Book Club

Book Club’s next read is ‘Winter Solstice’ by Nina MacLaughlin

Join the live author discussion on Dec. 19 at 6 p.m.

December 5, 2023

As the days grow shorter and the nights colder, author Nina MacLaughlin wants you to lean into introspection. Her new essay, “Winter Solstice,” is a meditation on the coldest season of the year and the darkness — and light — it brings to all of our lives.

For this month’s Boston.com Book Club discussion, we’re reading “Winter Solstice” to reflect on the memories, traditions, and emotions that winter evokes.

“Winter tells us, more than petaled spring, or hot-grassed summer, or fall with its yellow leaves, that we are mortal. In the frankness of its cold, in the mystery of its deep-blue dark, the place in us that knows of death is tickled, focused, stoked,” MacLaughlin writes. “The angels sing on the doorknobs and others sing from the abyss. The sun has been in retreat since June, and the heat inside glows brighter in proportion to its absence. We make up for the lost light in the spark that burns inside us.”

MacLaughlin isn’t new to writing about life and nature. This newest release is a companion piece to her 2020 essay, “Summer Solstice.” In that book, she writes about dreamy summer days that pull us outside for cookouts, beach days, and stargazing.

Now that summer is behind us and we ready ourselves for months of snow, holiday lights, and hot chocolate, “Winter Solstice” is the perfect read to start the season. It’s a short read — just shy of 100 pages — and perfect for cozying up and meditating on beautiful prose.

MacLaughlin is a Cambridge resident and a lover of books. As a regular books contributor to The Boston Globe, she’s written about some of the best poetry and prose in the local literary scene. In addition to the titles we’ve already mentioned, she’s also the author of “Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung,” a re-telling of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” and the memoir “Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter.”

Her work has also appeared in the Paris Review Daily, The Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, and the New York Times Book Review, to name a few.

“Winter Solstice” won her spot on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list and a slew of praise from critics and fellow writers who described the essay as “smart and lyrical” and “arresting.”

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of “World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments,” called the book “an astonishing gift.”

“Nina MacLaughlin returns to celebrate the winter solstice, and delivers a most sensual hymn and harbor for the human ability to feel our way through the darkness towards wise, unexpected connections,” the writer said. “This ethereal collection offers us a candle at night.”

“Husbandry” author Matthew Dickman puts MacLaughlin right up there with acclaimed writers José Emilio Pacheco and Fleur Jaeggy.

“In ‘Winter Solstice’ we are invited into the impending dark, guided through our own, and in the end given just enough light to survive,” he said. “MacLaughlin’s meditation is both universal and uncommonly distinct. An immense joy to read, ‘Winter Solstice’ is not so much an essay as it is a vision.”

A book like that is bound to inspire conversation, and the Book Club has a great discussion lined up with MacLaughlin and Jacob Fricke, bookseller at Hello Hello Books.

Fricke has been a bookseller at the Rockland, Maine bookstore for more than a decade and is a celebrated writer in their own right. Before joining Hello Hello Books in 2012, Fricke was the poet laureate for Belfast, Maine for two years and they were one of the head organizers for the Belfast Poetry Festival. They continue to help organize the annual literary festival and host community events for book lovers in New England. And on top of all of that, Fricke won the Village Soup “Best Local Author” award for their poetry collection “This Book of Poems You Found.”

Hello Hello Books, where Fricke works as the operation director, is a beloved part of the Rockland community and in 2019 made the shortlist for Publishers Weekly’s Bookstore of the Year Awards. For a small shop, its impact on its community is outsized. At the store, you’ll find a careful curation of popular fiction and more niche titles recommended by the shop’s expert booksellers.

Join Nina MacLaughlin and Jacob Fricke as they discuss her new essay “Winter Solstice” on Dec. 19 at 6 p.m.

Buy “Winter Solstice” from: Bookshop | Hello Hello Books