An invitation: “The Old Man and the Sea” Book Club

by Sarah Linville, Book Club Editor

We recently wrapped up a successful book club covering Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. About 10 of us met every two weeks to discuss Brontë’s (mostly unlikable) characters, comparisons to Emerald Fennell’s recent movie adaptation, and what this story says to our society today. Our conversations were both engaging and thought-provoking, and many members agreed that tackling this novel in community greatly enriched the experience (and the built-in accountability was helpful, too).

For our next book club, we are turning to a much shorter piece, and one that is set closer to Florida: Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. For those who aren’t familiar, this novella follows the story of Santiago, a Cuban fisherman, as he chases a giant Marlin in the Gulf Stream. Originally published in 1952, nearly 30 years into his writing career, this work is considered by many to be Hemingway’s magnum opus: it won the Pulitzer in 1953 and greatly contributed to Hemingway winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Because it is so short—around 120 pages in most copies—we’ll just have one meeting for this book club, as we did for A Christmas Carol in December. Our hope is to continue alternating between single-session and multi-session book clubs so that everyone has the opportunity to join us, no matter their time constraints. We’ll meet on May 5 from 8-9:30 Eastern. We hope you’ll join us!

And, this summer, we’ll turn to another piece of Florida fiction—The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Stay tuned for details.

Sign up for the May 5th book club here.