Marilyn's suggestions for our July book.
The book selected was "On Beauty" by Zadie Smith.
The Robber Bride Margaret Atwood. 520 pagesInspired
by "The Robber Bridegroom," a wonderfully grisly tale from the Brothers
Grimm in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair and
devours them, one by one. But in her version, Atwood brilliantly recasts
the monster as Zenia, a villainess of demonic proportions, and sets her
loose in the lives of three friends, Tony, Charis, and Roz. All three
“have lost men, spirit, money, and time to their old college
acquaintance, Zenia. At various times, and in various emotional
disguises, Zenia has insinuated her way into their lives and practically
demolished them.
To
Tony, who almost lost her husband and jeopardized her academic career,
Zenia is 'a lurking enemy commando. To Roz, who did lose her husband and
almost her magazine, Zenia is 'a cold and treacherous bitch.' To
Charis, who lost a boyfriend, quarts of vegetable juice and some pet
chickens, Zenia is a kind of zombie, maybe 'soulless'" (Lorrie Moore, New York Times Book Review). In love and war, illusion and deceit, Zenia's subterranean malevolence takes us deep into her enemies' pasts
Claire of the Sea Light Edwidge Danticat (238 pages)
Claire Danticat was already halfway through writing Claire of the Sea Light, set in the fictional coastal town of Ville Rose in Haiti,
when the 2010 earthquake devastated that country. Ville Rose, located
20 miles south of Port-au-Prince, would have been affected by the
earthquake, and Danticat must have known that readers would come to the
book carrying the weight of that knowledge, and that their reading would
be altered by it. Some writers might have chosen to move the fictional
town out of the earthquake's range, others to write the earthquake into
the book. But as Danticat explained in an interview with Guernica magazine:
"At some point in the writing, even before the earthquake happened,
this place I was writing about became a town on the verge of disaster."
The what-really-happened-later aspect of the book doesn't detract from
or diminish what is contained in its pages; it magnifies it. (Kamile
Shamsie, The Guardian, Friday, Dec 27, 2013)
Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction and named one of the ten best books of the year. Having hit bestseller lists from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle, this wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty
is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of
Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars-on
both sides of the Atlantic-serve to skewer everything from family life
to political correctness to the combustive collision between the
personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny,
this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary
talent.
Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
This is the Kesey novel that nobody read after One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
nest stole all its thunder. Although it was filmed with a great cast
(Henry Fonda, Paul Newman) it never gained the reputation that its
inferior sibling achieved. This is, quite simply, one of the great
classics of the 20th century. Its pace and moody evocation of the
American North West are stunning. The collision between the traditional
and the modern, the past and the present make riveting, enthralling
reading. The Stamper family are loggers, rough, hard men and women who
care for no one’s opinion but their own. They are fighting the union,
the neighbors, the town, their whole world. Their motto of "never give
an inch" was the title of the film of the book. Into the strike-breaking
start of the book comes the dope-smoking, college educated half
brother, the prodigal son. His arrival triggers a tidal wave of events
that spiral gradually out of control until everything that has been
permanent before is now threatened. If I seem vague in this review it is
simply that I don't want to deprive you of the pleasure of discovering
this story for yourself. This is one of the forgotten masterpieces. A
book to be read, and then passed on to friends who are later bullied to
give it back to be read again.
Tell the Wolves I’m Home: a Novel, Carol Rifka Brunt
Amazon Best Books of the Month, June 2012: In Tell the Wolves I’m Home,
Carol Rifka Brunt has made a singular portrait of the late-‘80s AIDS
epidemic’s transformation of a girl and her family. But beyond that, she
tells a universal story of how love chooses us, and how flashes of or
beloved live through us even after they’re gone. Before her Uncle Finn
died of an illness people don’t want to talk about, 14-year old June
Elbus thought she was the center of his world. A famous and reclusive
painter, Finn made her feel uniquely understood, privy to secret
knowledge like how to really hear Mozart’s Requiem or see the shape of
negative space. When he’s gone, she discovers he had a bigger secret:
his longtime partner Toby, the only other person who misses him as much
as she does. Her clandestine friendship with Toby- who her parents blame
for Finn’s illness- sharpens tensions with her sister, Greta, until
their bond seems to exist only in the portrait Finn painted of them.
With wry compassion, Brunt portrays the bitter lengths to which we will
go to hide our soft underbellies, and how summoning the courage to be
vulnerable is the only way to see through o each other’s hungry, golden
souls.
