I immediately reached out to ask her to write a piece for us about the Boston book club named Club RED (which is short for “Read, Eat, Drink"), who spoke with her last fall and had a lively discussion of her work. They reunited in January when the group, led by Christine Powers, took a day trip to New York City to tour various locations from Fiona’s books. These sites included the Barbizon Hotel (from THE DOLLHOUSE), the Dakota (from THE ADDRESS), and Grand Central Terminal, the setting for her third novel, THE MASTERPIECE, which releases in August. According to Fiona, “We had an absolute blast and I’m honored by their enthusiasm and support. I don’t think I stopped laughing the entire time!” Read much more about their experiences and see photos from the tour in Fiona’s blog post. Many thanks to Fiona for taking the time to share these fun memories with us.
Around our house, there has been a lot of Olympic viewing (my thought: if only turning pages was a sport, my reading would get me a gold medal). With this year’s competition taking place in South Korea --- and with so many people saying they know so little about the region --- we thought it would be the ideal time to call attention to one of my favorite books from last year, PACHINKO, which we’re spotlighting on the ReadingGroupGuides.com homepage. This National Book Award finalist written by Min Jin Lee centers on four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family who fights to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan, exiled from a home they never knew. So many groups have selected PACHINKO for discussion. Another book about Korea that was noteworthy when it first released was THE ORPHAN MASTER’S SON by Adam Johnson, which is set in North Korea and received the Pulitzer Price for Fiction in 2013.