Book Club Night Kit

The Strangers

Naomi Alderman

Cozy night

A grieving novelist sets a camera in her mother's garden and catches the first photo of a creature nobody can explain, and the world quietly rearranges itself around it. It is a strange, tender book about loss, wonder, and what we do when the impossible shows up in the back yard.

Something Small Is In The Garden. Bring A Mug.

Come read about a creature nobody can explain and a daughter missing her mother, then sit in a warm kitchen and talk about both. Stew on the stove, tea forever, and bring a bake from a family recipe if you have one.

Reading level: Moderate Pages: 288

Best for: A club that likes odd, warm books and does not mind a night where feelings come up alongside the weirdness

Discussion

Warm-up

1.Where did you do most of your reading of this one, and did it want a blanket and a quiet house, or did it follow you onto the bus?
2.Before we go deeper: describe a mimmoth to someone who has not read the book. What did yours look like in your head, and did you find it cute, unsettling, or both?

Digging in

1.The book opens with a wildlife camera in a parent's garden. What was it like to read about a small, ordinary act of watching done by someone who is grieving? Did it remind you of anything you have done to keep company with a loss?
2.There is something comforting about a creature that is just there, about the size of a badger, not asking permission. Which passages about the mimmoths felt soothing to you, and which ones made the back of your neck prickle?
3.Alderman puts her own name and her mother's death right next to an impossible animal. How did that make you feel as a reader, sitting in that space between true and invented? Did you want to know which parts were real, or was it nicer not to?
4.Once the creatures spread, the world starts producing theories, rumours, and people who are very certain. Where in your own life have you felt that pull, the wish for a story that explains everything, and what does the book seem to feel about that wish?

Going deep

1.Grief and the mimmoths move through the book on parallel tracks. By the end, did the strange animal feel to you like a comfort, a companion, or a kind of grief in a different shape? What in the later chapters left you with that impression, without giving anything away?
2.Close your eyes for a second and find the image from this book you will still be carrying in a year. Why that one? What did it leave you feeling about your own people, your own garden, your own small unexplained things?

On the table & to sip

To eat

Slow-cooked root vegetable and barley stew with buttered bread

Low-to-the-ground, dug-from-the-garden food for a book about something that appears in the soil of an ordinary back garden. One pot, made in the morning, ladled out whenever people are hungry.

Mum's-recipe tray bake (whatever yours is: lemon drizzle, flapjack, brownie)

Invite each member to bring a bake that comes from a parent or grandparent, ideally with a story. The book is partly about a mother's house and what stays behind in it.

Cheese, apples, walnuts and honey on a wooden board

Trunk-and-snuffle food, the kind of thing you would leave out for a garden animal. No cooking, and it sits out happily all evening.

To sip

Hot spiced apple and pear cordial (non-alcoholic) (no alcohol)

Warm orchard-and-garden flavours, served in mugs so people can hold something while they talk. Keep a pot on low all night.

Big pot of strong tea with a proper milk jug (no alcohol)

The most English possible grief-and-strangeness drink. Alderman is a London writer, and this book lives in kitchens.

Mulled red wine with orange and clove

Gentle, warm, and low effort. A glass of something spiced makes the uncanny bits easier to sit with.