Today, The Ink Book Club met for our last discussion of An Yu’s Sunbirth before meeting with the author next week. We talked about some of the novel’s themes as seen through the eyes of our members, and discussed a New School study on how reading fiction affects empathy. Its conclusion: “What great writers do is to turn you into the writer. In literary fiction, the incompleteness of the characters turns your mind to trying to understand the minds of others.”
And on that note, Book Club member Teela Banker not just shared her insightful take on Sunbirth, which built on a possible correspondence between character names and Egyptian mythology to talk about the novel’s symbolic exploration of grief, but talked about how the book has prompted her not just to go back into her ceramics studio for the first time in a while to create her own mini sun-heads!
For more on Teela’s thoughts (and more insights from Book Club members), check out our earlier post:
We’ll see you next Wednesday when we everyone will join us with your thoughts about the book and questions for author An Yu, on Wednesday, August 27, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern. To participate in the discussion, join The Ink as a supporting subscriber today.
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