Clare Pooley
To learn more about the author and her works: Clare Pooley
Getting Personal with Clare
Pooley first pursued a career in advertising before leaving the work-place on the birth of her third child. In 2015, Pooley began a blog, Mummy was a Secret Drinker, about her life following a resolution to give up alcohol. She blogged under a pseudonym until the announcement of her first book deal in September 2017.
Clare Pooley Novel
The Authenticity Project by ISBN: 9781984878618Publication Date: 2020-02-04The story of a solitary green notebook that brings together six strangers and leads to unexpected friendship, and even love Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren't really honest with each other. But what if they were? And so he writes--in a plain, green journal--the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves--and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica's Café. The Authenticity Project's cast of characters--including Hazard, the charming addict who makes a vow to get sober; Alice, the fabulous mommy Instagrammer whose real life is a lot less perfect than it looks online; and their other new friends--is by turns quirky and funny, heartbreakingly sad and painfully true-to-life.
Videos
Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions
1. Do you ever talk to strangers on public transportation? If not, why do you think that is? Which of the characters would you most—and least—like to share your commute with?
2. Iona feels that, at fifty-seven, she’s gone from “It Girl” to “Past-It Girl.” Do you think that society, and the workplace, undervalue women once they pass fifty?
3. The story is set in 2019—prepandemic. Do you think your experience of working from home has affected your view of the daily commute and your reading of the novel?
4. Each of the characters in the book make assumptions about one another, which often turn out to be wrong. What assumptions did you make about them, and who surprised you the most?
5. All the characters in the story are changed in some way, as a result of meeting one another. Who do you think are the most transformed?
6. Iona talks about having experienced sexism, ageism, and homophobia. We know that these factors work together to influence Iona’s experience, but which one do you think appears to have an outsized impact on her life?
7. Iona loathes some of the “modern” ways of working—the brainstorms, beanbags, and corporate speak, for example. Do you agree with her? What are your least favorite aspects of corporate life, or the work world in general?
8. There are three married couples in the story: Iona and Bea, Piers and Candida, and David and Olivia. What does this story teach us about long-term relationships? Candida walks away from her marriage because she believes Piers changed the rules. Do you have any sympathy for her?
9. The characters in the novel span three generations. What do you think teenagers, millennials, and boomers can learn from one another?
10. Martha believes she is not a “normal teenager.” Is she right? What do we learn about the world when we see it through her eyes?
11. Iona spends her life helping people with their problems, yet she’s unable to ask for help herself. Do you think this is a common problem? Why is that?
12. Do you agree with Iona’s rules for commuting? What would your rules be?
Reserve a copy
Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting by ISBN: 9781984878649Publication Date: 2022-06-07Nobody ever talks to strangers on the train. It's a rule. But what would happen if they did? Every day Iona, a larger-than-life magazine advice columnist, travels the ten stops from Hampton Court to Waterloo Station by train, accompanied by her dog, Lulu. Every day she sees the same people, whom she knows only by nickname: Impossibly-Pretty-Bookworm and Terribly-Lonely-Teenager. Of course, they never speak. Seasoned commuters never do. Then one morning, the man she calls Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader chokes on a grape right in front of her. He'd have died were it not for the timely intervention of Sanjay, a nurse, who gives him the Heimlich maneuver. This single event starts a chain reaction, and an eclectic group of people with almost nothing in common except their commute discover that a chance encounter can blossom into much more.
Read A-Likes
The Lost Ticket by ISBN: 9780593201404Publication Date: 2022-08-30When Libby Nicholls arrives in London, brokenhearted and with her life in tatters, the first person she meets on the bus is elderly Frank. He tells her about the time in 1962 that he met a girl on the number 88 bus with beautiful red hair just like hers. They made plans for a date at the National Gallery art museum, but Frank lost the bus ticket with her number on it. For the past sixty years, he's ridden the same bus trying to find her, but with no luck. Libby is inspired to action and, with the help of an unlikely companion, she papers the bus route with posters advertising their search. Libby begins to open her guarded heart to new friendships and a budding romance, as her tightly controlled world expands. But with Frank's dementia progressing quickly, their chance of finding the girl on the 88 bus is slipping away. More than anything, Libby wants Frank to see his lost love one more time.
The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie by ISBN: 9781638084747Publication Date: 2022-10-01Lolly Blanchard's life only seems to give her lemons. Ten years ago, after her mother's tragic death, she broke up with her first love and abandoned her dream of opening a restaurant in order to keep her family's struggling Seattle diner afloat and care for her younger sister and grieving father. Now, a decade later, she dutifully whips up the diner's famous lemon meringue pies each morning while still pining for all she's lost.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by ISBN: 9780812983456Publication Date: 2013-03-26Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning a letter arrives, addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl, from a woman he hasn't heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye. But before Harold mails off a quick reply, a chance encounter convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. In his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold Fry embarks on an urgent quest. Determined to walk six hundred miles to the hospice, Harold believes that as long as he walks, Queenie will live.
