The Reading List
Fiction
William Morrow
August 3, 2021
Advance reader copy
384
Free from publisher
Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in the London Borough of Ealing after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries.
Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home.
When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list…hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again.
First off, can I get a wallpaper or lithograph in the pattern of this book cover? As a bibliophile, if you weren't interested by seeing the cover, you surely would be after reading the premise. A book about books will capture my interest every time. Some of these type of reads are better than others, but this one was a great fit for me. The character of Mukesh was yet another example of my love for old men in books! I loved him, and the dynamic with his daughters calling him everyday to remind him of mundane things like trash day was just heartwarming. I loved the way the characters interacted with the books on the mysterious list, and their discussions of them. The fact that the books were well known helped in my understanding around the discussions, but you don't need to have read them (I haven't read the last two) to get the takeaway from each. The timeline does bounce around a bit in the beginning, which made it a bit harder to get into, but once the main characters are established, it got easier. Not only was this a great story centered on how reading can bring people together with a shared experience, it was also a nod to libraries. I loved that the character of Aleisha thinks her summer library job is just something to power through, until she discovers the books and people that change her life for the better. The campaign to save their small library was one that I'm sure will resonate with many, as library funding is always an issue no matter where you live. The somewhat improbable coincidence toward the end was one that I saw coming from a mile away, but that and the timeline issue were my only negative takeaways.
What a lovely tribute to the power of reading, the connections we make through reading (both physically with people, and mentally within ourselves). Add in an ode to libraries and you have the perfect book about books!
