I am looking for a book for my Ladies book club that has a woman that just lost her Father to an extended battle with a traumatic brain injury. Our first book was “What Alice Forgot” and none of use realized this might be an issue because we didn’t really know anything about the book. The second book was “The Bell Jar” which we thought would be okay but the suicide themes were not great for her.
We are looking for a book that is about 200 pages that she can read and all of us can enjoy. We are a racially diverse group of women 25-48. (I didn’t know about how racist the Bell Jar is when we picked it – It would be nice to avoid members of our group having to read slurs about themselves in this one.) Half the group is Mothers and all of us work so some of us don’t have as much time to read as others.
Thanks for your help.
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by CutesPDX
2 Comments
It’s amazing how many books have some sort of trigger in it, I’ve been sitting here for a good ten minutes trying to think of books that don’t have some sort of trauma in them! I did come up with a few suggestions, though-
‘The Shadowy Horses’ by Susanna Kearsley. This will be longer than your 200 pages but it’s undemanding, fun, had a little romance, some (fun) history and also mystery/suspense. I don’t believe there’s any death in it and not any of the other triggers either.
Also by Susanna Kearlsey is ‘Marianna’ but if I remember correctly there is an implied (but not detailed or dwelled upon) death close to the end. It’s a bit if a take on time travelling historical romance and is fun as well.
My (adult) bookclub did a foray into youth/middle grade fiction for something different so I’ll suggest the books we read-
‘Catherine Called Birdy’ by Karen Cushman- written as the diary of Catherine it’s set in England in the year 1290 and is a coming of age story. There are a couple of deaths, but they are mostly just mentioned and then forgotten again. There is some stress around her mother during a difficult (but certainly NOT graphic as this is a kids book) childbirth but everything turns out fine.
We also read all of the ‘Jill’ series pony books by Ruby Ferguson. They’re books set in I think the 1950s in England and are centred entirely around Jill and her adventures with her friends and her ponies. They are not particularly ‘juvenile’ in style, books of that era for kids were not written in a dumbed down fashion, but they are extremely horse-centric so it may not suit for your crowd. There are some fox hunting scenes (nothing at all graphic) which was legal when the books were written but aside from that I don’t think there’s any trigger warnings at all. They’re good solid old fashioned country fun.
If I think of anything else I’ll come back!
Use the website doesthedogdie.com to search for particular types of triggers in books. Works for movies too. It’s been so helpful for me