Westside Women's Book (& Beer) Club

We'll meet at Firestone Walker at 3205 Washington Blvd. in Marina del Rey, 90292. We will likely (hopefully?) be inside but bring a jacket just in case! There is no obligation to order food or drinks, but if you want to do so it is all on an individual basis using a QR code, so need to worry about splitting a check at the end. Parking is available in a small lot behind the restaurant, in the neighborhood (check the signs!), and on Washington.

Note that this book may also appear under the title "The Other Hand."

Little Bee Summary:

Little Bee follows a teenage Nigerian refugee after her illegal release from a British immigration detention center. She travels to the home of Sarah and her husband Andrew, whom she met two years previously on a beach during the oil conflict in the Niger Delta. As both Little Bee and Sarah slowly tell and retell their stories of that event and those before and after it, their voices slowly unite. Bridging across countries and blending into a single set of metaphors, the women’s stories intermingle into one.

The weather is warming up, finally, so fingers crossed that we'll move back to a fun venue in Marina del Rey with the possibility of outdoor seating! Check back closer to the date of the discussion for location information.

Book Synopsis from GoodReads:

Monday Charles is missing, and only Claudia seems to notice. Claudia and Monday have always been inseparable—more sisters than friends. So when Monday doesn’t turn up for the first day of school, Claudia’s worried. When she doesn’t show for the second day, or second week, Claudia knows that something is wrong. Monday wouldn’t just leave her to endure tests and bullies alone. Not after last year’s rumors and not with her grades on the line. Now Claudia needs her best—and only—friend more than ever. But Monday’s mother refuses to give Claudia a straight answer, and Monday’s sister April is even less help.

As Claudia digs deeper into her friend’s disappearance, she discovers that no one seems to remember the last time they saw Monday. How can a teenage girl just vanish without anyone noticing that she’s gone?

The weather is finally warming up! Check back closer to the date of the discussion for location information, hopefully one with an outdoor option.

Book Summary from GoodReads:

It's 1913, and on the surface, Laura Lyons couldn't ask for more out of life--her husband is the superintendent of the New York Public Library, allowing their family to live in an apartment within the grand building, and they are blessed with two children. But headstrong, passionate Laura wants more, and when she takes a leap of faith and applies to the Columbia Journalism School, her world is cracked wide open. As her studies take her all over the city, she finds herself drawn to Greenwich Village's new bohemia, where she discovers the Heterodoxy Club--a radical, all-female group in which women are encouraged to loudly share their opinions on suffrage, birth control, and women's rights. Soon, Laura finds herself questioning her traditional role as wife and mother. But when valuable books are stolen back at the library, threatening the home and institution she loves, she's forced to confront her shifting priorities head on . . . and may just lose everything in the process.

Eighty years later, in 1993, Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, the famous essayist Laura Lyons, especially after she's wrangled her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library. But the job quickly becomes a nightmare when rare manuscripts, notes, and books for the exhibit Sadie's running begin disappearing from the library's famous Berg Collection. Determined to save both the exhibit and her career, the typically risk-adverse Sadie teams up with a private security expert to uncover the culprit. However, things unexpectedly become personal when the investigation leads Sadie to some unwelcome truths about her own family heritage--truths that shed new light on the biggest tragedy in the library's history.