The Harvard Square Book Circle

The Harvard Square Book Circle, our in-store book club, will discuss Lorrie Moore's first novel Anagrams.

Gerard sits, fully clothed, in his empty bathtub and pines for Benna. Neighbors in the same apartment building, they share a wall and Gerard listens for the sound of her toilet flushing. Gerard loves Benna. And then Benna loves Gerard. She listens to him play piano, she teaches poetry and sings at nightclubs. As their relationships ebbs and flows, through reality and imagination, Lorrie Moore paints a portrait of men and women in love and not in love.

"Benna Carpenter—who is either a poet, teacher, nightclub singer, aerobics instructor, or all of these—is appealing as the heroine of this extraordinary and often hilarious first novel." —The New York Times

"Moore shows feeling for language and for her characters all at once, and it is on such passages that I base my hope for Moore's future work.... Her first novel shows an appetite for the difficulties of the novel form that should serve her and her readers well."
—The Los Angeles Times