagram. We’ll then examine Ayşegül Savaş’s The Anthropologists, which, like Perfection, takes up the everyday lives of a millennial couple attempting to cultivate urban domesticity in the face of the homogenizing forces of globalization.

Reading List:

Things by Georges Perec
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico
The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Please read Perec’s Things in its entirety in advance of the first meeting.

What to expect from this reading group: This group is seminar-style and participant-driven, with some initial structure and observations to focus and warm up our conversations.

Pricing inclusive of sales tax if applicable.

Led by

Jennifer Stock

Jennifer Stock

Jennifer Stock is a writer whose work has appeared in the Iowa Review, the Yale Review, the New England Review, the Georgia Review, and others. Her essays “Alice and Jean,” “Lighter than Air” and “Parrot on a Stone Plinth” were awarded Notable distinctions in the Best American Essays of 2019, 2021, and 2023. Her debut essay collection, Object Lessons, was a finalist for the Yale Nonfiction Book Prize in 2024, and she was the recipient of the 2019 New England Review Award for Emerging Writers. She holds a B.A. in English and Music from Yale and a Ph.D in Music Composition from the City University of New York. She is currently a Lecturer in Writing at Yale.

About this series

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