The Confession Club

September 9, 2019
Berg (The Story of Arthur Truluv) returns to Mason, Mo., for this feel-good testament to taking risks, falling in love, and reinvention. Here, the focus is on the irrepressible members of a monthly club of eight women ranging in age from 20s to 80s, who bare their fibs, sins, and shame. “They knew they were mostly silly,” Berg writes. “They enjoyed being silly, because sometimes you just needed to take a load off.” The heart of this story belongs to cooking school teacher Iris, who’s “coming into my fifties,” divorced and childless when she falls in love with John, 66, a homeless Vietnam vet still haunted by the war and the wife and child he left behind. Berg effortlessly wraps her arms around this busy universe of quirky characters with heartbreaking secrets and unflagging faith. “We forget how ready people are to help,” 47-year-old “stout and practical” club member Toots says, adding: “To say those words to yourself or another, ‘I forgive you’? Most powerful words in the world.” Readers new to Berg’s Mason will be dazzled by this bright and fascinating story, and fans will be cheering for the next volume set there. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME Entertainment.

September 15, 2019
The denizens of Mason, Missouri, are at it again, dispensing just deserts with unearned optimism on the side. The premise for this book, a sequel to two other novels set in Mason (Night of Miracles, 2018; The Story of Arthur Truluv, 2017), is the Confession Club, a group of mostly middle-aged women who meet regularly at each other's homes to exchange secrets over wine and treats. For the most part, though, the Confession Club operates independently and irrelevantly of the novel's main concern--the ongoing sagas of the late Arthur Truluv's surviving friends. Iris, baking teacher extraordinaire, is about to turn 50, and 20-something Maddy has just returned from New York City with her 7-year-old daughter, Nola, leaving her new husband behind. A major character is introduced: John, a 66-year-old, handsome, homeless Vietnam vet, has made his way from Chicago to Mason, taking up residence in an abandoned farmhouse. Berg does not delve deeply into either the details of John's homeless existence or his Vietnam combat experience. However, the competence and resourcefulness John displays as a homeless person are strangely at odds with his PTSD. This contradiction might give readers pause, since PTSD (for which he refused counseling) led to John's wife's departure, which resulted in his homelessness. Iris is immediately attracted to John, albeit leery of him--and it's unclear how leery she should be. The Confession Club seems to exist mostly to explore themes like infidelity, loneliness, independence, and longing, which are too generic to relate to the principal players' predicaments. As usual, Mason is a refuge unruffled by the country's political turmoil, and conflict, if any, is mostly avoided before it can generate any excitement. Some readers may wish to return to Mason again and again, to relax with the literary equivalent of well-worn slippers, a glass of wine, and no wellness diets in sight. But readers seeking insight into modern American life, leavened with humor, might be better challenged by Richard Russo or Anne Tyler. All the bucolic pacifism of an episode of Prairie Home Companion without the seething undercurrents.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2019

In a stand-alone that revisits Mason, MO, the setting of The Story of Arthur Truluv and Night of Miracles, the New York Times best-selling Berg introduces a group of friends who routinely gather for homemade dinners. After one woman uses the occasion to unburden herself, they launch a "confession club," sharing secrets, embarassments, and mistakes.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.