Fiction Book Club (March)

Name: Fiction Book Club (March)
Start: 2026-03-03T16:30:00-06:00
End: 2026-03-03T17:30:00-06:00
Location: 14 S. Commercial Alley, Mason City, IA

Schedule

Tue Mar 03 2026 at 04:30 pm to 05:30 pm

UTC-06:00

Location

14 S. Commercial Alley, Mason City, IA | Mason City, IA

The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytton is our general fiction read for March. Meetings last about an hour and discussions are led by one of our staff bookworms. This is a casual, no-commitment book club. There is no fee but we'd appreciate you buying the book club book from us or making another purchase of your choice while you're here. This will help us keep events like this going.
Copies of the book are available for purchase now in the store.
About the book:
A LIBRARY READS PICK AND ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025
In the spirit of Amor Towles and George Saunders, the renowned, bestselling Norwegian author Frode Grytten takes readers on a quietly epic journey: ferry driver Nils Vik’s last route along the fjord, on what he knows will be his last day alive.

Nils Vik wakes up on November the 18th and knows it will be the day he dies. He follows his morning routine as voices from his past echo in his mind, and looks around the empty house one last time, before stepping onto his beloved boat.

His dog, dead these many years, leaps aboard with him, and then the other dead begin to emerge – from the woods along the fjord, from each of the ferry stops along the route, from his logbook full of memories and quotations and jotted-down notes about the weather conditions. The people from the past accompany him now, prodding him, showing him what he might have missed before, as he waits for his Marta, his late, remarkable wife, to finally join him on the boat again.

Winner of the prestigious Brage Prize, and considered to be Grytten’s long-awaited masterpiece, The Ferryman and His Wife is the story of a quiet, yet utterly profound, life told in reverse. Timeless and absorbing, this is a novel about what we take with us – those moments that might seem insignificant as they happen but prove to be the most meaningful, in the end.