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DO YOU PREFER CUTE ROM-COMS OR DYSTOPIAN NOVELS?
I have a ton of those books, so to narrow it down I thought I’d go through all of Reese’s Book Club picks to zero in on three titles Witherspoon has chosen for her monthly club that I wish I could read again with fresh eyes, from a funny rom-com I would love to see turned into a movie to an affecting dystopian novel with an unforgettable protagonist.
1. Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo
Imagine growing up knowing nothing about your father except his name. Maybe he’s a doctor or a banker or even a prolific artist. Perhaps, as in the case of Sankofa (Reese’s October 2021 pick), he’s…a dictator in a faraway country. This novel from Chibundu Onuzo (Welcome to Lagos) follows Anna, a 48-year-old mixed-race British woman who feels totally alone after her mother dies and her cheating husband moves out of the house. Unsure of who she is, Anna decides to dig into her father’s life, and learns about a man who came from West Africa to London to study in the ’70s. Falling in with a crowd of political revolutionaries, he became radicalized, eventually returning to Africa and reinventing himself as a firebrand who founded a liberation group that promptly became labeled as a terrorist organization. The bi-continental novel explores issues of power, corruption, racism, colorism, colonialism and more. Perhaps most compelling, though, is the way it explores Anna’s mixed-race identity; She is seen in England as Black and in Africa as white. With echoes of Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage and Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, Sankofa is a vivid exploration of finding one’s place in the world, while confronting the demons brought on by our parentage.
2. Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
In this modern, compulsively readable take on a rom-com that was Witherspoon’s April 2023 book club pick, Sally is a 30-something who’s a writer at a weekly sketch comedy show a la Saturday Night Live. She’s working on a sketch based on her officemate, a funny and smart but aesthetically average guy who’s somehow gotten engaged to a gorgeous actress. Her argument is that the reverse would never happen. Enter Noah, an ultra-popular—and handsome—musician who’s serving as host and musical guest on the show and quickly proves himself to be smart, sensitive and suspiciously interested in spending one-on-one time with Sally. For readers like yours truly who are fans of Nora Ephron and 30 Rock, Romantic Comedy is deliciously charming and whip-smart.
3. Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
Set in a dystopian near future, Celeste Ng’s (Little Fires Everywhere) October 2022 novel centers on 12-year-old Bird, who lives with his father, a former college linguistics professor. His mother, a Chinese American poet, vanished without a trace three years earlier, around the time her work became considered controversial amidst the passing of an act opposing foreign cultural influences. Out of the blue, Bird receives a mysterious letter that he knows is from his mother, and sets off to find her. It’s a dangerous mission, but Bird’s resolve is unflappable. Traveling to New York City, where the letter was postmarked, he connects with an underground network of librarians dedicated to rescuing disappeared books that went against the xenophobic act. Our Missing Hearts is a departure from Ng’s previous novels, but her talent is as apparent as ever. The novel shines when narrated by its innocent, precocious protagonist. Bird is wise beyond his years, holding little to no resentment toward his mother for leaving and maintaining a modicum of hope that they’ll be a regular family again someday.
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