We arrive promptly at six for chilled sancerre and, perhaps, a cucumber-mint gin spritz. We admire the platter of delectable cookies or artfully arranged appetizers. We ooh and we aah. But, I remind myself, we do not eat. Here, no one eats. These women drink, though, and while I’d prefer sparkling water, I’ve learned to cradle a wineglass and sip. (They disapprove of abstaining.) We mingle and speak of travels and renovation, but mostly of our children and their accomplishments. The competition in the room is fierce. After precisely 30 minutes, we begin our discussion of The Corrections.
That’s how things were after I moved, grudgingly, to a posh suburban town in California about 25 years ago. A new acquaintance invited me to join her book group. Rather, she invited me to audition by attending one meeting. Desperate for friends in a place where I knew no one but a distant cousin, I agreed to the humiliating tryout. Afterward, I heard there was dissension about whether to admit such a chatty, opinionated New Yorker. Still, when an official invitation was belatedly extended, I accepted.
This article appears in Issue 35 of Alta Journal.
SUBSCRIBE
Little did I know that this was the book group in town. People asked how I’d wrangled an invitation. Gradually, I gleaned that the dozen country club women in my group were the fanciest of the fancy. They were beautiful, accomplished, and mostly very rich. They had advanced degrees and impressive former careers, now on indefinite pause. They were unfailingly excellent at tennis, golf, and skiing. And they were perfectly tailored, nary a hair out of place. Meanwhile, my hair was messy, and I struggled to keep a shirt tucked in. I marveled at how damn tucked in these women stayed. Not unrelatedly, nobody was above a size 4. Except me.
This was foreign territory. I was the only out Democrat in the group. (There was a closeted one, too.) Occasionally, somebody would say something faintly racist, reflecting on a recent African safari, or just a whiff homophobic, despite the tacit understanding that one member’s son was gay. I’d feel wretchedly complicit for not speaking up.
And yet, there were real compensations. When we sat down to talk about a book, the conversation was serious and engaged. These disciplined women chose worthy titles and arrived prepared, margins meticulously annotated. Each month, a different member facilitated the discussion, sharing background on the author and insight into the text’s historical framework. We read Amor Towles, Ann Patchett, and Ron Chernow. We examined Nazi occupation in Suite Française, Supreme Court dynamics in The Nine, and North Korean deprivation in Nothing to Envy. We learned together.
Over time, I came to understand my role—why I was invited to join. I was not friend material, but I enlivened what might otherwise have been boring colloquies. Because I am indeed chatty and opinionated, I added spice. These women were so careful and contained that their discussions often were, too. Sometimes I added too much spice: Our conversation about Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed and the impossibility of surviving on minimum wage was, shall we say, strained.
Often, award-winning authors visited our group (gratis) for intimate conversations. Those evenings featured elegant cocktail parties to which a select few outside members of the community might be invited. It was all very heady.
Still, I felt perpetually ill at ease. These were not my people, but I didn’t want to alienate women who were, on balance, well-meaning and who had included me. Until I did.
Two things happened.
First, the group invited someone to join who was divorced, dark-skinned, and worked full-time. They didn’t make her audition, which felt like progress. But she attended less often than expected and, when she did come, offered perspectives that made people uncomfortable. They soon expelled her, seemingly oblivious to her feelings and the broader implications of her exclusion.
Second, Trump was elected in 2016. Most of the women liked to intimate that they were Never Trumpers, but I knew that behind the voting booth curtain they had chosen him. Not because they were disenfranchised, struggling people desperate for change, but because they were married to masters of the universe who wanted tax breaks they absolutely did not need. On good days, I can sympathize with voters in the former category. I can’t fathom the self-justifications of those in the latter.
So I told the group I was going on hiatus. I never went back, and I’ve never regretted it. I believe in spending time with people whose lives and views differ from your own—but I put in my time.
The happy ending: During those years, my distant California cousin became a close friend. Tired of hearing my book group woes, he urged me to participate in his group instead, and I finally did. For nearly a decade, I’ve loved our small, passionate cohort. We have dinner parties (people eat!), discuss challenging nonfiction, talk honestly about our lives rather than jockey for status, and contemplate ways, small and large, that we might do better in the world. I pull my unruly hair into a ponytail, wear jeans and a sweater, and feel like myself.•
Anonymous is a lapsed lawyer and lover of books. She’s based in Silicon Valley and would like to eat in her town again.
