The Lonely Hearts Book Club

“‘An echo with nothing and no one to call her own,’ Arthur announced without preamble. Clearly, this was a subject he’d given some thought to. ‘A friendly facade. An empty smile. A scared little girl without an opinion of your own, latching on to other people’s bigger and brighter lives because you’re not willing to fully live your own.’”

Arthur and Sloane’s connection captures The Dynamics of Unlikely Friendships. Arthur is cruel and callous to Sloane when they first meet at the Coeur d’Alene Public Library. Instead of endearing himself to Sloane, Arthur identifies and ridicules her for her vulnerabilities. At the same time, Arthur’s honesty awakens Sloane and compels her into a new, unexpected friendship.

“Of all the lines Octavia had drawn—and there were quite a few—patron privacy was the one she’d put down in permanent ink. Especially when it came to a man like Arthur McLachlan, who eschewed every offer of help and turned up his nose at every smile. According to her, libraries were the final bastions of the civilized world, the one place left in society where you could spend time but not money. People came here to learn, yes, but they also came to hide. Our job was to let them.”

Sloane’s philosophies about the library contrast with her boss Octavia’s philosophies. While Octavia believes that library patrons want to use the library to disappear, Sloane understands the setting as a point of connection. For this reason, she defies Octavia and pursues connection with Arthur. Her boldness captures her character’s longing for companionship and her distinct understanding of friendship.

“‘What I want is to be left alone,’ Arthur grumbled, but without much enthusiasm. ‘Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.’ Maisey’s eyes met mine over the top of Arthur’s head. There was a look of such warm understanding in them—of camaraderie—that I couldn’t help flushing.”

Arthur’s character brings Sloane and Maisey together. Arthur is an off-putting, miserable old man who lives in isolation. However, without Arthur, Sloane and Maisey would never have met. They readily bond once they start caring for Arthur together. The description of Sloane’s physiological response to Maisey’s kindness foreshadows the transformative nature of their developing friendship.

“The thing I couldn’t make Octavia understand was that my fate and Arthur’s had somehow become tangled, and the knot was impossible to undo. Since the day he’d walked into this library, refusing all my book suggestions and overtures of friendship, I’d known that he meant something—that he meant something to me.”

Sloane and Arthur’s unexpected connection reopens Sloane to her life and to others. Ever since her sister’s death, Sloane has retreated into her private reality. She finds more comfort in books than she does in human relationships. Therefore, she refuses to abandon her newfound friendship with Arthur when she realizes he’s in trouble. Arthur has reminded her of who she is and thus catalyzed her journey toward healing and personal growth.

“The fact that they glanced at me with the same tilt to their heads, the same surprise widening their eyes, confirmed my decision. Two more perfect people for each other had never existed.”

Maisey’s innate empathy helps her to bring others together. She can perceive Sloane and Arthur’s similarities even before the characters fully understand their connection. Maisey’s spiritual intuition teaches the other characters the ineffable ways in which people find understanding and love.

“I had almost no interest in the book, especially now that I knew there were literary devices lurking about, but that didn’t stop me from seizing opportunity with both greedy hands. ‘Do you want to read it together?’ I asked, trying not to sound as nervous as I felt. I imagined this was what people proposing marriage had to deal with. ‘As a…book club?’”

Maisey’s longing for friendship catalyzes the launch of the Racing in the Rain Book Club. Maisey doesn’t possess the same innate love for literature as Sloane and Arthur. However, she does have the same desire for connection and community. She capitalizes on her new friends’ bookish interests in order to foster a safe place for them to bond.

“‘You’re afraid of what happens when the stability goes away.’ ‘Wait.’ Sloane tried to snatch her hand back. ‘What are you talking about? That’s not on my palm.’ She was right—it wasn’t. But it was in the way she showed up here every day, determined to help an old man who’d done nothing to deserve it. It was in the way she’d quietly and gently removed her fiancé from this house, unwilling to let him upset the delicate balance she’d managed to reach. It was in the way she always looked a little bit startled when someone was nice to her, as if it could be taken away at any moment.”

Maisey’s assessments of Sloane grant insight into Sloane’s complex character. In Sloane’s first-person sections of the novel, Sloane is unable to articulate her feelings or her actions. However, Maisey’s first-person section reveals the truth of Sloane’s loneliness, loss, and longing for companionship. In this way, the narrative form works in service of the novel’s developing themes.

“No, you’re a stubborn old man who’d rather spend hours buried under a pile of books than admit he needs help […] All the books in the world won’t save you from yourself. You need an exorcism for that.”

Books both isolate and connect all of the primary characters. When Greg surfaces in Arthur’s life, he immediately notices that books are Arthur’s defense mechanism. The same is true for Sloane, who retreats from reality via reading. Greg’s words therefore expose the characters’ need to balance their love for literature and need for community. He is encouraging them to use their literary sensibilities to relate to others, rather than to alienate themselves.

“I was mostly terrified of what would happen if the book club disbanded before we found out what happened to that poor butler. Not to mention what would happen the moment Sloane and Arthur and Greg moved on with their lives. They had no idea how much I needed this: someone to cook for, someone to care about. Someone who might, if I was tied to a hospital bed and knocking on death’s door, be a little sad to see me go.”

The Racing in the Rain Book Club grants Maisey a new kind of family. In her personal life, Maisey feels alone and abandoned. Her ex-husband has a new wife with whom her teenage daughter would rather live. Maisey’s identity as a mother and caretaker therefore feels deflated and unrealized. However, in and through the book club, she discovers the power of a found family.

“Weirdly enough, the book helped. I’d have normally drowned myself in Flames of the World reruns and that bottle of ice-cold Grey Goose, but it had been nice to spend some time with that dreary old butler instead.”

Maisey discovers The Healing and Transformative Power of Literature when she, Sloane, and Arthur read The Remains of the Day. In the past, Maisey put little thought into books or reading. With her book club, she realizes that literature clarifies her complex emotions and helps her process her inarticulable experiences.

“The only thing that stuck with me was the memory of staring up at the distant blue circle above my head. There’d been something beautiful about it—not the shape or the color, or even the occasional puff of cloud going by like chimney smoke—but in knowing how far away it was. God, I missed that feeling. How relaxing it was. How free.”

Mateo’s fraught maternal relationship complicates his self-discovery. Ever since he was a little boy, he’s longed to define himself outside the context of his famous and charismatic mother, Althea. His experience falling in the well as a boy is a metaphor for his emotional entrapment and psychological unrest. These are internal conflicts that Mateo ultimately overcomes with the help of his new community support system.

“I could see her starting to get choked up—a thing that was only going to make me get choked up—so I bumped her with my hip. ‘Next time you want a favor, Parker, just ask. I’m always happy to help a friend.’”

Mateo helps Sloane realize that she is loved, seen, and needed by others. Since her sister’s death, Sloane has felt trapped by her isolation and grief. She’s afraid to ask others for help because she doubts her significance in their lives. When Mateo joins the book club, he reassures Sloane that she is his friend, and therefore a vital part of his life.

“‘He’s all you have left. You owe it to him—and yourself—to try.’ Such was the boy’s love for her that he did what she said. Not right away, and not with anything approaching enthusiasm, but when fate left him with no other choice.”

Greg ventures to Coeur d’Alene in hopes of confronting and resolving his familial trauma. He has residual guilt surrounding his mother and grandfather’s complex relationship and is unsure how he’ll fix this dynamic on his own. What he finds instead surpasses his expectation. At Arthur’s, he discovers The Dynamics of Unlikely Friendships, The Healing and Transformative Power of Literature, and The Importance of Community Support.

“Two things were becoming rapidly clear around this place: one, that against all odds, my grandfather had fallen into the hands of a kind, caring, supportive group of people he’d done nothing to deserve; and two, that it was starting to look more and more like I’d have to become one of them.”

Greg discovers a new community and family over the course of his time in Coeur d’Alene. Prior to visiting Arthur, Greg has been living on his own. He’s still reeling from his mother’s recent death and therefore has little footing in his life or identity. Contrary to his expectations, connecting with Arthur grants Greg entrance into a strong community of diverse friends.

“The thought of this was so depressing that the entire room fell silent. The antagonizing-perfect-strangers part was fine—expected, even—but the living-alone part stung. It was a stark reminder that this thing we were doing together had an expiration date—that soon we’d all have to return to our regularly scheduled lives.”

The Racing in the Rain Book Club offers its members a safe space to explore themselves and process their emotions. However, the club has arisen circumstantially and therefore seems in danger of ending. Characters like Greg fear the dissolution of the group once their lives change because the club has given them both a community of friends and a new reason to live.

“‘Shame on you, Arthur,’ she said. ‘Do you have any idea what I’d give to have my daughter in the same state as me, let alone the same room? This young man picked up his whole life and traveled across the state to take care of you, and you’re wasting it. You’re throwing it away.’”

The book club members both love and challenge one another. Sloane, Arthur, Maisey, Greg, and Mateo all want companionship and validation. However, they also crave honesty and openness. In this scene, Maisey confronts Arthur for his poor treatment of Greg. Like the other characters, she doesn’t excuse Arthur’s bad behavior, and this in turn contributes to his personal growth.

“For a few minutes there, I’d felt as though my mother were alive again, her memory awakened by a few simple questions and my just-as-simple answers. In the five months since I’d lost her, no one else had done anything like that. It was as if Sloane knew that what I needed more than sympathy and support—more than all the condolences in the world—was a chance to talk about her.”

Greg and Sloane’s friendship buoys both characters through their grief. While all of the book club members are familiar with loneliness, Greg and Sloane are particularly intimate with loss. In this scene, they discover a new way of communicating their sorrow and processing it together. This is just one way that the book club friend group teaches the characters The Importance of Community Support.

“Sloane was wrong all the time. Maisey, too. Mateo and Greg didn’t put forth their opinions very often, but I felt pretty sure they didn’t have one good literary theory between the two of them. But damn it all if I didn’t like every last one of them for it, for doubling down on their errors and trying to talk circles around me, for taking enough interest to try. I hadn’t felt this good about arguing with people in decades.”

The Racing in the Rain Book Club evolves Arthur’s character over the course of the novel. When Sloane first introduces him in Part 1, he’s miserly, caustic, and abrasive. However, he softens after just a few weeks in Sloane’s, Maisey’s, Mateo’s, and Greg’s company. Their more youthful, playful spirits reawaken Arthur to his life by immersing him in the energizing dynamics of unlikely friendships. His first-person point of view narration conveys his real feelings for his new friends.

“I didn’t have the words to say what I truly felt. Maisey would have been ashamed of me, but this wasn’t like apologizing to a few nurses for my bad temper. That was just a matter of stringing the right syllables together and forcing them out. This was something else altogether, something I’d never been able to do. That was the truth of the matter, and it had to be said. I, Arthur McLachlan, didn’t have the right words.”

Arthur’s newfound ability to admit his faults captures his capacity for change. For years, Arthur has been crystallized in his bitterness and disdain for others. However, when he realizes that he wants to communicate something more heartfelt to Sloane, he suddenly understands that he doesn’t have the language. His revelation marks a turning point in his journey toward self-discovery and personal growth.

“‘I’m tired,’ I said—and I was. Tired of going through the motions, tired of pretending that something terrible hadn’t been happening to my heart ever since my stay at the hospital. Physically, that heart was the same as it had always been […] Emotionally, however, I was broken. I’d been broken for a long time, and I’d done my best to make sure that everyone around me was broken, too.”

Arthur’s friendship with Sloane transforms him over the course of the novel. He realizes how much love he needs when he discovers that he’s on the verge of losing his new friend. For years, he’s masked his heartbreak and longing with an elitist attitude and a snobbish academic facade. His unlikely friendship with Sloane disrupts these facets of his persona and teaches him the power of admitting his wrongs.

“‘We’ll buy her a new one,’ he promised, and in a tone of authority I didn’t recognize. ‘And you and I will go through it, line by line, to pick out the ones that say what you need them to. Once you explain what they mean, she’ll know what you’re saying. She’s too smart of a person not to.’”

The book club’s Anne of Green Gables project helps them to communicate their feelings to Sloane. With Nigel’s help, they decide to highlight prominent passages of L. M. Montgomery’s novel in order to compel Sloane to stay in Coeur d’Alene. Their new community has taught them The Healing and Transformative Power of Literature, which inspires them to use literature to translate their complex emotions.

“This world was a terrible place. It gave you people to love and then took them away before you stopped loving them. It made you mean and angry and cruel to those who needed you most. It ground you down until it was all you could do to get through the day. But most of all, it tried to convince you that you were alone in your suffering. Everyone in this room had fallen for that lie, but I wasn’t having it anymore. Not one goddamn second longer.”

Arthur’s strong will helps to keep the Racing in the Rain Book Club together. Once he realizes that all of the book club members are familiar with loneliness, trauma, and grief, he refuses to let them feel isolated in their emotional experiences any longer. His forthcoming, brusque manner compels the characters to be honest with one another and with themselves.

“You’re more than welcome to come with me if you want, but this is happening. When your friend is in the hospital, you go. When the people you care about are hurting, you take care of them. You don’t stand by the side of the river waiting to make sure they’re drowning before you jump in.”

Sloane’s unprecedented friendship with Arthur empowers her to claim her voice and her autonomy. Instead of ceding to her fiancé’s demands and needs when Arthur is hospitalized again, she speaks up. She articulates her feelings and desires in a way that exemplifies her character’s evolution.