Adult Book Club's November Read

Adult Book Club's November Read

                         

When I’m not crafting with kids, I’m an adult services librarian. Once of my responsibilities is hosting a monthly book club. They’ve been meeting for 13 years, so it’s sometimes difficult to find something nobody has read yet, that isn’t so insanely popular that it would be impossible to reserve enough copies. This month, we read The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno, by Ellen Bryson.
We all agreed that this book is very readable. It wasn’t what I’d call a page-turner, but I did read it in two days, so maybe it was. It’s about a group of ‘freaks’ living in P.T. Barnum’s museum, right after President Lincoln’s death. The characters were varied and interesting. The plot had a bit of mystery, and left me honestly a bit surprised by the end. It’s been referred to as a cross between Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love and Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants. 

Bartholomew is the world’s thinnest man, and the story follows him as he meets a new ‘freak’ who changes the way he views his place in the world. It’s not exactly a coming of age tale, but it does deal with finding your identity and making your destiny. The other characters are fun—I know that sound dumb, but they’re fun to read about! There are side plots involving the other members or the museum, and each character comes off the page in their own way. There wasn’t a single character or side plot that had me yawning and flipping past their scene.

This was a good change-up for our group. We’ve been reading heavier plots and classics. This allowed us to take a step back, enjoy ourselves, and then touch on the more serious themes layered into the lighter plot. I think this is a great book club pick—or a for-fun read—I’d have read it even if I hadn’t assigned it to myself!