The Pfister Book Club, Extra Spicy

This month, our Pfister Book Club discussed a book that has been on so many of the “must read” lists lately, including being named Amazon’s Best Novel of 2017.  Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng is the perfect novel for a book club because it’s an engrossing page-turner that still deals with complex issues like adoption and parental rights, class and race, family secrets, and the struggles of motherhood.  We all loved reading it and flew through the pages, but also had plenty to discuss.

It’s always so enjoyable for me to float between the tables and hear snippets of such compelling discussions.  A complicated topic this month was what side everyone took in the adoption debate in one of the novel’s central storylines: should the baby be raised by her biological mother, who’d struggled with both postpartum depression and adjusting to life in the United States but longed for her daughter, or the affluent adopted family who’d come to love her deeply but didn’t care much about her cultural heritage?  We were divided and that made the conversation vibrant and nuanced.

If you’ve read Little Fires Everywhere but weren’t able to attend our book club meeting, please tell me what you thought of the adoption decision, or any other part of the novel that interested you,  in the comments below!

The dessert Executive Pastry Chef Travis Martinez creates to pair with our book each month is usually the very first thing we all want to discuss.  This month, he went with the “fire” theme: a chocolate tart with raspberry cremeux, orange blossom chantilly,  raspberry coulis, a fresh blood orange and chocolate deco with a very spicy crunch as a garnish!

Join us next month for an April in Paris theme!

Please remember that we’ll be meeting on the third Thursday of April instead of our regular second Thursday!  The next book club meeting is April 19 from 7-9 pm.  We’ll be discussing The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George.

Monsieur Perdu can prescribe the perfect book for a broken heart. But can he fix his own?

Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can’t seem to heal through literature is himself; he’s still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened.

After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story. Joined by a bestselling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu travels along the country’s rivers, dispensing his wisdom and his books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself.

Internationally bestselling and filled with warmth and adventure, The Little Paris Bookshop is a love letter to books, meant for anyone who believes in the power of stories to shape people’s lives.

As Spring inches closer, I’m ready to read and dream of Paris.  See you next month!