April 26, 2015 Meeting at Ann's House

Submitted by Lori...

We had a very nice meeting at Ann's house in Nashua discussing Age of
Iron by J. M. Coetzee. Most (but not all) felt the book was extremely
well written, and were impressed that the author could write on such a
depressing topic (a woman dying of cancer during the violent end of
South African apartheid with only a homeless man as a companion) and
yet make the book uplifting. This short book of only about 200 pages
yielded interesting discussion on a number of topics including the
main character's relationship with her daughter living in the US,
whether or not the homeless man in the story was black or white (we
realized that the author never actually said and there was a
difference of impression among us), the symbolism in the book (e.g.
the main character's cancer representing apartheid), and many other
topics. Claire had many interesting points to bring up as discussion
leader, Judy had many post-its as usual, and the discussion was
lively. Some found the book difficult to get through, while others
read it quickly within a day or two. The food was delicious and
plentiful, as usual.

The May meeting will be on Sunday, May 31st, and will be at Diane's
new house (please correct me if I'm wrong about this). We will discuss
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See. We will also pick from Celia's choices for
July at the May meeting.

The June meeting will be on Sunday, June 28th at Joy's house. We will
be discussing A  Spool of Blue Thread  By Anne Tyler. If "All the
Light We Cannot See" turns out to be much easier to get through the
library, we may switch since it was more or less a tie between the
two.

The July meeting will be at Judy's, and the August meeting will be at
Celia's (this was a change from what was discussed before).

We look forward to the summer months, when all of you will be back in NH!!

Lori

Celia's Suggestions for our July Book

We will vote at our May 31, 2015, meeting for one of these books.  We will discuss at out July meeting.

The Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrich. Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for "a reliable wife." But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she's not the "simple, honest woman" that Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious, haunted by a terrible past and motivated by greed. Her plan is simple: she will win this man's devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on, though, is that Truitt — a passionate man with his own dark secrets —has plans of his own for his new wife. Isolated on a remote estate and imprisoned by relentless snow, the story of Ralph and Catherine unfolds in unimaginable ways.

With echoes of Wuthering Heights and Rebecca, Robert Goolrick's intoxicating debut novel delivers a classic tale of suspenseful seduction, set in a world that seems to have gone temporarily off its axis.

Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult Throughout her blockbuster career, Jodi Picoult has seamlessly blended nuanced characters, riveting plots, and rich prose, brilliantly creating stories that "not only provoke the mind but touch the flawed souls in all of us" (The Boston Globe). Now, in her highly anticipated new novel, she has delivered her most affecting work yet—a book unlike anything she’s written before.

For more than a decade, Jenna Metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother, Alice, who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident. Refusing to believe she was abandoned, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over the pages of Alice’s old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries will provide a clue to her mother’s whereabouts.

Desperate to find the truth, Jenna enlists two unlikely allies in her quest: Serenity Jones, a psychic who rose to fame finding missing persons, only to later doubt her gifts, and Virgil Stanhope, the jaded private detective who’d originally investigated Alice’s case along with the strange, possibly linked death of one of her colleagues. As the three work together to uncover what happened to Alice, they realize that in asking hard questions, they’ll have to face even harder answers.

As Jenna’s memories dovetail with the events in her mother’s journals, the story races to a mesmerizing finish. A deeply moving, gripping, and intelligent page-turner, Leaving Time is Jodi Picoult at the height of her powers.

Stoner - William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a "proper" family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.

John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.

n extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love--and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a mesmerizing, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless

machinations of fate.

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

Fault in our Stars by John Green Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars brilliantly explores the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love

Joy's Suggestions for our June Book

Immortal Bird By Doron Weber

From Booklist

When Weber’s eldest son, Damon, is born with a heart defect, he devotes every waking hour to helping his boy lead a normal life. But Damon’s complex condition requires surgeries from his earliest months, and as a consequence, he develops a severe protein deficiency that is often fatal. Weber and his wife consult experts from the nation’s top medical centers, including the Mayo Clinic and New York’s prestigious Columbia Presbyterian Hospital (Weber is both impressed by the latter’s sophisticated medical technology and appalled by its often inept care). Meanwhile, affable Damon displays remarkable courage in the face of his deteriorating health, excelling in school and proving himself to be a talented young actor. He even lands a minor speaking role on the critically acclaimed HBO series Deadwood. For 16 years, Damon endures good days and bad, but when he becomes gravely ill, it’s clear a heart transplant is the only option. Sadly, its success is short-lived. Both heartbreaking and life affirming, this is a tender tale of the love between a father and son. --Allison Block

A Spool of Blue Thread By Anne Tyler (358 pages)

It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . .” This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. From Red’s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.

Brimming with all the insight, humor, and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler’s work, A Spool of Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish.

All the Light We Cannot See By Anthony Doerr (545 pages)

From Booklist

*Starred Review* A novel to live in, learn from, and feel bereft over when the last page is turned, Doerr’s magnificently drawn story seems at once spacious and tightly composed. It rests, historically, during the occupation of France during WWII, but brief chapters told in alternating voices give the overall—and long— narrative a swift movement through time and events. We have two main characters, each one on opposite sides in the conflagration that is destroying Europe. Marie-Louise is a sightless girl who lived with her father in Paris before the occupation; he was a master locksmith for the Museum of Natural History. When German forces necessitate abandonment of the city, Marie-Louise’s father, taking with him the museum’s greatest treasure, removes himself and his daughter and eventually arrives at his uncle’s house in the coastal city of Saint-Malo. Young German soldier Werner is sent to Saint-Malo to track Resistance activity there, and eventually, and inevitably, Marie-Louise’s and Werner’s paths cross. It is through their individual and intertwined tales that Doerr masterfully and knowledgeably re-creates the deprived civilian conditions of war-torn France and the strictly controlled lives of the military occupiers.

March 29, 2015, Meeting at MJ's Inn

There were 8 of us.  Fun time exploring and discussing Sacred Bleu, Christopher Moore.  Its always interesting to hear what we all have to say about this book.  

 

Our next book is: "Age of Iron" and will be at Ann S. In Nashua at 1:00 pm.

 

May's book that was chosen is "Shanghai Girls by Lisa See and will be at Diane's new house on May 31.

Submitted by MJ