About the book
Celebrity Kidnappings, the Kama Sutra, Russian Mobsters, Congolese Shimmer Frogs . . .Book Club is a time to drink wine, to live vicariously through erotic fiction, and pay lip service to one’s life goals. The club's founder wants to be a writer but can’t find her story. Billie is the virgin mailwoman who doesn’t know if she’s gay or straight. Ashleigh is the beautiful housewife who can’t get pregnant by her philandering husband, and Marissa is the high-powered executive who has sacrificed her own family for a stressful job that makes her miserable.
They meet once a month, updating their dream boards guided by the self-help book du jour, but nothing ever changes. Until Marissa’s mysterious sister arrives and shakes the women into action.
What will it take to make their dreams a reality? The disappearance of People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, mass abandonment of smart phones, Korean nacho dogs, and some good old fashioned sex.
Book Club is smart, sexy, and endlessly entertaining. A delicious, thought-provoking romp from start to finish. Make it your top book club pick for 2015!
Interview with Jaime Boust
Jaime, what’s the story behind the title Book Club?The original inspiration was Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. I loved the idea of a group of women taking extreme measures to feel alive.
Do you have another job outside of writing?
I write all day, five days a week, but my husband says it's time to start earning money. Please help me avoid getting a job by telling all your friends about Book Club! I'm unfit for the outside world.
I hear you! Which character did you most enjoy writing?
Hope is my favorite character to write. She is totally free, and very naughty.
What would your main character say about you?
She would say we have an awful lot in common.
Is your book based on real events?
No, I have never kidnapped a celebrity with the help of the Russian Mafia. Or have I? I'll never tell!
One of your characters has just found out you’re about to kill him off. He/she decides to beat you to the punch. How would he kill you?
A poisoned piece of Round Table Pizza. That would do the job.
Less mess that way. If you could be one of your characters, which one would you choose?
I'd want to be the narrator and founder of Book Club. She's a writer, a mother, and isn't afraid to get her hands dirty in the name of living.
Tell us about your favorite scene in the book.
Billie, the virgin mailwoman who doesn't know if she's gay or straight, decides to hold a walk-a-thon to raise money for a reading with Sonya Fitzpatrick, the world's foremost animal communicator, so she can ask her reptiles if they'd mind being petted by strangers. That part always cracks me up. (By the way, Sonya Fitzpatrick is real and she's AMAZING.)
Who are your favorite authors?
Egad, this question. Virginia Woolf, Loorie Moore, George Saunders, Jennifer Egan, Flannery O'Conner, Ray Bradbury, Don DeLillo, Jeannette Winterson, Anne Carson, Angela Carter . . . help, I can't stop. Okay, I'll stop.
What book are you currently reading and in what format?
Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers in ebook. Good stuff.
Do you have a routine for writing?
I write all day, Monday through Friday, rain or shine.
Where’s home for you?
Sunny Pasadena, California, where it never rains.
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
In a palazzo on the grand canal.
What are you working on now?
I'm writing my steamy serial Conquest by Steam Bijou, and then I'll start work on a thriller that's been simmering in my noggin for a while.
Excerpt from Book Club
We sat in her leather-bound great room spreading herbed chèvre onto discs of watermelon radishes, feeling proud of ourselves for having selected a classic of English Literature that still managed to incorporate a great deal of sex. It was gratifying to be able to toss out sophisticated literary references to our lesser-read friends, and we were happy for Connie (Lady Chatterley) to have finally started living in her body once again.
But we were distracted in our discussion by a new presence, who sprawled herself on Marissa’s ice plant velvet chaise smoking marijuana from a vaporizer and listening to every word we spoke in silence. This was Hope, Marissa’s younger sister, whose life was often recounted by Marissa in a half-proud, half-cynical way. She was the baby, the black sheep, the fu*#-up, the zeitgeist of modernity. She wrote poetry on the sidewalk and made experimental films in which she appeared naked and spray-painted silver. She was always in Berlin for a month or partying with Jay Z, busy designing a pop-up gallery, or eating at an underground restaurant. She was sleeping with a dancer, a doorman, and a Habsburg Prince.
Hope had arrived the day before in a mist of unanswered questions filtered from Marissa through Ashleigh to me. Something had happened in New York to make her come here, and her presence in the room was like an ornately filigreed blade. Any genetic kinks that revealed themselves through Marissa’s angular face had been worked out by the time Hope came along. Her looks were striking in the way a crow’s feathers shine blue in the sun. She wore a long curtain of black hair, dyed darker than her natural brunette, which cast her urban untanned skin as a mask of porcelain with piercing cobalt eyes. Something in her presence startled me, but whether it was her face or her scrutinizing silence I wasn’t sure. All the time I stood reading from the selected passage, and all the time afterward that I sat sipping Pinot Gris, professing my respect for Lady Chatterley for taking charge of her life, Hope watched me, watched all of us, as she drew luxurious vapor breaths from her slim gold apparatus.
She was thirty-six, one year younger than I was.
About the author
Jaime received her formal education at the University of California at San Diego and her informal education on the streets of London, the hills of San Francisco, the sewers of Paris, and the suburban wilds of Oakland. These days you'll find her dodging traffic in Los Angeles with her husband and two kids. Many things have been said of her: idea machine, portmanteau enthusiast, cutthroat croquet player, national champion cheerleader, world's spiciest cook. Believe them all.
Connect with Jaime:
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