Fiction Review: The Reading List

I love listening to the Book Cougars podcast, and their second quarter read-along choice was The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams (this year's theme for their read-alongs is books about books). This warm, moving novel about the power of books to connect people came to me at just the right time.

Seventeen-year-old Aleisha is reluctantly working at her local library in Wembley, London, for the summer. She's not much of a reader, but she took the job at the urging of her older brother, Aidan; the library is a special place to him that he has loved since he was a young child. The siblings now work together to care for their mother, who is confined to the house due to mental illness. It's a difficult life for both of them.

One day, a widower named Mukesh comes to the library for the first time and timidly approaches the desk to ask Aleisha to recommend a book. His wife died a year ago, and his three adult daughters worry about him but have busy lives of their own. His wife was an avid reader and always had a stack of books from the library on her nightstand. Their granddaughter, Priya, is just like her grandma, and Mukesh thinks that perhaps reading will help him to become closer to Priya and to his late wife, whom he misses so much. He found a library copy of The Time Traveler's Wife under their bed and read it. The novel opened a whole new world for him, helped him better understand his own loss, and gave him a glimpse of what his wife and Priya love so much about books. But he has no idea what to read next. When he asks Aleisha, she doesn't know what to say, but she found a list of books inside a book she was shelving earlier, so she suggests the first one from the list, To Kill a Mockingbird, and checks it out for him. Knowing the lonely man will return and want to talk to her about the book, Aleisha begins reading it also. That begins their own private book club, and the two isolated, struggling people both begin to reach out and connect, with each other and with their community.

The list Aleisha finds:

Just in case you need it:

To Kill a Mockingbird

Rebecca

The Kite Runner

Life of Pi

Pride and Prejudice

Little Women

Beloved

A Suitable Boy

(links to my own reviews, where available)

While Aleisha and Mukesh are at the heart of this story, that list makes the rounds of the community, and short, interstitial chapters provide a quick glimpse into the lives of other people who find the list of books in various places. In all, the novel weaves together the story of a community and of people coming together via the books they read. Mukesh and Aleisha are both suffering, and their healing journeys are highlighted here. It's a beautiful, heartwarming story, but it doesn't shy away from difficult topics like death, mental illness, and suicide. I read this novel during a difficult time in my own life, grieving the loss of our 13-year-old grand-nephew, and like the characters, the gentle but honest tones of the novel helped me to cope. It's all about people and connections, but it is also a love letter to books (I've read all but two of the books on the list). I greatly enjoyed experiencing these books (many of them my own favorites) through the eyes of these characters just discovering the power of reading for the first time.

400 pages, William Morrow

HarperAudio

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Alphabet Soup Challenge - R

Diversity Challenge (and East Asian mini challenge)

Travel the World in Books - UK

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Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. It sounds like a wonderful audio production, with multiple narrators.

 

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