The Lonely Hearts Book Club
The Lonely Hearts Book Club
By: Lucy Gilmore
[Fulfilled ‘Book with a library or bookshop’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2023]
“If I’d known my house was going to turn into the setting of a Jojo Moyes novel, I’d have let them put me in a nursing home in the first place.”
This is one of those feel-good books about friendship. I couldn’t read a bunch of these back to back but it was a refreshing read in between my typical thrillers! Even though it had a sentimental plot line, the writing style was very good and there was a lot of wit and humor that just made this book a delight to read.
I really enjoyed the message of the story— that life is worth living and that relationships are a mess worth making— and that it was encompassed in an unlikely book club made it all the better and is definitely one I would recommend.
As the title suggests, what ends up forming in the pages of this book is a book club full of lonely (inter-generational) hearts. Although, the people take awhile to figure that out.
What adds to the genuine-ness of this book is that not all the problems get solved or have classic happy endings. It’s real life and healing is a process. Most of the time action steps are small and ordinary.
I really liked that Gilmore chose to create a diverse group of book club members, not just in personality but in age. There is so much value in not just surrounding ourselves with people our own age and stage of life. We need the wisdom and experiences of others to speak into our lives and this book portrays well how meaningful friendships cross generational lines.
The book is told with multiple POVs from each of the characters that make up the book club.
Here’s the cast:
Sloane: librarian; instigator of the book club; her older sister died when they were young
“Since the day my sister Emily died… I hadn’t loved anyone who didn’t exist between the covers of a book. At this point, I wasn’t even sure I knew how.”
How others viewed her:
“She was the only person I knew who was capable of genuine, un-ironic joy in other people’s triumphs.”
“An echo with nothing and no one to call her own. A friendly facade. An empty smile. A scared little girl without an opinion of your own, latching on to other people’s bigger and brighter lives because you’re not willing to full live your own.”
Arthur: old curmudgeon and regular library attendee who all the librarians avoid because of his cutting remarks and general grumpiness; his wife died very young
“Mark Twain was a curmudgeon. Ebenezer Scrooge is a curmudgeon. Arthur McLachlan is Satan’s grandfather.”
Maisy: Arthur’s ‘nosy’ neighbor who works as a phone ‘psychic’; she is divorced and her hostile daughter chose to live with her dad and stepmom
“One should never underestimate the staying power of a woman who had literally nowhere else to be.”
“They had no idea how much I needed this: someone to cook for, someone to care about. Someone who might, if I was tied to a hospital bed and knocking on death’s door, be a little sad to see me go.”
“She drove the same way she talked— wildly and without direction.”
Mateo: Sloane’s coworker at the library; lives with his boyfriend Lincoln; has an overbearing mother who is a famous singer
“If there was one thing I was good at, it was pretending I knew what I was doing. When you were a Sharpe, there was only one rule: The show must go on.”
Greg: I don’t want to spoil too much about Greg but his mother had died recently of cancer
Nigel: I can’t tell you his deal without spoilers too but he is also sad
The book club had a unique start.
At the library Sloane encountered Arthur in all his curmudgeonliness. They began a ritual of sorts where they traded literary banter and arguments. Sloane refused to back down from Arthur and gave crap back to him.
Then one day she realizes he hadn’t come in the library at all that week. Concerned for his safety she breaks library protocol, looks up his address, and shows up at his house to make sure he’s okay.
Turns out he had a health scare and was in the process of, in turn, scaring off the in-home health care.
After Sloane loses her job for disobeying her boss’s order to leave Arthur alone, Sloane now has the time to take care of him. Arthur is begrudging to accept any help, but he also refuses to return to the hospital. The compromise is that Sloane catalogues the stacks of books all over his house and is there if he needs anything.
The neighbor gets involved and to Arthur’s dismay, a book club emerges. Eventually they end up needing Mateo’s registered nurse skills so he gets an invite to the group. And Greg and Nigel also eventually get grafted in.
Loneliness is a real epidemic these days. There are lots of books about how we are so connected via the internet and social media that it actually makes us less connected in the ways that matter most.
Covid-19 added a whole new layer of loneliness when shelter in place laws kept families and support systems apart. The elderly in nursing homes stopped having visitors and many died without anyone there to hold their hands. I was in the hospital for a couple weeks in 2020 before my twins were born and was told they had just changed the rules at the hospital to allow husbands to stay in the mothers’ rooms because they were prescribing so many depression meds for the moms because they were dealing with it all alone.
The Lonely Hearts Book Club does not tackle the Covid stuff at all, but I couldn’t help but see the connection.
God created us to be relational beings. In relationship with him, but also with others. We need each other. There is struggle and heartache when we find ourselves alone.
Even in a crowd we can be lonely. Some of these characters have people around them, but they haven’t been able to be vulnerable, to let someone in or to do the hard and messy work of loving another.
I love what one of the characters realizes: “This world was a terrible place… it tried to convince you that you were alone in your suffering. Everyone in this room had fallen for that lie but I wasn’t having it anymore.”
I would go a step further and more specifically say that Satan wants to convince you that you are alone in your suffering. That is a lie that keeps you from seeing the other lies in your life you may be believing. We weren’t made to do this life alone but Satan would love to isolate you from the love and support of others.
In the very beginning God declared it was not good for man to be alone.
Hebrews 10:24-25 says “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another…”
Galatians 6:2 says “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
There’s plenty more commands to that effect, plus all the verses exhorting us to love one another. How can we love each other if we aren’t with each other? How can we bear each other’s burdens if we aren’t honest with each other?
The Lonely Hearts Book Club wasn’t studying the Bible, but they still quickly came to understand the value of sharing that time together, of bearing each other’s burdens, of allowing others to be in your life and serving others in yours.
The books they read together helped them express the words that were deep in their hearts, the hurts and the truths that were fighting to get out but without a way to do it.
They realized that isolating themselves in their grief and their struggle took away from their ability to truly live life.
“I clutched the book to my chest in sudden, heart-wrenching sadness. Not because of the people we’d lost and would continue to lose, but because even with that loss in every horizon, life still called to me… it had been calling me for years— but it had taken this random, beautiful collection of people for me to realize…”
It reminded me of a book I read called On Getting Out of Bed that addresses the difficulty of ‘getting out of bed’ when you’re grieving, depressed, or anxious. The author says,
“Your existence testifies… There is nowhere you can hide where your life will not speak something to the world.”
He goes on to say,
“Life will inevitably crush you, at one point or another, and your response to that suffering will testify to something. There will be times when subjectively you will be convinced that life is not worth living, and that existence is not beautiful or good but onerous and meaningless. When those times come, your obligation is to look toward others as witnesses of God’s goodness, to remember your responsibilities to care for others, and to remember that you are always a witness, whether you want to be or not. But most of all, remember that you are God’s beloved. This means acknowledging the objective reality that life is good, and that despite our distress, we must get up and carry on.” [On Getting Out of Bed]
The Lonely Hearts Book Club reminds us that life is worth living. That relationships are a mess worth making. That even in our grief or our struggles, there are others who need us even as we need them. God designed it that way.
We aren’t meant to be lonely. Fight against the lie that you are alone. Find your people that will be there for you. If it takes a book club to get there, so be it! There are actually a ton of books out there that may start the conversations you need to speak into your life or another.
The books talked about in The Lonely Hearts Book Club are largely classics— which I’m not a huge fan of, but I appreciate what the author was doing in writing it like that. Classics are classics because they usually touch on timeless, relevant human experiences and emotions.
One of the books that became prominent in the story was Anne of Green Gables. I suspect if you enjoyed that one, it will add an extra layer of sentimental value to this book as well. You’ll find some “kindred spirits.”
This book is a good book club book option. It even includes some good discussion questions at the end of the book.
The fifth question mentions the social media challenge where you put two or more book titles together to make a funny phrase or sentence [“A Time to Kill Pollyanna”]. Since it’s totally something up my alley, I’m including a few (I got carried away) of my own. Feel free to add yours in the comments!
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone In Cold Blood Where the Crawdads Sing
Excuse Me While I Disappear On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
Recommendation
This is a great read! Even if you don’t love sentimental fiction books, I think it’s a quick enough and funny enough read that it will still be a compelling read for you.
I’m not a huge fan of books that showcase LGBTQ relationships, but this book’s message about life and friendship was able to overshadow that for me and still makes this a book I definitely recommend.
Life is calling you to come live it. Let these characters inspire you to be known by another and to share your burdens.
[Content Advisory: a few f-words in Mateo’s chapters; no sexual content; there is a romantic relationship between two male characters]
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