Susan Storer Clark, a regular contributor to the Independent, recently joined the Iron Maidens, a unique book club in the Washington, D.C. area.
The Iron Maidens get their name not from the gruesome medieval torture device but from the fact that many of them are members of a women’s weight-lifting class at the YMCA in Silver Spring, Md., a class that has been running for about a decade and bears the same name. Between bench presses in 2006, several of the women decided they wanted to read and talk about State of Denial, Bob Woodward’s third book about President George W. Bush’s prosecution of wars in the Middle East. The discussion was so successful that they founded the club, which has met fairly regularly ever since. They read a mixture of fiction and nonfiction, and alternate day-time and evening meetings to accommodate members’ work schedules. Sometimes the topic has been an author instead of a book; one month they read “anything by Carl Hiaasen.”
For October, 10 members met at Sarah Kestner’s house to discuss Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark. Discussion of the book and Stark’s choices (she was an intrepid explorer of the Middle East, an accomplished Arabist and a prolific writer whose life and career spanned most of the 20th century) was lively, with considerable discussion of Stark’s unorthodox attitudes and life choices. Then it was down to the business of choosing the next books to read. Sarah produced a list of proposed books culled from members’ e-mails, and Pat Kloehn laughed that “We’re trying an adult way to do this now — it used to be down to whoever talked loudest.”
Pat was one of the founders of the group. She says that when it started, it was about half a dozen women about the same age and with similar occupations. The group has grown to include 18 members of a wide range of ages and a diversity of interests. They’ve known each other through serious illness, the deaths of parents and other life crises. For the past two years, their September meeting has been a weekend at one member’s house in the Virginia mountains. As to the stereotype of women’s book clubs as places where they just drink wine and talk about their lives, they readily acknowledge that, yeah, they do that, but they also talk about the books.
When they discussed Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, Karen Robinson suggested the African-American perspective offered by The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson’s 600-page examination of the Great Migration. Sarah Kestner writes, “The Warmth of Other Suns was powerful because it gave a more detailed, personal account of the racism and brutality of white Americans (particularly in the South) towards African Americans than any history book could ever capture. It struck a chord in me because my father was born and raised in Florida, and his grandfather owned a farm not far from the site of one of the most horrific lynchings ever recorded.” Sarah has since lent her copy of the book to her father, who grew up in Florida from the late 1920s till the early 1950s; she says she’s looking forward to discussing it with him.
As for fiction, Pat and Phyllis Rattey agreed that they thoroughly enjoyed Junot Diaz’s novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Phyllis says, “His writing was so fresh and different. He used Spanish slang my Spanish-speaking friends didn’t even know — too raunchy or regional. I loved it. You kind of had to let go and let a different part of your brain comprehend.”
As for their new “adult” way of choosing the next selections, Phyllis cracked, “This will only work for this one meeting,” and several members joked about how much time and how much arguing it would take to choose the next books.
Actually, it took less than 25 minutes for the women to decide to read Anne Patchett’s State of Wonder next, and to pick their books through January. They usually try to choose books that are of current interest but old enough to be in the public library. Pat explains that the first few times, when they tried new books, it was expensive to get them and a hassle to share. Even with that in mind, they decided to follow up the Patchett novel with J.K. Rowling’s new book, The Casual Vacancy, figuring members could always ask for the book as a holiday gift. In January, they’ll read and discuss Catherynne Valente’s Deathless.
Susan Storer Clark lifts weights with the Iron Maidens at the YMCA in Silver Spring, Md., and recently became a member of the book club. She is a regular contributor to The Independent and reviewed the Iron Maidens’ November selection, State of Wonder, when it was released. She is a former TV and radio journalist, and has completed her first novel, which has the working title “The Monk Woman’s Daughter.”
