Dear Great Book Guru, We are interested in starting a small book club reading only small but extraordinary books - filled with thought provoking ideas.  Any suggestions? Thinking Small

Dear Thinking Small, I just finished in about three hours, the perfect book for you and your friends: THE VULNERABLES by Sigrid Nunez.  In 249 pages Nunez covers aging, friendship, literature, grief, memory,  and -yes- zoology in a beautifully meditative style.  Set in the first months of the pandemic, the novel tells the story of three “vulnerables” who find themselves in  lockdown in  a luxurious New York City apartment.  The trio includes our narrator - a woman in her seventies, a young college student with a history of psychiatric breakdowns, and a spirited parrot - all vulnerable in different ways.  When her friend finds herself  on the West Coast unable to return, she asks the narrator to care for her parrot who is alone as everyone in the building has fled the city for second homes upstate. The narrator spends much of her days and nights thinking about her past and present with many references to her favorite authors, especially Joan Didion, Virginia Woolf, and Charles Dickens. As a writer herself she questions the value of literature in difficult situations.  Through a series of miscommunications, Vetch - a young, troubled college student - arrives to share the apartment, and the two form a mutually beneficial alliance. Eureka the parrot serves as an ever-present source of muted comic relief.  Throughout this novel, we see evidence that even the smallest acts of kindness and generosity can make a huge difference in people’s lives. Highly recommended!