How to Read a Book by Monica Wood

All Books Have a Story and a Meanwhile

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There are three main characters in this book and in alternating chapters, the author tells us about them. We quickly learn that their lives overlap. The book opens with Violet, a twenty-two-year-old woman who is in prison. She is one of twelve female inmates who attend a weekly book club there. She tells us that in book club – and in prison in general – the women talk about many things, but never their Reason with a capital “R”, the reason they are in prison. Thus it takes a while for us to figure out Violet’s Reason.

The leader of the book club is Harriet. The women call her Bookie the Book Lady. She has been leading the group for a year and a half. She is not supposed to tell the women anything about herself and yet she does. She talks about her deceased husband, her two daughters who live out of the country, her cat Tabsy, the niece who lives with her now but who is soon leaving for grad school, etc. The women even know her last name and where she lives. Clearly, to the extent possible, Harriet and the women have become friends. In the end, this backfires on her, but not in the way we might expect.

Harriet is a retired school teacher and she puts a lot of effort into the book club. To get the books they read, she frequents a small store called Wadsworth Books where she is a favorite customer. It is there that she meets Frank, “a tall, good-looking older man with hazel-brown eyes and a silver crew cut.” He is the book store’s part-time handyman, and the third main character.

The author introduces Frank this way: “After the torment of the trial – pitying glances from the jury box, merciless renditions of Lorraine’s final moments – Frank Daigle had sequestered himself for over a year, a jury of one, enduring daily calls from his daughter, Kristy, who believed her father paralyzed with grief.”

It takes a while to learn how Lorraine died, why there was a trial, and what Frank was paralyzed with if not grief. But since all these characters are in the same story together, we can easily guess that Violet’s imprisonment is connected to Lorraine’s death.

When Violet is suddenly released from prison, her adjustment to life in the “Outs” is fascinating. (Perhaps the best part of the book.) Since her family does not want to be near her, they do not bring her home to Abbott Falls, Maine. Instead they take her to Portland, Maine. Another reason they choose to abandon her in Portland is that it is a bigger city and the social worker thought she’d find more opportunity there. What she finds instead is the home of Wadsworth Books, Harriet, and Frank.

It’s pretty clear where the novel is going from there. And actually, this is one of my favorite types of stories, where an odd group of people come together to become a family.

Adding another dimension to the book, though, is its title. One of the things Harriet teaches in her book club is “how to see that stories have a ‘meanwhile’ – an important thing that’s happening while the rest of the story moves along. Three bears strolling in the forest: story. Goldilocks wrecking their house: meanwhile. Heartbroken Cinderella sweeping and scrubbing: story. Handsome prince searching far and wide: meanwhile.”

In this novel, when Violet is newly out of prison, she thinks of things this way: “Felon from Abbott Falls on the terrifying Outs: story. Book Lady plinking dishes at the felon’s sink: meanwhile.”  The rest of the book shows all of Violet’s story with the very last words being her life’s meanwhile. And while her life, like any life, might have had its ups and downs, it is a beautiful and satisfying meanwhile.

Equally, this book is a beautiful and satisfying read.

And the ending couldn’t be more perfect.

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Read about Monica Wood’s first book, The One in a Million Boy here. 

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