Clare Pooley, "The Authenticity Project" (Penguin, 2020)

New Books in Literature · Oct 26, 2021 · 29m

Today I talked to Clare Pooley about her novel The Authenticity Project (Penguin, 2020). In this chatty, very British story, a few personal lines written in a “pale-green exercise book like the one Monica had carried around with her at school,” inadvertently trigger enormous personal change in a group of strangers. Monica owns the café where Julian, an aging, lonely artist, has left a few words about himself in the exercise book. Julian hopes that whoever finds it might want to share their own truth and pass it along, and surprisingly, some do. Monica writes in it and leaves it for the next…