-
Access Our
Best Book Club
Books of 2025!
Summary | Reading Guide | Discuss | Reviews | More Information | More Books
From the award-winning author of The One-in-a-Million Boy comes a deeply moving novel about second chances, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories.
Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine Daigle…
Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher.
Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest.
Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn't yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.
When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland—Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman—their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.
How to Read a Book is an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living.
"Gorgeously told...A finely wrought story, with deeply memorable characters." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[H]eartwarming if simplistic...The novel improves in the second half with an immersive section on Violet's job assisting a scientist on researching cognition in parrots, and there are some poignant revelations about how she came to drive drunk that night and about the Daigles' marriage." —Publishers Weekly
"Told with compassion and empathy, Wood's tender novel explores the ways people can surprise themselves and others. A deeply humane and touching novel; highly recommended for book clubs and fans of Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures." —Booklist
"I laughed and wept my way straight through How to Read a Book. What a beautiful, big-hearted treasure of a novel!"
—Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Euphoria and Writers
"What a master of plot and character Monica Wood is. I love the various worlds How to Read a Book took me to: a prison, a bookshop, and a laboratory, all in Portland, Maine. And I love how hopefully Wood writes about grief and second chances on behalf of her three protagonists. Surely everyone who reads this novel will want to offer Ollie, a voluble African grey parrot, a home." — Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author of The Boy in the Field and The Flight of Gemma Hardy
"A young female ex-con, a widower who was collateral damage, and a woman who runs the prison bookclub—three indelible voices (and let's not forget one extraordinary parrot's), remind us that life is full of mysteries, and sometimes the ones we believe are unsolvable as the ones that might save us. About second chances (our lives need not be apologies), the weight of forgiveness, our bond with our books, and the stubborn way love can make us see a world shining with mercy, Wood's new novel is both incandescent and unforgettable." —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of With or Without You and Pictures of You
This information about How to Read a Book was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Dan Abbott
Monica Wood is a novelist, memoirist, and playwright; a recipient of the Maine Humanities Council Carlson Prize for contributions to the public humanities; and a recipient of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Distinguished Achievement Award for contributions to the literary arts. She lives in Portland, Maine, with her husband, Dan Abbott, and their cat, Susie.
To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be ...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
