Ratings2
Average rating3.3
A remarkable tale about the life-changing power of books, following the Titanic librarian whose survival upends the course of his life. For weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, Yorick spots his own name among the list of those lost at sea. As an apprentice librarian for the White Star Line, his job was to curate the ship's second-class library. But just as he was about to board to tend to his library throughout the passage, a superior takes his place, leaving Yorick stranded at the dock. The Titanic was not Yorick's first brush with death, but as with every near-miss he manages to escape into the world of books. After he learns of the ship's sinking, he takes this twist of fate as a sign to follow his lifelong dream of owning a bookshop in Paris. It's at his shop that he receives an invitation to a secret society of survivors where he encounters other ticket-holders who didn't board the ship. Haunted by their good fortune, they decide to transform their group into a book society, where they can grapple with their own anxieties through the guise of discussing contentious works such as The Awakening or The Picture of Dorian Gray. Of the ragtag group of survivors, Yorick finds himself particularly drawn to the wealthy candy heiress Zinnia and the mysterious and alluring Haze. Yorick feels like an outsider looking in, falling hopelessly for Haze as Haze courts Zinnia; a tangled triangle of love and friendship forms between them. Yet with the Great War looming, their close-knit group is shattered, only brought back together once the death of a fellow book club member leaves them wondering what fate has in store for each of them. Elegant and elegiac, The Titanic Survivors' Book Club is a dazzling ode to love, chance, and the transformative power of books to bring people together.
Reviews with the most likes.
ok yeah the title is misleading but that's also like, the point of it, I guess, that even in the contemporary context of the sinking of the Titanic these “survivors” (who were all meant to sail on the Titanic but missed the boat for various reasons) understood the cachet and allure of describing themselves that way.
anyway I enjoyed this quite a lot, a bit of armchair/time travel to Paris, and like most bookish people (including this very book's fictional character Zinnia) I enjoy it when fictional characters read real books.
I feel neutral about the doomed love triangle.