Jenna Bush Hager has selected Melissa Albert’s The Children as the latest pick for her Today show book club.
Albert’s novel, slated for publication next week by Morrow/HarperCollins, tells the story of Guinevere and Ennis Sharpe, whose mother was the author of a popular series of fantasy novels featuring them as characters. Their childhood is cut short by a tragedy, and they become estranged; later, Guinevere is publicizing a ghostwritten memoir while her brother prepares an art show titled “Mother” that threatens to reopen old wounds. A critic for Kirkus called the book “a chilling and twisted fairy tale.”
Hager announced the novel’s selection on the Today show, saying, “I loved this book so much. It’s her debut adult novel, and not since Donna Tartt’s The Secret History have I loved a book filled with such magic and mystery.…This is a layered, haunting adult fairy tale [that] asks the question, What weight do our childhood memories hold?”
Albert told Today.com that her novel was inspired by C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.
“I’ve always continually revisited these books, and every time I read them again, they seem a little bit different,” she said. “The…deepest root for me is just loving these books. It’s such a celebration of portal fantasy—no matter how dark it got, I wanted it to be leavened by enchantment.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
