A Symphony of Human Connection

It took me this picture to realize that hues of my look inadvertently matched the blue-grey cover of Eastbound, a beautiful novella lapped up while sitting on Spring-fresh grass, under a blue, blue sky.

A breathless tale set on a Trans-Siberian train read breathlessly too….so I could finish in time for Picture Book New York’s charming book club in the evening. :)

Sara who heads the club had a gorgeous cheese plate for us from Bloomy Cheese & Provisions. So, between bites of manchego, crunchy quito corn nuts and licks of honey, we spoke about what liminal spaces (that we talk of Danielle Claro) like a cramped trans-Siberian train do to the human creature connection.

How we each viewed the fraught bond between a young Russian conscript and an older, French woman who he hopes will help him evade military service by hiding him in her first-class sleeping car.

Both running away – the woman from her lover, and the young man from hazing and rigors of military service in Siberia. Both riddled by doubts. “A symphony of human connection” - as the cover copy put it, one that I found author Maylis de Kerangal evoked in startling sensuousness, painting the frisson of the human experience with all its fury, fire, guilt, anxiety, longing, love, anger, desperation, and sheer instinct for survival.

This is also what I love about book clubs — seeing how the same words on page tap into different aspects of the readers’ psyches, what they evoke in our memories and sensory experiences, both individual, and collective. The questions we ask, and the answers about the characters, the writing, the plot, or the author’s motivations that we do or do not find.

I am glad Sara chose this novella and then brought us book lovers together at our all time favourite co-working space Hudco! :)