A CONSTELLATION OF VITAL PHENOMENA, BY ANTHONY MARRA

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 2016, AT 1:00 P.M.

Stegner and Whiting Award winner Anthony Marra transports us to a snow-covered village in Chechnya, where eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night, accusing him of aiding Chechen rebels. Across the road their lifelong neighbor and family friend Akhmed has also been watching, fearing the worst when the soldiers set fire to Havaa's house. But when he finds her hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives.... 

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MARY COIN, BY MARISA SILVER

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: MONDAY, DECEMBER 14th, 2015, AT 11:00 A.M.

In 1936, a young mother resting by the side of a road in central California is spontaneously photographed by a woman documenting the migrant laborers who have taken to America's farms in search of work. Little personal information is exchanged, and neither woman has any way of knowing that they have produced what will become the most iconic image of the Great Depression. (publisher)

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Booklist:

Inspired by Migrant Mother, the iconic Depression-era photograph snapped by Dorothea Lange in 1936, Silver reimagines the lives of both the photographer and the subject. Interweaving the stories of Mary Coin , a young mother grappling with the cruel realities of raising a family during an enduring economic crisis, and Vera Dare, the brilliant young photographer facing life-altering decisions of her own, this dual portrait investigates the depths of the human spirit, exposing the inner reserves of will and desire hidden in both women. Though their paths cross for a brief moment, their fates—stretching into succeeding generations—are permanently altered by the meeting. The luminously written, heart-wrenching—yet never maudlin—plot moves back and forth through time, as history professor Walker Dodge unpeels the layers of the photograph’s hidden truths. -- Flanagan, Margaret (Reviewed 02-01-2013) (Booklist, vol 109, number 11, p31)

Publishers Weekly:

/* Starred Review */ Three characters whose lives span 90 years form the core of Silver's gorgeous third novel (after The God of War). Social historian Walker Dodge, as he sorts through the last items of his nearly empty childhood home, discovers a familial link to a famous photograph. Here, a real-life photo taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936 becomes a fictional photo taken by Vera Dare of Mary Coin . Silver fills in the untold story behind Lange's photo by revealing Vera and Mary's  lives in vivid detail. Neither woman can reconcile herself with the Depression-era photo, yet they are intimately linked: each has children, husbands who leave them, and battles with cancer. This narrative of mid-century hope, loss, and disenchantment is both universal and deeply personal. Mary's  problem with the truth of history and the stories told through objects leads her to make the hardest decision of her life, one confronted by Walker 75 years later. Silver has managed the difficult task of fleshing out history without glossing over its ugly truths. With writing that is sensual and rich, she shines a light on the parts of personal history not shared and stops time without destroying the moment. Agent: Henry Dunow; Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency. (Mar.) --Staff (Reviewed February 25, 2013) (Publishers Weekly, vol 260, issue 08, p)

Library Journal:

/* Starred Review */ Dorothea Lange's legendary photograph of an unknown migrant mother, taken at the height of the Great Depression, is the inspiration for Silver's (The God of War ) superb new novel. The titular character is a reimagining of this Native American mother of seven, with the memorable face that came to symbolize American poverty. Mary , along with Vera Dare, a strong-minded photographer and polio survivor who is forced to abandon her own children, and Walker Dodge, a modern-day history professor with a surprising link to the celebrated photograph, are the mesmerizing novel's three central characters. Silver's acute observations and understated style are evident here as are her matter-of-fact, unapologetic characters. "You'll know who you are when you start losing things," declares one. With only a few known facts of the woman in Lange's photograph, Silver has crafted a highly imaginative story that grabs the reader and won't let go. VERDICT A must-read for Silver fans that is sure to win over many new followers; the acclaimed author's best work to date.— Lisa Block, Atlanta, GA --Lisa Block (Reviewed February 15, 2013) (Library Journal, vol 138, issue 3, p95)

FLORENCE GORDON, BY BRIAN MORTON

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: Monday, November 23, 2015, at 1:00 P.M.

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Meet Florence Gordon: blunt, brilliant, cantankerous, passionate, feminist icon to young women, invisible to almost everyone else. At seventy-five, Florence has earned her right to set down the burdens of family and work and shape her legacy at long last. But just as she is beginning to write her long-deferred memoir, her son Daniel returns to New York from Seattle with his wife and daughter, and they embroil Florence in their dramas, clouding the clarity of her days and threatening her well-defended solitude. And then there is her left foot, which is starting to drag...
With searing wit, sophisticated intelligence, and a tender respect for humanity in all its flaws, Brian Morton introduces a constellation of unforgettable characters. Chief among them Florence, who can humble the fools surrounding her with one barbed line, but who eventually finds there are realities even she cannot outwit. (publisher)

THE CHILDREN ACT, BY IAN MCEWAN

Book discussion date and time: Thursday, November 12, 2015, at 10:30 A.M.

Judge Fiona Maye is at a difficult point in her marriage. Taking refuge in addressing other people's problems in family court, Fiona extends herself more than usual, meeting a boy whose future is in her hands. McEwan is a masterful observer of human distress. With a simple story and flawed, genuine characters, this novel is  poignant and insightful.

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson

Book Discussion Date and Time: Tuesday, October 13, 2015, at 11:00 A.M.

"My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead."

So begins the story of two eccentric sisters, "Merricat" and Constance Blackwood, and their frail, daft Uncle Julian, who live on a grand  old family estate, isolated from their hostile, curious  neighbors. This gothic masterpiece was written by Shirley Jackson, who first received wide critical acclaim for her short story, The Lottery.

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CASEBOOK, BY MONA SIMPSON

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2015, AT 1:OO P.M.

Nine-year-old Miles Adler-Hart’s mother, “the Mims,” is “pretty for a mathematician.” Miles and his best friend Hector are in thrall to her. When her marriage starts to unravel, the boys begin spying on her to find out why. They rifle through her dresser drawers, bug her telephone lines, and strip-mine her computer. Ultimately, what they find will affect the family’s prosperity—and sanity. (Penguin/Randomhouse)

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The Book of Unknown Americans, by Cristina Henriquez

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME:
Tuesday, August 11, 2015, at 11:00 A.M.

The Riveras move from Mexico to Delaware so Maribel, their brain-injured daughter, can attend a special school. They move into an apartment building filled with other recent immigrants, including the Toros, a Panamanian family. The families become more closely tied than anyone ever expected. Henriquez intersperses her main narrative with short chapters that consist of first-person accounts of the other immigrants living in the Riveras’s apartment building. These stories are suspenseful, poignant and vividly illustrate a variety of immigrant experiences. Henriquez’s novel was inspired by her father who came to the U.S. from Panama in 1971. (NovelistPlus)

About Cristina Henriquez 

Euphoria, by Lily King

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: TUESDAY, JULY 14, 2015, AT 11:00 A.M.  (PLEASE NOTE THAT WE ARE MEETING ON A DIFFERENT DAY AND TIME FOR JULY AND AUGUST.)

Inspired by events in the life of revolutionary anthropologist Margaret Mead, Euphoria is a captivating story of three young, gifted anthropologists of the 1930s caught in a passionate love triangle that threatens their bonds, their careers, and ultimately their lives.
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THE ARSONIST, BY SUE MILLER

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2015, AT 1:00 P.M.
A series of summer house fires exposes deep social faults in the hometown of Frankie Rowley, who makes unsettling discoveries about her aging parents while engaging in an affair with a local journalist.

With her trademark elegant prose and masterful command of subtle psychological nuance, Miller explores the tensions between the summer people and the locals in a small New Hampshire town. Frankie Rowley, after years spent doing relief work abroad, has returned to her parents’ summer home, unsure of whether she will ever go back to East Africa, feeling depleted by that region’s seemingly endless suffering. But the reassuring comfort of the small town she has been coming to since she was a girl is shattered by a series of fires set by an arsonist who has targeted the rambling summer homes of the wealthy. Frankie falls into an unexpected and passionate love affair with the local newspaper editor while also becoming privy to her parents’ difficulties, with her mother seeming to resent her husband’s decline into Alzheimer’s, especially since she no longer loves him. The town, awash in fear of the unknown arsonist, splits into factions aligned along class divisions. In this suspenseful and romantic novel, Miller delicately parses the value of commitment and community, the risky nature of relationships, and the yearning for meaningful work.(Booklist, vol 110, number 17, p76)

Publishers Weekly:

A small New Hampshire town provides the backdrop for Miller’s (The Senator’s Wife ) provocative novel about the boundaries of relationships and the tenuous alliance between locals and summer residents when a crisis is at hand. After years of being an aid worker in Africa, Frankie Rowley returns to the idyllic Pomeroy, N.H., summer home to which her parents have retired. But all is not well in Pomeroy, where a spate of house fires leaves everyone wary and afraid. Frankie, who may have seen the arsonist her first night home, contemplates her ambiguous future and falls for Bud Jacobs, a transplant who has traded the hustle and bustle of covering politics in D.C. for the security of smalltown life, buying the local newspaper. Meanwhile, Sylvia, Frankie’s mother, becomes concerned about her husband’s increasingly erratic behavior, fearful that it’s a harbinger of Alzheimer’s. Liz, Frankie’s married sister, has her hands full dealing with their parents while Frankie’s been overseas. Miller, a pro at explicating family relationships as well as the fragile underpinnings of mature romance, brilliantly draws parallels between Frankie’s world in Africa and her life in New Hampshire, and explores how her characters define what “home” means to them and the lengths they will go to protect it. (June) --Staff (Reviewed April 28, 2014) (Publishers Weekly, vol 261, issue 17, p)

Library Journal:

Retiring with her increasingly erratic professor husband to the New Hampshire town where she has summered for decades doesn't turn out as planned for Sylvia Rowley. Social tensions surface, starting with the renovation work Sylvia's son is doing on the property, and then local homes start falling to an arsonist. From the multi-million-copy best-selling Miller. --Barbara Hoffert (Reviewed January 1, 2014) (Library Journal, vol 139, issue 1, p71)

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NORWEGIAN BY NIGHT, BY DEREK B. MILLER

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME:
MONDAY, MAY 18, 2015, AT 1:00 PM.

 Miller's affecting debut, about a cantankerous Jewish widower transplanted to Norway who becomes party to a hate crime, is an unusual hybrid: part memory novel, part police procedural, part sociopolitical tract and part existential meditation. Native New Yorker Sheldon "Donny" Horowitz, 82, is a retired watch repairman living in Oslo with his granddaughter Rhea, an architect, and her new Norwegian husband, Lars. She thinks her grandfather is slipping into dementia. Haunted by his experiences as a Marine sniper in the Korean War and by his son Saul's death in Vietnam, Sheldon sometimes has trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality. He thinks the Koreans are still after him. But he is more strong-willed, decisive and wily than his granddaughter thinks. When a stranger murders the immigrant woman who lives upstairs, Sheldon shelters and then escapes with her young son, fearing the boy is in danger, too. Hovering over the narrative is Norway's roundup of its Jewish population during the Nazi occupation--for which, the author points out, the nation didn't formally apologize until 2012. This novel, first published in Norway, was worth the wait.(Kirkus Reviews) 

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THE MUSEUM OF EXTRAORDINARY THINGS, BY ALICE HOFFMAN

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 2015, AT 1:00 p.m. (Please note different day of week than usual)

Romance blooms between a photographer and the daughter of a Coney Island freak show impresario in early 20th-century New York.  (Long Island Reads/South Shore Reads book selection for 2015)

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GROLIER CLUB EXHIBITS "THE FIRST PAPERBACKS"

Anyone who has ever sat in a cafe, or in the bath, with a paperback owes a debt to Aldus and the small, cleanly designed editions of the secular classics he called libelli portatiles, or portable little books. (New York Times)
A Tribute to the Printer Aldus Manutius, and the Roots of the Paperback

WIDE SARGASSO SEA, BY JEAN RHYS

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2015, AT 1:00 PM.
Jean Rhys's reputation was made upon the publication of this passionate and heartbreaking novel, in which she brings into the light one of fiction's most mysterious characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Set in the Caribbean, its heroine is Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Rochester. In this best-selling novel, Rhys portrays a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.

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JEAN RHYS BIOGRAPHY AND TOUR

OBEAH (VOODOO) IN THE CARIBBEAN

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK: STORIES, BY NATHAN ENGLANDER

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: MONDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2015, AT 1:00 P.M.

A collection of short stories includes the title story about two marriages in which the Holocaust is played out as a devastating parlor game, and a dark story of vigilante justice undertaken by a troop of geriatric campers.

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