In this our first book club episode of 2021, Fable and the Verbivore unpack Kim Liggett’s The Grace Year.

Spoiler alert for this episode as we dissect some of the plot twists and the end of this book.

We highly recommend seeking out and reading the letter to the readers that Kim included in the Target exclusive edition, as it gives some great context around the meaning and the author’s intentions.

In this episode, we discuss how the extreme but honest brutality in this book reflects experiences that many young girls face while growing up, as well as how the world that she built explores unchallenged prejudices and injustice within our own society.

We dig into the complex characters she created and many stereotypes that the various individuals accept as truth and how she chooses to call out those beliefs and challenge them over time. We also talke about the many ways that symbols steeped in meaning play into this story - flowers, seeds, and growing things that are never solely what they appear to be at first glance.

Towards the end of the episode, we discuss some of our takeaways from this powerful and thought-provoking story: That we each can make a difference by using the voice we have, that by making a different choice from those that came before we can create positive change, and that hope however small is important. But also that we each individually can choose to be medicine in our world.

Kim Liggett writes mostly YA Horror and Thrillers. She has published five books: The Unfortunates, The Last Harvest, and the duology Salt and Blood and Heart of Ash. In 2019, it was announced thatThe Grace Year is in development to be made into a film. She is on instagram @kim2legit2quit and her website is http://www.kimliggett.com/.

Take care of one another! And keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The Verbivore mentions the Target letter in her copy of the book. As part of the Target exclusive edition of The Grace Year, the book included a letter from author Kim Liggett to her readers that discusses an experience she had at a train station watching a family interact with a young girl who was going back to boarding school and how strangers assessed her while walking past - this was part of the spark for writing this book.

The Verbivore references the movie “V for Vendetta”. Here is the quote she was thinking of:

• “We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world.”

Books Mentioned:

• The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

• Lord of the Flies by William Golding 

Movies Mentioned:

• V for Vendetta

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)