Reading Groups

Members Only: The Literarians

Free

RSVP Below

Wednesday, 12:30 pm EDT - 2:00 pm EDT October 20, 2021

Online via Zoom & at
The Center for Fiction*

This session will take place in person* and online via Zoom. Please click Register above to RSVP. Questions? Please email Allison Escoto at allison@centerforfiction.org.

The Literarians is a free monthly discussion group open to members of The Center. Led by our head librarian Allison Escoto, The Literarians read a wide variety of contemporary fiction. New participants are welcome throughout the year!

Not a member yet? Join today!

Up Next:
Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

Previous Selections:

How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue
The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
Indelicacy by Amina Cain
Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
A Burning by Megha Majumdar
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Deacon King Kong by James McBride
Apeirogon by Colum McCann
Milkman by Anna Burns
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
The Parisian by Isabella Hammad
Normal People by Sally Rooney
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
The Burning Girl by Claire Messud
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

*To attend this reading group in person, please email your proof of vaccination to health@centerforfiction.org prior to visiting the Center. Mask wearing will be required throughout the building. Accepted vaccination proofs include:

an image of your CDC vaccination card
a screenshot or scanned printout of your Excelsior pass
a record of vaccination from the healthcare provider who gave you your vaccine

In compliance with developing guidelines issued by federal, state, and our local government, we ask that all visitors to The Center for Fiction’s member spaces provide proof of vaccination for COVID-19. If you remain unvaccinated because of a disability or sincerely held religious belief, please also contact us at health@centerforfiction.org for assistance or to request a reasonable accommodation.

Led by

Allison Escoto

Head Librarian & Education Director

Allison Escoto

Head Librarian & Education Director

New Yorker by way of New Orleans, Allison Escoto received her BA in Creative Writing from SUNY New Paltz and closed out the 90s as a bookseller in Greenwich Village. After several years in publishing, she pursued and received her MLS from Queens College. Since then she has worked as a librarian for 15 years in various libraries in and around NYC and has been moonlighting as a poet and copywriter. She reviews books for Booklist and serves on the ALA RUSA Notables committee. From 2017-2020, she was the Associate Editor for Newtown Literary Journal, a publication dedicated to featuring writers from her beloved Queens.

Up Next

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Whereabouts

By Jhumpa Lahiri

Published by Knopf

PURCHASE

Exuberance and dread, attachment and estrangement: in this novel, Jhumpa Lahiri stretches her themes to the limit. In the arc of one year, an unnamed narrator in an unnamed city, in the middle of her life’s journey, realizes that she’s lost her way. The city she calls home acts as a companion and interlocutor: traversing the streets around her house, and in parks, piazzas, museums, stores, and coffee bars, she feels less alone.

We follow her to the pool she frequents, and to the train station that leads to her mother, who is mired in her own solitude after her husband’s untimely death. Among those who appear on this woman’s path are colleagues with whom she feels ill at ease, casual acquaintances, and “him,” a shadow who both consoles and unsettles her. Until one day at the sea, both overwhelmed and replenished by the sun’s vital heat, her perspective will abruptly change.

This is the first novel Lahiri has written in Italian and translated into English. The reader will find the qualities that make Lahiri’s work so beloved: deep intelligence and feeling, richly textured physical and emotional landscapes, and a poetics of dislocation. But Whereabouts, brimming with the impulse to cross barriers, also signals a bold shift of style and sensibility. By grafting herself onto a new literary language, Lahiri has pushed herself to a new level of artistic achievement.

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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