Tuesday, June 6th, 6:30 PM
Please join us on June 6th for An Evening With Jane Roper, author of The Society of Shame
ABOUT THE BOOK
Kathleen Held’s life is turned upside down when she arrives home to find her house on fire and her husband on the front lawn in his underwear. But the scandal that emerges is not that Bill, who's running for Senate, is having a painfully cliched affair with one of his young staffers: it's that the eyewitness photographing the scene accidentally captures a period stain on the back of Kathleen’s pants.
Overnight, Kathleen finds herself the unwitting figurehead for a social media-centered women’s right movement, #YesWeBleed. Humiliated, Kathleen desperately seeks a way to hide from the spotlight. But when she stumbles upon the Society of Shame—led by the infamous author Danica Bellevue—Kathleen finds herself part of a group who are all working to change their lives after their own scandals. Using the teachings of the society, Kathleen channels her newfound fame as a means to reap the benefits of her humiliation and reclaim herself. But as she ascends to celebrity status, Kathleen's growing obsession with maintaining her popularity online threatens her most important relationship IRL: that with her budding activist daughter, Aggie.
Hilarious and heartfelt, The Society of Shame is a pitch-perfect romp through politics and the perils of being "extremely online"—without losing your sanity or your true self.
"Readers will be swept along by Roper’s scrappy heroine."
—Publishers Weekly
“The Society of Shame is like Tom Wolfe and David Sedaris had a baby and it was female. I was HOWLING with laughter on every page. This is the book we NEED right now: not only because it’s absofreakinglutely hilarious, not only because it makes trenchant points about cancel culture... but because it’s zany and zeitgeisty and, like all exquisite satire, it reflects us back to ourselves in a way that raises questions—and possible solutions. YOU NEED THIS BOOK.”
—Jenna Blum, New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us and The Lost Family
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JANE ROPER is the author of two previous books: a memoir, Double Time, and a novel, Eden Lake. Her short fiction, essays, and humor have appeared in publications including McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Millions, The Rumpus, Salon, and Poets & Writers and on NPR. Jane is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in the Boston area with her husband and two children.
