Kira's blog: It Started With A Book

It Started with a Book: Nine years, countless conversations and a friendship we never set out to build

It's a Thursday evening and I'm sitting in the warm glow of two glasses of Sauvignon, surrounded by five wonderful women. Looking around the table, I am so grateful for this group and all the different perspectives they bring to any topic we land on. We've just been consoling one of the women who is in the midst of GCSE hell with a daughter who is feeling too laissez-faire about the situation for her nerves to handle. Another of the women is childless by choice so although she hasn't been in the same position she sympathises and regales us with hilarious tales of her own exam dramas at that age.

I'm brought back into the here and now when the woman next to me says "By the way, did anyone read this month's book?" A couple of us sheepishly shake our heads while the others say they have and quite enjoyed it, although not as much as the author's previous work. "I've heard good things about The Herd, shall we read that next month?" someone else pipes up. We all agree so I quickly send it as a message in our WhatsApp group so we don’t forget. And that is the book analysis and selection part of our book club done and dusted for the evening. Now back to more pressing matters: one of the women has a new job with a hefty staff discount and we're all keen to hear more.

When we started out as a book club nine years ago, the picture was very different. I’d just bought my first house with my fiancé and I was keen to put down roots and be part of the community, so I put out a message on the local village Facebook page asking if there was a book club or if anyone fancied starting one. Someone mentioned a local one, but a few other women responded that they'd be keen to start one so we agreed on a book (The Light Between Oceans), a date and a local pub as our meeting point.

We all dutifully read the book and I even printed out questions and discussion points I'd found online.

I felt a little out of place with my book on the table in the pub and said hello with a nervous giggle as I was joined by others clutching their copy under their arms.

We were a random collection of women; a couple of us not yet married, one newly married, another newly divorced. One woman had just returned from a few years in America and was settling back into life in the UK.  What we had in common was our love of books and the idea of a lovely evening discussing them over a glass of something.

Over the first two or three years, various people joined us. We'd publish our book of the month, date for our next meeting and our pub of choice on the Facebook page I'd set up for the book club. The picture I had in my head at that time was of a big group of local people getting together each month to discuss the latest book.

When Covid struck, we took our gatherings online to Zoom. We were all still fairly good at reading the chosen book, although the question sheets had dropped off somewhere along the way and the amount of time spent actually discussing the book was diminishing. A lot of the people who came along to trial our book club gave up on us because of this.

When restrictions eased and restaurants were opened for groups of up to six, there were probably seven or eight people still turning up to our gatherings fairly regularly. But there was a clear core group of six who always showed up so we booked our next gathering at a restaurant and never looked back.

Something had changed in the nature of our relationship, though none of us vocalised that. Instead we just closed down our Facebook page; we were no longer looking for new joiners. We moved from drinks after work to dinner once a month either at a restaurant or at one another's homes. A couple of us moved out of the village but we continued to meet every month and our conversations morphed from "What did everyone think of the ending?" to "How is work going?". Then "How are you finding motherhood?" and now "How is your dad? What's happening with your son? Are you ok?"

A few times over the years we have joked that in meeting once a month we see each other more than we see our "actual" friends. It has taken us a while to really see each other in that light despite our regular meetings and the depth of our conversations. We’ve seen each other’s lives change over the years: weddings, babies, caring for and losing elderly parents and countless job changes. Conversation flows easily because we aren’t having to give context or backstory to every topic. We don't need the full history of the difficult teenager; we were there when he was strong-willed in primary school. We don’t need to explain the career change, we all know what the old job was and how awful the boss had been.

Books have been our constant backdrop. We never fail to select a new one for the month ahead, but nine years on, life has become the actual topic. We've gone from discussing the lives of fictional characters to discussing real-life issues. Showing up for each other every month over these years has built trust in each other and a sense of safety; no matter what else is going on in life, this group of women are here to listen and share with no expectation of anything else.

Life gets busy and catching up with friends often gets postponed and conversations over text are fragmented. In having our guise of a book club, we’ve had a more solid reason for meeting up consistently, month after month, something that perhaps seems more justified even when the calendar is hectic. Book club was an activity with a clear purpose; we could put it in the diary without having to justify spending an evening together or wait until we had something important to discuss.

Four years ago we branched out and did a weekend away in Oxford (a city that seemed suitably literary for ‘Book Club on Tour’). A single meal each month wasn't enough time to really hang out and chat so now our weekend away has become an annual event, complete with custom-printed t-shirts.

When I sent that first Facebook message I could never have imagined what would grow from it. I thought I’d discover some new books and have some thought-provoking conversations. Instead, through simply showing up each month we have built something so much more meaningful, a relationship built through consistency, shared history and the accumulation of so many ordinary moments. Looking back, I might have been more daunted by the idea of pressing send if I’d known just how important these women would become to me. The idea of deliberately setting out to build friendships like these feels quite intimidating. Instead, we started with something small: a book, a date and a reason to meet again next month. The rest grew from there.

Topics:
• Mental and Physical Health