Free Press Book Club

Free Press
Book Club

Welcome to the Free Press Book Club!

To help ease some of the isolation-related boredom, we’ve started a monthly book club which will run completely online and is open to anyone and everyone to join.

Each month, we will choose a novel and share it on this page, as well as in an email to those who have registered to participate. We’ll send a couple of follow up notes to check in on your progress and suggest a few discussion topics and questions to think about as you go.

At the end of the month, we’ll all gather to participate in a livestream book club meeting, hosted by our books editor, Ben Sigurdson, or one of our pals from McNally Robinson Booksellers, as well as the author of the book.

You’ll be able to submit questions ahead of time, or drop them into one of the live chat boxes during the meeting. (And don’t worry, we’ll provide an easy-to-access link to the stream, so all you have to do is click.)

Right now, our focus is on local authors of varying genres and backgrounds, so we hope you’re excited to dive in.

The Book

Hour of the Crab
By: Patricia Robertson

Buy Now

From Goose Lane Press:

Patricia Robertson’s new collection of short fiction, Hour of the Crab, is a work of insight and mastery, each story demonstrating an original vision, intriguing characters, and sophisticated skill.

Readers will travel with Robertson’s vivid characters, sharing their journeys, their challenges, their complicated choices. They will also discover other worlds — from an eleventh-century monastery in France to a near-future British Columbia where apocalyptic wildfires seem to be never-ending.

A young woman discovers the corpse of a Moroccan teenager washed up on the beach in southern Spain and sets out to find his family in a gesture that destabilizes her own. An international aid worker shares her house with the very real ghost of a gardener’s boy. The last speaker of a dying Norse-like language carves the words he remembers into the stones of his house.

Urgent and evocative, immersed in issues of our time, the stories of Hour of the Crab reveal Robertson’s ability to draw in her readers with the heightened realism of her imagined worlds.

Schedule

Tue
Sept 28

Free Press Book Club pick annoucement

Hour of the Crab, by Patricia Robertson

Mon
Oct 11

Check-in

Expect an email from us to check in on your progress. We’ll offer up some discussion questions and other things to think about as you continue reading.

Mon
Oct 18

Livestream information email

This email will provide all the information you need for our livestream book club event, including the access link, some information about your viewing options and how you can submit your questions for the author ahead of time. This information will also be posted to our Free Press Book Club Facebook group.

Mon
Oct 25

Free Press Book Club meeting

Join our live chat starting at 7 p.m. CDT with special guest, author Patricia Robertson.

If you have any questions, please email us at bookclub@winnipegfreepress.com