EXIT WEST, BY MOHSIN HAMID

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: 

MONDAY, JANUARY 22, 2018 

at 2:00 P.M.

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An astonishingly visionary love story that imagines the forces that drive ordinary people from their homes into the uncertain embrace of new lands. 

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city.

When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through.

Exit West follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time. (From the publisher.)

COMMONWEALTH, BY ANN PATCHETT

Book Discussion Date and Time: 

Monday, December 18, 2017, at 2:00 P.M.

The Cousins and the Keatings are two California families forever intertwined and permanently shattered by infidelity. Bert Cousins leaves his wife for Beverly Keating, leaving her to raise four children on her own. Beverly, with two children of her own, leaves her husband for Bert. The six children involved are forced to forge a childhood bond based on the combined disappointment in their parents. As adults, they find their families’ stories revealed in a way they couldn’t possibly expect. Patchett has written a family drama that perfectly captures both the absurdity and the heartbreak of domestic life. -- LibraryReads.

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PACHINKO, BY MIN JIN LEE

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME:

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2017, 
AT 2:00 P.M.

Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan.

So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. Through desperate struggles and hard-won triumphs, its members are bound together by deep roots as they face enduring questions of faith, family, and identity. 

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ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE, BY ELIZABETH STROUT

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME:
MONDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2017, AT 2:00 P.M.

An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss in this new work of fiction by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout. Recalling Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others.

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H-WPL READERS DISCUSSION GUIDE

NUTSHELL, BY IAN McEWAN

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: Monday, September 25, 2017, at 2:00 p.m.

Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She's still in the marital home -- a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse -- but John's not here. Instead, she's with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb.

Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world's master storytellers.

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ARTICLE AND VIDEO OF THE BOOK FROM THE WASHINGTON POST



NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE ON IAN MCEWAN'S COTSWOLDS ESTATE

THE RENT COLLECTOR, BY CAMRON WRIGHT

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME:
Tuesday, July 18, 2017, at 10:30 A.M.
(Our Summer Schedule)

Survival for Ki Lim and Sang Ly is a daily battle at Stung Mean Chey, the largest municipal waste dump in all of Cambodia. They make their living scavenging recyclables from the trash. Life would be hard enough without the worry for their chronically ill child, Nisay, and the added expense of medicines that are not working.

Just when things seem worst, Sang Ly learns a secret about the ill-tempered rent collector who comes demanding money — a secret that sets in motion a tide that will change the life of everyone it sweeps past. The Rent Collector is a story of hope, of one woman's journey to save her son and another woman's chance at redemption. It demonstrates that even in a dump in Cambodia — perhaps especially in a dump in Cambodia — everyone deserves a second chance.

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OUR SOULS AT NIGHT, BY KENT HARUF

Discussion Date and Time:
 Monday, June 19, 2017, at 2:00 p.m. 

In the familiar setting of Holt, Colorado, home to all of Kent Haruf’s inimitable fiction, Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to a neighbor, Louis Waters. Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have known of each other for decades; in fact, Addie was quite fond of Louis’s wife. His daughter lives hours away, her son even farther, and Addie and Louis have long been living alone in empty houses, the nights so terribly lonely, especially with no one to talk with. But maybe that could change? As Addie and Louis come to know each other better—their pleasures and their difficulties—a beautiful story of second chances unfolds, making Our Souls at Night the perfect final installment to this beloved writer’s enduring contribution to American literature.

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1984, BY GEORGE ORWELL

DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: MONDAY, MAY 15, 2017, AT 2:00 P.M.
In her recent essay in the New York Times (January 17, 2017), "Why '1984' is a 2017 Must-Read," Michiko Kakutani writes: 

The dystopia described in George Orwell’s nearly 70-year-old novel “1984” suddenly feels all too familiar. A world in which Big Brother (or maybe the National Security Agency) is always listening in, and high-tech devices can eavesdrop in people’s homes. (Hey, Alexa, what’s up?) A world of endless war, where fear and hate are drummed up against foreigners, and movies show boatloads of refugees dying at sea. A world in which the government insists that reality is not “something objective, external, existing in its own right” — but rather, “whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.”

 Please join H-WPL Readers for a lively and timely discussion of this classic  novel.

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Henna House, by Nomi Eve

DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: 
Monday, April 24, 2017, at 2:00 P.M.
 Eve (The Family Orchard) re-creates the life of the Yemenite Jewish community from 1920 through the group's immigration to Israel in 1950. At the age of five, Adela Damari is terrified by the Confiscator, an agent of the local imam, whose job it is to remove orphaned Jewish children from their community and place them with Muslim families. To protect Adela, her ailing parents madly hunt for a Jewish male to become her betrothed. When her aunt, uncle, and cousin arrive in the village, Adela becomes entranced by the henna designs created by her aunt, learns her craft, and also bonds with her female cousin, Hani. As all of Adela's betrothals fail and drought strikes the village, the family flees to the seaport city of Aden. Finally, in 1950 the Israelis airlift the entire Yemenite community to Israel where they find safety, but not necessarily acceptance.... Eve opens a window on a community, little known in the Western world, whose rituals and traditions were maintained for over 2,000 years. Her appealing portrait of young men and women moving from an ancient life into modernity will captivate readers who enjoy historical fiction. (Library Journal)

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READ A REVIEW FROM THE JEWISH BOOK COUNCIL


WEBSITE ON THE TRADITION OF HENNA

MILLER'S VALLEY, BY ANNA QUINDLEN

Book discussion date and time:
Monday, March 13, 2017, at 2:00 P.M.


Filled with the remarkable insight that is the hallmark of Anna Quindlen’s beloved bestsellers, this extraordinary novel is about a woman coming of age as she unearths surprising secrets about her family, and unexpected truths about herself.
“No one ever leaves the town where they grew up, not really, even if they go,” says Mimi Miller as she tells the story of her life, from the 1960s to the present, in a small American town on the verge of change. The Miller family has lived and farmed in Miller’s Valley for generations, but Mimi sees change looming at the corners of her community and within the walls of her home. As she grows up and discovers sex, love, and ambition, what has seemed bound together begins to drift apart: Mimi’s mother from her reclusive sister, Ruth; her damaged brother Tommy from his family and son; and the community itself, menaced by the lingering presence of government officials. As Mimi looks back on the past, she comes to understand that her family and her town itself may always have been destined to disappear.
Anna Quindlen’s stunning new novel is a masterly study of family, memory, loss, and, ultimately, discovery and finding home. Miller’s Valley reminds us that the place where you grew up can disappear, and the people in it too, but all will live on in your heart forever (annaquindlen.net)

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THE WONDER, BY EMMA DONOGHUE

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: 

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13th, 2017, AT 2:00 P.M.

A village in 1850s Ireland is mystified by what appears to be a miracle--a little girl seems to be thriving after months without food. An English nurse and an international journalist try to get to the root of why the child may actually be the victim of murder in this psychological thriller. (NovelistPlus)

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/* Starred Review */ An English nurse confronts Irish history and entrenched prejudices—some of them hers—in this stinging latest from Donoghue  (Frog Music, 2014, etc.).Lib Wright has survived the Crimean War and a failed marriage by the time she's summoned to central Ireland to watch over 11-year-old Anna O'Donnell, whose parents claim she has eaten no food in four months. The girl's physician, Dr. McBrearty, and a committee of local bigwigs have hired Lib and a nun to provide round-the-clock surveillance. Lib quickly realizes that Dr. McBrearty, at least, is weirdly anxious to prove the girl's fast is no hoax, even if he deplores loose talk of a miracle. An advocate of the scientific nursing principles preached by Florence Nightingale, Lib has nothing but contempt for such an absurd idea. Yet she is charmed by Anna, as whip-smart as she is pious, and alarmed when the girl's surprisingly robust health begins to falter shortly after the nurses' watch begins. Clearly someone has been feeding Anna until now, but it's also clear she believes she has eaten nothing. Lib's solution of this riddle says nothing good about provincial Irish society in the mid-19th century, seen through her eyes as sexist, abusive, and riddled with ridiculous superstitions. Irish Times correspondent William Byrne counters with a scathing analysis of the recent potato famine, angrily instructing this blinkered Englishwoman in her nation's culpability for mass starvation as well as the centuries of repression that have made the Irish a defensive, backward people. Nonetheless, nothing can excuse the wall of denial Lib slams into as she desperately tries to get Anna's parents and the committee even to acknowledge how sick the child is. The story's resolution seems like pure wish fulfillment, but vivid, tender scenes between Lib and Anna, coupled with the pleasing romance that springs up between feisty Lib and the appreciative Byrne, will incline most readers to grant Donoghue  her tentative happy ending. Her contemporary thriller Room (2010) made the author an international bestseller, but this gripping tale offers a welcome reminder that her historical fiction is equally fine.(Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2016)