The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls

I’m Adrienne Haus, survivor of a mother-daughter book club. Most of us didn’t want to join. My mother signed me up because I was stuck at home all summer, with my knee in a brace. CeeCee’s parents forced her to join after cancelling her Paris trip because she bashed up their car. The members of “The Unbearable Book Club,” CeeCee, Jill, Wallis, & I, were all going into eleventh grade A.P. English. But we weren’t friends. We were literary prisoners, sweating, reading classics, & hanging out at the pool. If you want to find out how membership in a book club can end up with a person being dead, you can probably look us up under mother-daughter literary catastrophe. Or open this book & read my essay, which I’ll turn in when I go back to school.

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Julie Schumacher grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, & graduated from Oberlin College & Cornell University. Her first novel, The Body Is Water, was published by Soho Press in 1995 & was an ALA Notable Book of the Year & a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award & the Minnesota Book Award. Her other books include the novel Dear Committee Members, a short story collection, An Explanation for Chaos, & five books for younger readers. She lives in St. Paul & is a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program & the Department of English at the University of Minnesota.