the book that matters most

As I was reading this book I kept trying to think what book I would recommend if I was asked what book mattered has mattered most to me.  Even now, after finishing the book, I cannot think of a book that could fit that description.

This book has a number of plot lines working at the same time.  We follow Ava, a teacher, daughter, mother and now ex-wife.  She is trying to find herself after her husband leaves her for another woman.  Her children are grown and off in foreign countries living their own lives.  Of course, Ava, at the behest of her best friend joins the bookclub. Through the books they read and the friends she makes comes to some understanding about who she is so she can move on with her life.  Ava has become stuck, reliving in her mind, a tragedy from her childhood, that she also never really resolved.

We also follow the story of Ava's daughter, Maggie, a twenty-something, also lost, traveling in Paris, getting to into bad relationships and working through a drug addiction.  As Ava tries to communicate with her daughter and find both the book that has always matted most to her, From Clare to Here, and its author, she reexamines the mysterious secrets from her childhood that have lead to this point in her life.

At one point in the novel, as each book club member leads the discussion about the book they have picked as the most important in their life, the leader say explains; "The idea of the book that matters most," Kiki said.  "Because I think its like impossible to pick such a book.  When you read a book, who you are when you read it, makes it matter or not.  I don't know, if you read On The Road or The Three Musketeers, and that book changes how you feel or how you think, then it matters most.  At that time."   That really in the end is the crux of the issue.  I have loved so many books over the years, some because I read them at a critical junction that was serendipitous.  Some books I just felt I could relate to but were not live changing.  Some authors have written so well that I feel some connection to their work even if does not relate directly to my personal life.

This is one of the books that leaves you thinking at the end.  It is one of those books that you do not want to put down until the end.  Some will I think feel that they can relate to some of the characters that presented here.  A woman going through breast cancer treatments, a man who has lost his wife, a young man in search of love, a mother with six children looking for adult conversation.  Ten book club members one for each month's book selection.  Though I did not find each of the character's and their book selections quite as well developed as I would have like, I do see how the author, Ann Hood, tried to use each of their book selections to bring Ava forward out of her despair and back to a world that she could make her own.  How to leave behind her childhood loss and the loss of her marriage and move forward to find happiness or at least contentment.