Reading Groups

The Kick of the Novella with Martha Cooley

4 Sessions Saturdays, 12:00 pm EDT - 1:30 pm EDT October 5 to October 26, 2024

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

Meeting Dates:
10/5, 10/12, 10/19, 10/26
Held Online via Zoom

The novella is a venerable, often startling, and deeply satisfying form of fiction. We’ll think and talk about what makes a novella far more than a short novel, and why a good novella delivers a strong kick intellectually, emotionally, morally, and aesthetically. Part of the answer lies in the form’s elegant compression—although that’s only part of the story, as we’ll see in four quite different novellas, two in translation.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Please read Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer.

What to expect from this reading group: The group leader will give a brief introduction to novellas and present a framework for considering this fictional form. Then, we’ll discuss each novella—one per week.

Reading List:

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
The Waitress Was New by Dominique Fabre
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West

Capacity: 20

Please note: All virtual classes are recorded. Please click here for information about our recording policy.

Led by

Martha Cooley

Martha Cooley

Martha Cooley is the author of three novels—The Archivist (a national bestseller published in a dozen foreign markets), Thirty-Three Swoons, and Buy Me Love—as well as a memoir, Guesswork: A Reckoning with Loss. She co-translated Time Ages in a Hurry, a short-story collection by Antonio Tabucchi. A 2017 O. Henry Prize winner, Martha has published essays, short fiction, and co-translations in A Public Space, AGNI, LitHub, The Common, LARB, and other leading journals. She is a Professor Emerita at Adelphi University and taught for fifteen years in the Bennington Writing Seminars. Martha lives in the medieval Italian village of Castiglione del Terziere with her husband and about a dozen cats.

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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