8. Rosie confronts Jeannie by asking if Jeannie had told her mother about her father’s infidelity. Do you think the situations are comparable—a friend hiding another friend’s betrayal and a daughter hiding her father’s? How are the two friends able to reconcile over the course of the party?

9. While all of Charlene’s friends are supportive and healing in different ways, how is it that Sissy, the cookie virgin, is able to best advise her on a path forward? How can an outsider sometimes better see a person for who they are in the moment?

10. Marnie describes “the season’s thrill” (p. 84) of the holidays in terms of the warmth and excitement that her friends bring to the cookie club. What are the key elements that form the holidays for you?

ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB

1. Turn your book club into a cookie club! Divide up the recipes in The Christmas Cookie Club and share them according to the rules of the group.

2. Compare the group of friends in the novel to your book club. Get closer by sharing stories about how everyone in your group first met.

3. Jeannie fills her fortune cookies with sayings drawn from her yoga practice and lifestyle. Come up with your own fortunes, or compare favorite fortunes you’ve received over the years.

4. Interested in learning more about the ingredients described in The Christmas Cookie Club? Check out one of the books Pearlman used, such as The Cambridge World History of Food and share your findings with the group.

A CONVERSATION WITH ANN PEARLMAN

What inspired you to write this novel, your first work of fiction?

I’ve been working on fiction for some years, and a few of my short stories have won literary awards. I imagined this novel in 2000 when I first attended a cookie exchange and realized it would be a fabulous setting for a story about a party and the importance of women’s friendships. I set it aside to write a nonfiction book. And when I got back to it, I wrote it with a complete sense of joy.

How different was the process of writing The Christmas Cookie Club from that of your nonfiction works?

You invent the characters and story when you write a novel. With nonfiction, I do a lot of research either to make sure my memory is correct or to gather information for added texture. In biography, there’s an attempt to see the world from another person’s eyes. So nonfiction contains more circling back. I use fictive techniques (dialogue, scene setting, etc.) in both.

Which do you prefer?

I like both. I particularly enjoy writing (and reading) books in which actual people, events, or places are mixed in with the fictional. Thus, I used Ann Arbor and its stores, restaurants, parks, and events as settings for scenes in The Christmas Cookie Club.

How did you choose the cookie recipes to include? Do they have a special meaning for you?