Maria Semple’s GO GENTLE Is Oprah’s Book Club Pick for April
Oprah Winfrey has announced that her latest Oprah’s Book Club pick is GO GENTLE (Putnam) by New York Times bestselling author Maria Semple.
The news was announced April 14 on CBS Mornings. Click here to watch the full segment.
“For all those who crave a good page turner, this is one wild ride of a story that carries equal parts wit and wisdom,” said Oprah Winfrey. “I learned so much about Stoicism – I laughed out loud for real. And underneath the humor there was always something tender… a quiet truth about relationships, identity, and what it means to find peace with yourself.”
Maria Semple, photo © Beowulf Sheehan
“To authors, ‘to get the call’ means one thing: Oprah has phoned out of the blue and made you a book club pick,” Maria Semple said in a statement. “Truth is, I should have been prepared, considering the countless hours I’d spent in fantasyland imagining it happening to me … before scolding myself that it was an honor bestowed on other, more serious writers. When, while tidying the kitchen, I heard her voice for the first time, I hit the ceiling in bewildered, grateful, joy. I’m still there.”
Semple is the New York Times bestselling author of the international sensation Where’d You Go, Bernadette. Her first novel in a decade, Go Gentle, is at once a romantic, globe-trotting page-turner, whip-smart mystery, and a dazzling story of reinvention.
Adora Hazzard has it all figured out. A Stoic philosopher and divorcée, she lives a contented life on New York City’s Upper West Side. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, she’s applied this insight to blissful effect: relishing her teenage daughter, the freedom of being solo, and her job as a moral tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. She’s even assembled a “coven”—like-minded women who live on the same floor in the legendary Ansonia—and is making active efforts to grow its membership. Adora’s carefully curated life is humming along brilliantly until a chance meeting with a handsome stranger. Soon, her ordered world is upended by black-market art deals, secret rendezvous, and international intrigue . . . and her past—which she has worked so hard to bury—lands like a bomb in her present. Inflamed by unquenchable desire, Adora finds herself a woman wanting more: and she’ll risk everything to get it. Adora Hazzard’s journey of self-discovery will grip you from the start.
Lindsay Sagnette, Semple’s editor and Putnam VP & Editor-in-Chief, says “It has been a joy working with the incomparable Maria Semple, and the entire Putnam team, to publish GO GENTLE. Maria is life force personified, and that energy animates every single page of this fastidiously crafted and brilliantly alive story of the unforgettable Adora Hazzard. I cannot wait for readers to join me in having their lives changed by her bold way of living. Amor Fati!”