The Bookies is the Goodwin Library’s Book Club! This month’s pick is Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce.
We have multiple copies available for checkout. New members are always welcome – just stop by to pick up a copy!
The book discussion will be held both in-person and on Zoom. If you would like to attend via Zoom, please email Joyce at jwhite@goodwinlibrary.org for the link. If you attend in person, please try to be here before 6:50, as that is when we lock our doors for the night. Thank you!
Summary: It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist—the golden beetle of New Caledonia.
When she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind – fun-loving Enid Pretty, in her tight-fitting pink suit and pom-pom sandals, seems to attract trouble wherever she goes. But together these two British women find themselves drawn into a cross-ocean adventure that exceeds all expectations and delivers something neither of them expected to find: the transformative power of friendship.
