Brunch and Books: The Stages of a Woman
Information on Brunch and Books happening on Saturday mornings - 25 March, 22 April, 27 May, 24 June.
On four Saturday mornings from the end of March to the end of June, I will be running a themed ‘book club’ over brunch focusing on ‘The Stages of a Woman’ at my home in East Belfast. The dates are Saturday 25 March, Saturday 22 April, Saturday 27 May and Saturday 24 June.
We will start at 10am and enjoy some delicious coffee and food together to get to know each other before discussing the book and talking about how it resonates or otherwise with our own lives. We will finish 12pm. Weather dependent, we will either eat indoors or outdoors!
The cost for the four weeks is £40 (to cover catering, costs and fees).
The biological life stages of a typical woman are divided into infancy (which we will skip in the interests of getting to the more interesting parts!), puberty/adolescence, the reproductive age, the climacteric period (perimenopause, menopause) and the post-climacteric (elderly years). I have curated a range of (fiction) books which will allow plenty of room for discussion about these stages of our lives and the impact they have on us.
Saturday 25 March (Puberty/Adolescence)
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
On the first Saturday, we will look at puberty. If you grew up in the 1970s, 80s or 90s, you are likely to have read at least one of Judy Blume’s ‘controversial’ books. In fact, they were often banned or had to be specifically requested with parental permission from the library!
When her family moves far away from the city where she has spent her childhood, 11-year-old Margaret has to navigate new friends, new feelings and the beginnings of adolescence. When Nancy Wheeler from six doors away knocks at the door and invites her over, Margaret quickly learns that in Nancy’s secret club, the other girls are very interested in growing up - getting their period, wearing make-up, kissing boys and wearing bras! But Margaret hasn’t done any of these things yet! To deal with her anxieties, Margaret talks to God, telling him all her thoughts and asking him to help her grow up so she can be just like all the other girls.
Written in 1970, Judy Blume’s iconic novel highlights the doubts and hopes young girls have about their changing bodies and the expectations society places on them including the pressures they face in terms of their appearance.
“A brilliant book about growing up - this story remains relevant and engaging today”.
Reading this book as adults, we can consider how this time in our life felt and whether this story does indeed remain relevant today. We can also prepare ourselves for the film adaptation coming to UK cinemas on 28 April! You can view the trailer here…
Saturday 22 April (The Reproductive Age)
Sorrow and Bliss and Ordinary People
On the second Saturday, we will discuss two books which show how life can very much diverge for women at this stage known as the reproductive age.
In Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss, everyone tells Martha Friel that she is clever, beautiful and brilliant. She has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick. A gift, her mother once said, not everybody gets. But Martha feels like everything is broken. As she approaches 40, she is friendless, childless, jobless, often sad and Patrick has decided to leave.
Martha has long believed that there is something wrong with her. Something in her broke, a little bomb went off in her brain when she was 17 and left her changed in a way no doctor or therapist has ever been able to explain. When she is forced to return to her childhood home to live with her dysfunctional parents, Martha has to salvage relationships with her difficult mother and her much more socially acceptable and constantly pregnant sister. She feels she has one last chance to find out whether a life is ever too broken to fix or whether, maybe, by starting again, she can write a better ending for herself.
It's South London, 2008 and in Diana Evans’ Ordinary People, two couples find themselves at a crossroads, a moment of reckoning. Melissa has a new baby and doesn’t want to let it change her. She is dealing with issues of identity. She wants to cling on to the remnants of her career but inside the crooked walls of a narrow Victorian terrace, she begins to disappear. Michael still loves Melissa but can’t quite get close enough to her to stay faithful. Meanwhile out in the suburbs on the commuter belt, Stephanie just wants to live a happy, normal life with Damian and their three children, but the death of Damian’s father has thrown him into crisis. Are they all just in the wrong place?
Saturday 27 May (The Climacteric Period)
Back When We Were Grown-Ups
On the third Saturday, we will consider how perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause is often a time when we ask questions about the life we have lived and the choices we have made.
“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person,” is the opening line of Anne Tyler’s novel about Rebecca Davitch, a 53-year old widow, single mother and grandmother. As she looks back, Rebecca wonders if she took the right path. Until age 20, her life had followed a fairly predictable path towards marriage to her college sweetheart and a PhD in history. But when she meets divorcé Joe Davitch and is “swept off her feet by a fully grown man, someone who...was already living his life," she quits college, marries him and becomes responsible for his three daughters, his mother and his brother. When Joe dies after only six years of marriage and his Uncle Poppy moves in, she finds herself with even more responsibility including the family business.
At an engagement party for one of her stepdaughters, Rebecca begins questioning everything about her life - “What happened to the 20-year young woman who was a serious scholar, politically-involved idealist, engaged to be engaged….?". She decides to take steps to resurrect her former self. Her self-improvement project includes a visit to her hometown in Virginia, picking up old hobbies, re-reading books that she had read in college, renewing her intellectual interests and re-connecting with her teenage sweetheart!
What will she realise about the path that she chose decades ago?
Saturday 24 June (The Elderly Years)
Olive, Again
In this sequel to Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout picks up the story ten years after we first met retired teacher Olive, her long-suffering husband Henry and her estranged son, Christopher. Olive is plain-speaking, not particularly fond of children and not one to suffer fools gladly. This book follows her into late old age, a second marriage, a heart attack and the loss of her independence. Olive, Again is structured as a set of interlinked short stories. In some Olive is the main character in her own life. Elsewhere, she is a tangential figure in other people’s lives. The book covers a range of themes including the damage done by parents to children (and vice versa), marital unhappiness, family tensions, loneliness, grief and loss.
As she becomes increasingly frail, unable to cut her own toenails, prone to soiling herself, we watch Olive face a kind of reckoning, coming to terms with the changes, sometimes welcome, sometimes not - in her own life and the lives of those around her.
Brunch and Books is for anyone who would like to read more books, meet new people, have meaningful conversations and find shared connections.
Some admin…
Full details of the venue (i.e. my home address) will be emailed in advance of the first Saturday.
There is only one rule for coming along - please read the book in advance!
There is no pressure to share anything that you are not comfortable with. No-one will be asked questions or forced to give their opinions….
If you are anxious about coming on your own, please let me know as I will aim to make it as easy as possible for you to come along.
There will be a maximum number of 10 people attending to ensure that everyone gets a chance to contribute.
If you are interested in attending but can’t make any of the dates, please get in touch as I can arrange something for you.
Because of the sensitive nature of the topic, this will be a women only ‘book club’. Keep an eye out for future Brunch and Books which cover other topics.
You can register and pay on Eventbrite at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/brunch-and-books-the-stages-of-a-woman-tickets-567021786427.
