The Magic of Book Clubs

Carolyn Turgeon's new novel, Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story, is about the fairy godmother from the classic tale, who is living in present-day New York City and longing to return to her otherworldly homeland. In today's guest blog post, Carolyn talks about a different kind of magic --- the magic of book clubs and reading.


I love book clubs. The first time I saw one, I was with my mother visiting Sarasota's Ringling Museum of the Circus to research my first novel, Rain Village, which was about a girl who becomes a trapeze star in a travelling Mexican circus. After visiting the museum, we had dinner at a charming, breezy little restaurant. I remember balmy weather, leafy plants hanging down, fans whirring overhead, wooden shutters. And then a group of women came in, laughing, obviously all friends, all wearing sundresses and holding copies of one of my favorite books, Chocolat. They sat around a long table, ordered goblets of red wine, and started talking.

This, I thought, is exactly the way to celebrate books. I'd spent years studying literature, in college and in graduate school, and was used to settings that could suck every bit of pleasure and feeling from a novel. I'd remember the envy I'd felt once when I was working as a waitress and my friend Penny came in, ordered a piece of chocolate cake and coffee, and sat clutching a thick novel in her ring-covered fingers, taking slow bites of that cake without taking her eyes from the page. It seemed like the definition of pleasure for me. Those Sarasota ladies reminded me of Penny, and all of them reminded me of why I'd ultimately left graduate school: to read again for pure pleasure, and to write novels instead of study them, to create worlds you could step right into, full of beauty and magic and feeling.

When Rain Village was published in 2006, I had my next big run-in with a book club, and this time I hit the mother lode: the Pulpwood Queens Book Club, "where tiaras are mandatory and reading good books is the RULE," had made Rain Village their April 2007 pick. That January I flew down to East Texas for the nationwide club's annual Girlfriend Weekend, where many Pulpwood Queens chapters gather to mingle with authors and attend the infamous and glamorous Hair Ball. I loved Pulpwood Queens founder Kathy Patrick and everyone else I met: all of them in their tiaras, decked out in pink and rhinestones, snapping up books, attending author panels, having a grand time with their girlfriends, and generally just celebrating the pleasure of words. That April, many of the women I'd met in Texas asked me to call in to their clubs, and I got to talk to women gathered around tables at a local restaurant or around the living room of one of the members, and I talked with them and answered their questions and asked a bunch of my own while they ate and drank and laughed together.

My second novel, Godmother (which comes out in stores today, March 3) is the Pulpwood Queens Pick of the Month this May, and I look forward to talking with many of those same ladies, who will whip up casseroles and mix pitchers of margaritas and have their girlfriends over to discuss my book. I love this. It feels exactly right to me. In fact, I wish I could send each book out in the world with a warm bath and bubbles and a goblet of red wine and maybe even some bon bons, not to mention the fervent request that you throw a party in its honor --- i.e., at your own book club. And, of course, that you invite me.

---Carolyn Turgeon
carolynturgeon@gmail.com