Its cover and design won Best of the Year at last night’s APA Book Design Awards, so it’s fitting that we turn our attention to Lloyd Jones' Hand Me Down World in this Friday’s Book Club.
A woman washes ashore in Sicily. She has come from north Africa to find her son, taken from her when he was just days old by his father and stolen away to Berlin. With nothing but her maid’s uniform and a knife stashed in a plastic bag, she relies on strangers—some generous, some exploiting—to guide her passage north.
These strangers tell of their encounters with a quiet, mysterious woman in a blue coat—each account a different view of the truth, a different truth. And slowly these fragments of a life piece together to create a spellbinding story of the courage of a mother and the versions of truth we create to accommodate our lives.
Haunting and beautiful, Hand Me Down World is simply unforgettable.
You can find reading notes for your book group here, and read award-winning designer Chong’s thoughts about the book on his blog, Culture Mulcher.
As always, you can follow us and ask questions on facebook and twitter. Happy reading!
