Final Months Mark Eight Years Of Togetherness

For Mother-Daughter Book Club

 

By Nancy K. Crevier

With the exception of Suzanne Lang and her daughter, Nicole, who joined in two and a half years ago, eight members of one mother-daughter book club in Newtown have gathered monthly for eight years, their love of reading the common bond tying them together.

They have laughed and cried together over some books, and they have grimaced at others. They have embraced characters, fictional or not, been astounded by insights, and awed by worlds imagined by authors. They have argued about motives and debated the merits of books, and learned to listen and respect each other. Their meetings have run the gamut from subdued to raucous, from introspective to hilarious.

This season, however, there has been a poignant air to the meetings.

The girls — Nicole Lang, Quincy DeYoung, Cassie Fallon, and Katie Burns — who along with their mothers Suzanne Lang, Suzy DeYoung, Valerie Fallon, and Sarah Burns make up the book club, are seniors in high school. The time looms when they will close the chapter on this part of their lives.

“It definitely has gotten harder to meet since the girls got into high school,” said Sarah Burns. “They are all so busy now. But even when one of us hasn’t had time to read the book that month, we still get something out of the discussions. Lots of times, we will go back and pick up the book to finish it.”

Katie is a member of the Newtown High School cross country and girls’ crack teams. Quincy also does cross country for NHS, belongs to several school clubs, and works part-time at Newtown Youth Academy. Volleyball in the fall, softball in the spring, stage manager for the winter musical, and working at C.H. Booth Library fill a lot of extracurricular hours for Nicole, who attends Wooster High School in Danbury. Cassie plays for the NHS girls’ soccer and track teams. All of the girls have been immersed in SAT and ACT testing since last year, and are applying to colleges.

Still, said Valerie Fallon, by rescheduling more frequently, the book club has managed to get together every six or seven weeks, even through the summer months.

The book club is a nice way to reconnect with friends she has known since elementary school, said Nicole, and whom she no longer sees on a day-to-day basis at school. It also serves as a pleasant break in the daily routine, said Quincy. “You get to discuss things with your friends that you wouldn’t talk about at school,” she said.

“And,” laughed Sarah Burns, “we get dessert.”

 “The conversations we have at book club are amazing. It can lead to so much,” said Suzy DeYoung.

The mothers said that the time spent with their daughters, most of whom are the eldest of the children in their families, has been special. They have watched their daughters grow from girls, just fifth graders the first year of book club, to young women with their own viewpoints.

“When they were young,” said Suzy DeYoung, “the girls tended to see the characters and experiences in the books we read in black or white. A person did something wrong and was bad, or did something nice and was good. As mothers, we were seeing much more deeply into the ‘whys’ of a character’s actions — and now we see our daughters doing this, too.”

The book selection has naturally evolved as the girls matured, with a mix of contemporary fiction and nonfiction dominating the reading list, and peppered with classics like The Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

“We were reading some serious stuff when they were pretty young, though,” recalled Suzy DeYoung.

“There were times when the books we selected started getting into some very adult themes and we had to kind of gloss over when we felt the girls weren’t quite ready for the subject,” Valerie Fallon added.

Quincy said, however, that the difficult book themes made for interesting chats during book club meetings, and rarely for any awkward moments.

 “I love hearing my daughter’s perspective on the book we are reading,” said Valerie Fallon. “It’s so nice to share books with her.”

Good Books, Bad Books

& Selecting Titles

The women thought deeply about the dozens of books they have read together, and came up with several favorites.

“For me,” said Katie, “The Secret Life of Bees was my favorite book.” It was the third book the group read, she remembered, following Fever and The Outsiders.

“Piratica was one I really liked,” said Cassie, “even though it was one we read a long time ago, when we were little kids.”

For Nicole, it was The Story of B that lingered with her after the last page was turned, and Quincy said that the recently read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — sidelined many times before the group finally got to it — turned out to be a top ten book for her.

Mothers and daughters were all in agreement that The Help and The Glass Castle were two excellent books for discussion, and loved by all.

Johnny Got His Gun left a deep impression on most of the group — and for a hugely disturbing novel on the subject of war, that particular selection also elicited some laughs.

“We were so confused when Sarah and Katie came to book club and said, ‘Well, at least the ending was uplifting,’” said Suzy DeYoung. It turned out that the Burnses had picked up another book, of a similar title, with a decidedly different outcome than the antiwar book by Dalton Trumbull.

Not all of the books picked were winners, the women said, with Beloved, What Jamie Saw and Where The Heart Is getting the thumbs down from all of the younger members of the club.

Even disliked novels had their merits, though, they said, in that they led to good discussions.

Selecting the books was a grab bag of suggestions, they said, with possibilities picked up from the Internet, The New York Times best sellers list, friends’ suggestions, and books well liked by other book groups. Sometimes it is just a book that looks interesting to one of them as they browse the library shelves.

For the past two years, Nicole has chimed in with ideas she has brought from her job at C.H. Booth Library.

“If I see a book come in and out a lot, I think this must be a good book. Or, I see what the book discussion groups are reading at the library, and suggest one of those,” said Nicole.

Belonging to a book club has also broadened their reading experiences, said the women.

“I am pretty sure I have read a lot more books than I would have on my own,” Suzanne Lang said.

Cassie agreed. “The book club has introduced me to a lot of books I wouldn’t have picked up otherwise,” she said.

Katie noted that the extensive reading has actually helped in test situations, where drawing on literature can benefit the writing portion of tests. There has even been some overlap in what the club has read and required reading for school, said Katie. That has been beneficial in class book discussions, she said.

As the women settled in at the Lang home for one recent discussion, they naturally broke into groups of the daughters and the mothers, the chatter flowing quietly and catching up on each other’s lives before the discussion on the past month’s book, Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan, got underway. The atmosphere was serene, and the sense of friendships forged over words and years was evident.

“We are definitely moving on, in a lot of different areas, and this book club is one,” reflected Suzy DeYoung, as she looked around the cluster of women.

“I think this year is a good ending point for all of us. And every moment,” said Valerie Fallon, “has been worth it.”