A long holiday break means three books for our next meeting. Our main read is the roadtrip-search-for-meaning novel by Benjamin Markvovits, The Rest of our Lives. Add to that two sub-reads, Man Booker nominated Universality by Natasha Brown and fairy-tale romance The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar, and we have an extremely unproductive start to 2026.

An interesting experiment in perspective that we felt didn't make a compelling read. Szalay has a clear mission with this work that he is rigorous in pursuing, but we found the plot twists too easy and just felt the book lacked anything really compelling to follow. This was not the best Man Booker nominee this year.

NUBClub saw so much potential in the themes and peak moments of The Antidote, but unfortunately some bad plot choices and shoddy worldbuilding made this a good novel and not a great one.