The Christmas Club
By: Barbara Hinske / Narrated By: Piper Goodeve
Length: 2 hrs and 17 mins
How lovely! Had me wishing we all were like this, esPECially during Christmas!
Okay, okay—I admit it, and if you wanna thunk me over the head with a crowbar, I wouldn’t blame you: Yesss, I very much ADORE Christmas audiobooks, look forward to them each year (And throughout if I find myself feeling all woeful and such), but I can be a TOTAL snob about them.
And such was the case with The Christmas Club. Yup, I’d recently read a shining review about it by a fellow Accomplice, so I put it on my listening list for this year.
But then I started it and was completely underWHELmed by narrator Piper Goodeve. Uh-oh, thinks I to myself: This is going to be a nice little story with serviceable but bland narration.
But then I was pulled into the story whereby Verna, an older woman who spend HOURS on her feet working at a bakery, slips on a patch of ice whilst whirling out her bank’s revolving door. Her purse falls to the ground, snaps open, spills its contents, and oh goodness: All the money she’s been saving, aaaaallll year, goes flying off in the wind, whipping to and fro through the crowded and busy street. $30, all five-dollar bills, appeeeears to be gone.
Edward, an attorney, stops to help Verna. And Carol, another stranger, assists also. After they get a devastated and somewhat distraught Verna back into the bank to sit and sip some water, the two good Samaritans go back to see if they can try to scoop up any remaining cash. Alas, all bills are long gone, but kind Ed has five $5 bills in his pocket, and he says he’ll tell poor Verna $25 was found. The touched Carol chips in $5 of her own, and so they give “her” money back to the relieved and overjoyed Verna.
After that, the two part ways, but they’re kicking themselves for exchanging names and names only. They’re kinda sorta attracted to each other, and each are touched and pleased with the other’s actions.
Author Barbara Hinske had me at that early touch of Romance-to-Be. Seriously, and I’m not ashamed to say it, esPECially as this is cleeeeearly Romance that won’t have my toes curling with excessive intimacy. I mean, the couple part ways, so it’s obviously going to be a series of near-misses.
And it is. But this little book is sooo much more as it follows various people who just happened to have the wind whip $5 into their hands. Given what I’m used to nowadays, it was soooo wonderful to see that for the story’s timeframe, 1952, WWII being over but with people still feeling relieved and blessed that it’s over, people just had other people in mind as they navigated their Christmases.
Each beneficiary of a $5 bill meets up with someone else, an entire stranger, who is struggling, or who they just feel grateful with their lives and they want to spread some cheer. This comes in the form of a traveler who sees the empathetic and hardworking shoeshine guy at the train station and gives him a good ol’ Christmas tip. Or a young woman at a department store who’s planning on using the money to buy special stockings but finds herself serving a young boy who’s $5 shy of purchasing a gift that would REALLY make his mother, who works so hard, very happy. Or a man who sees that a woman can’t afford to buy a nice Christmas tree for her children and thus makes a deal with the tree salesman, both doing a good deed for the woman.
People, even without the extra money, just do good and kind things for others for the Holiday. And it’s just cuz they remember kindnesses done them throughout the year. I mean, how AWEsome is THAT?!?
And yup, Piper Goodeve totally grew on me. And at least she didn’t try too hard, no weird vocal juggling, and she didn’t do anything weird for the male voices. Everyone just sounded good and kind, and oh so jolly decent.
What a treat this little audiobook was! Our society ain’t looking all that kind as of late, so it was WONderful to listen to people doing the right thing, the gracious thing, the most grateful thing.
>PHEW< and have an oh so Merry Christmas, y’all!
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