The Book Club – Online

This session of The Book Club will take place on Monday 27th  7pm – 8pm via Zoom. This month, we are reading Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan. £9.99 is the price of the book and a ticket to the session. The book can be delivered directly to you (please add your shipping address and tick the box for shipping) or you can collect it in store free of charge. You can buy a book and ticket here.

If you already own a copy of the book, you can purchase a ticket alone for £3. You can purchase a ticket only here.

For those unable to afford a book or ticket at present, we have a limited amount of complementary books/tickets. Please contact the bookshop via bookworms@houseofbooksandfriends.com or call 07597365380.

One of our booksellers will lead the book club, and the group will be split up into smaller groups in breakout rooms to discuss the questions.

We always ask that you be respectful and kind whilst discussing the book and others’ opinions of it.

About the book

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.

Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.