Goop, actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle website, is starting a book club, with C Pam Zhang’s recently released How Much of These Hills Is Goldas its first pick.
“It’s official—we’re launching #goopBookClub,” the company announced on Instagram. “We want to connect virtually with all of you (and we hope in person someday soon) about true and fictional stories that open up important conversations.”
Goop said that the book club organizers chose Zhang’s book because it’s “poignant, haunting, [and] beautiful.”
Goop said, “It’s a story about family secrets, the responsibilities that weigh us down and buoy us, and the choices people make when they don’t have any. And it’s also a story about our relationship to nature and what’s been edited out, rewritten, or stolen from one culture by another.”
Zhang’s novel follows two Chinese immigrant siblings in 19th-century America who flee their small town after their father dies. A reviewer for Kirkus called the book “aesthetically arresting and a vital contribution to America’s conversation about itself.”
The post on the website links to a Facebook group for the book club, where discussion about Zhang’s book will take place. As of Monday afternoon, more than 2,000 people had joined the group.
The Goop Book Club page offers a link for readers to buy the novel via the website Bookshop.org, a new retail site that benefits independent bookstores. Readers can buy other books from the Goop store, however, along with many other items. (We hear they sell candles.)
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
