Great Group Reads: The House on Fortune Street
Posted by: Mary Ellen
The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey is one of the Great Group Reads selected by the Women’s National Book Association Reading Group Month committee. Abigail, an actress, owns the titular London house and lives upstairs with Sean, a struggling Keats scholar. Abigail’s best friend from college, Dara, is a therapist who who occupies the garden flat. The book is divided into four interlocking sections, each presenting a different point of view: first Sean; then Dara’s father, Cameron, an amateur photographer who share more than a love of the camera with Charles Dodgson; then Dara; then Abigail take center stage. Reviewers have especially noted how the classics of nineteenth-century English shape both the characters and the book. Reading group alert: a review in The New York Times compared Livesey to Anita Brookner and Barbara Pym. Click here for discussion questions.
