Esther
2026년 8월 7일
The book of October is <Theo of Golden> by Allen Levi.
heo of Golden. This is one of those books I simply couldn't miss. The world wouldn't let me. Everything I listened to, every vaguely bookish space I wandered into, seemed to be nudging me toward the same title. At some point, resistance starts to feel like contrarianism for its own sake. So I looked up the author.
He's in his mid-seventies. A former folk musician and a lawyer, with a brief stint as a judge. He originally self-published the novel. No agent, no editor - which also meant no deadline, a real luxury that sounds romantic until you remember it leaves nobody to blame but yourself. Somehow it found its way to the top of The New York Times bestseller list. A genuine word-of-mouth success, the kind of thing marketing departments spend fortunes trying to conjure up.
What intrigues me isn’t only the book but the people who have read it. They aren’t merely recommending it; they seem almost compelled to recruit others into reading it. This level of collective enthusiasm reminds me, if only faintly, of the devotion that gathered around John Williams's Stoner, or Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. Which is, admittedly, an absurd comparison to make before I've read a single page. But readers do this sort of thing because excitement has very little patience.
From the interview I watched, the only thing I could think to call extraordinary about the author was just how completely ordinary he seemed. He didn't appear to be performing "writer." You know it when you see it - the carefully cultivated mystique, the curious dialect of self-importance that can slip into condescension without noticing . None of that. Just someone who sounded thoughtful, decent, and entirely comfortable being an ordinary human being. Strange that this should feel noteworthy. Stranger still that it does.
I've heard the novel is, at heart, about a good person. Just a good person. That's a surprisingly difficult sell these days. Fiction has become wonderfully generous toward damaged people, unreliable people, morally compromised people. Meanwhile, goodness, lacking such convenient sharpness of dysfunction, often gets mistaken for dullness. But Marilynne Robinson, for one, proved otherwise with Gilead and Rev. Ames. I'm sure she’s not alone. I simply haven’t been paying enough attention.
Anyhow, I'm trying to keep my expectations from inflating before the book actually arrives. Collective enthusiasm has a peculiar way of amplifying itself. Enough people speak in superlatives and, before long, you're no longer sure whether they're talking about the book or the experience of belonging to a certain group of people. I’m hoping, quietly, that this is one of those occasions when the consensus turns out to be simply right.
I have a feeling this is a proper book-club book in the most traditional sense - whatever that elusive phrase still means. A book that invites conversation and perhaps leaves its readers a little gentler than it found them. I hope you enjoy the read, and I'll see you in October, hopefully with a renewed sense of what goodness might still look like.
*
One morning, a stranger arrives in the town of Golden. No one knows who he is or where he came from. His name is Theo and he's arrived there by chance – or has he? He visits the local coffeehouse, where ninety-two pencil portraits hang on the walls, portraits by a local artist of the people of Golden. He begins purchasing them, one at a time, and putting them back in the hands of their 'rightful owners'. With each exchange, a story is told, a friendship born, and a life altered. A story of seeing and being seen, Theo of Golden is a beautifully crafted novel about the power of creative generosity, the importance of wonder to a purposeful life, and the invisible threads of kindness that bind us to one another.
출간 즉시 전 세계를 사로잡은 “바로 그 하얀 책”, 오직 입소문만으로 역주행의 아이콘이 된 화제의 소설 <테오>. 변호사이자 판사를 거쳐 전업 싱어송라이터로 살아온 작가 갤런 레비가 70대에 가까운 나이에 발표한 첫 장편소설로, 원래는 출간 계획조차 없었던 작품이었다. 그러나 주위의 강한 권유에 힘입어 작가는 자비출판을 하게 되었고, 그렇게 세상에 나온 책은 독자들의 자발적인 추천과 사랑만으로 미국 전역에 퍼져 나가며 하나의 거대한 문화적 현상으로 자리 잡았다.
이토록 많은 이들이 이 이야기에 열성적으로 마음을 내어준 까닭은 무엇일까. 겉모습은 더없이 매끄럽고 세련되어졌지만 정작 온기는 옅어진 현대사회를 살아가면서, 어쩌면 우리는 아주 오랫동안 잊고 지낸 무언가를 그리워하고 있었는지도 모른다. 대가 없는 선의, 무용해 보이는 친절, 타인과 느슨하게 연결되는 공동체의 유대감. 그리고 기꺼이 마음 다해 존경할 수 있는 진정한 ‘어른’의 존재를. 《테오》는 날 선 언어와 자극이 범람하는 시대에 우리가 잃어버린, 그러나 여전히 내면 깊은 곳에서 갈구해 마지않는 그 보편의 가치들을 문장 사이사이에 섬세하게 복원해 낸다.
Sunday, October 25, 2026, at 5pm
Join us for an evening of camaraderie and intellectual stimulation. Admission is free, but attendance is restricted to individuals of college age and above. You can sign up for the meeting via Karrot (당근 모임) or secure your spot through Kakao (에스더어학원).
세종에 거주하고 있는 외국인을 포함해 교사, 강사, 회사원, 공무원 및 가사일을 하시는 분들에게도 원서독서를 장려하고 자유롭게 토론할 수 있는 문학적/문화적 소통과 교류의 공간이 되고자 합니다. 해당 책을 읽고, 영어로 소통이 가능한 대학생 이상의 성인에 한해 누구나 무료로 참석할 수 있습니다. 2026년 10월 모임의 책으로는 Allen Levi의 <Theo of Golden>를 읽습니다.