Read to Me from… Beneficence by Meredith Hall
"Beneficence is a beautiful novel, quiet and meditative, exquisite in its language, moving in its emotional reach." Roxana Robinson
On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good.
Today, we read from Beneficence by Meredith Hall. (Our friends at Literary North clued us to this stunning book!) In the episode, we love the book’s hat trick: conveying devastating grief and deep family love, doing so through the embodied action of its characters, and carrying everything in light and joyful sentences.
Plus, we explore why we never, ever need credentials to love the written word.
Photo Credit: Nick Brown
Meredith Hall's memoir Without a Map was instantly recognized as a classic of the genre and became a New York Times bestseller. It was named Best Book of the Year by Kirkus and BookSense, as well as Elle's "Readers' Pick of the Year." Ms. Hall was a recipient of the 2004 Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation. Her work has appeared in the Five Points, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, New York Times, and many other journals. Hall divides her time between Maine and California.
Twitter @MerHallbooks
Website www.meredithhall.org
Literary North champions the literary arts in Vermont and New Hampshire. Rebecca and Shari, two bookish friends, started Literary North in June 2016 as a carefully selected, online calendar of literary events happening in our rectangle of Northern New England.
Since then, they’ve expanded their original mission by partnering with the local literary community to promote literary-related events, and by hosting their own events and projects, including the Mud Season Salon, Poetry & Pie, the Lady Sings the Blues Book Group, the Slow Club Book Club, Little Dipper chapbooks, and Constellation community writing projects.