Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library Readers Group

Monday, May 9, 2011

The Tortilla Curtain, by T.C. Boyle

Monday, June 6, 1 p.m.

Leader: Edna Ritzenberg

Reserve your copy of The Tortilla Curtain on ALIScat

Reviews from the Novelist database:

BookList:

PEN/Faulkner award winner and author of various novels, including The Road to Wellville (1993), Boyle avoids any potential pitfall of his prior achievement by veering in another direction and seriously examining social and political issues in this timely novel. He establishes an obvious dichotomy by interweaving the scrapping, makeshift, in-the-present lives of illegal aliens Candido and America Rincon with the politically correct, suburban, plan-for-the-future existence of wealthy Americans Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher. The Rincons' lives, though full of fear and hardship, contain far more passion and endurance than the Mossbachers' mundane and materialistic lifestyles. An initial, pivotal car accident briefly unites, and ultimately separates, Delaney and Candido, provoking question after question concerning immigration, unemployment, discrimination, and social responsibility. Surprisingly, Boyle manages to address these issues in a nonjudgmental fashion, depicting the vast inequity in these parallel existences. This highly engaging story subtly plays on our consciences, forcing us to form, confirm, or dispute social, political, and moral viewpoints. This is a profound and tragic tale, one that exposes not only a failed American Dream, but a failing America. ((Reviewed June 1 & 15, 1995)) -- Janet St. John

Magill Book Review:

Magill Book Review: Middle-aged Candido Rincon and his pregnant, seventeen-year-old wife, America, illegally enter the United States because of the lack of work in Mexico, but adversity constantly hinders them. Rincon is struck by a car, beaten and robbed, and accidentally starts a brush fire that consumes their savings. America grows increasingly desperate and gives birth to their daughter in a makeshift hut. Living high above the Rincons in a shiny new development are Delaney Mossbacher, a nature writer, and his second wife, Kyra, a real-estate agent. Kyra cares only for property values, making sales, her young son, and her pets. After her two dogs are taken off by coyotes, her cat disappears in the fire, and she has some tense encounters with Mexicans, Kyra wants a wall erected to protect Arroyo Blanco. Delaney is at first outraged at the racist motives of his wife and neighbors, but events soon also turn him against the invaders from the south. T. Coraghessan Boyle explores similar conflicts between cultures in such earlier novels as Water Music (1982), World's End (1987), and East is East (1990), but The Tortilla Curtain is not as stylish, satirical, or insightful as Boyle's previous work. Taking John Steinbeck's treatment of economic nomads in The Grapes of Wrath (1939) as his model, Boyle reveals his compassion for the Rincons, but his ironic view of smug suburbanites is itself smug. Still, Boyle is too good a writer to fail completely. The scenes of man in conflict with nature, during the fire and a subsequent mudslide, are powerful. As he shows in World's End in particular, Boyle is a master at exploring man's tenuous hold on the civilization he has constructed in the face of ruthless natural forces. -- Essay by Michael Adams.

Publishers Weekly:

Boyle's latest concerns two couples in Southern California--one a pair of wealthy suburbanites, the other illegal immigrants from Mexico. (Sept.)

Library Journal:

Go tell it in the valley: Boyle's newest novel is, according to the publicist, "a timely, provocative account" of immigration in central California. With a 100,000-copy first printing and a 25-city tour, you know the publisher expects this book to be big.

Kirkus:

The inestimably gifted Boyle (The Road to Wellville, 1993, etc.) puts on a preacher's gown and mounts the pulpit to proclaim a hellfire sermon against bigotry and greed--in this rather wan updating of The Grapes of Wrath. If Boyle is to be believed, Los Angeles County has gradually evolved into a kind of minimum-security prison, with the prosperous Anglos living in fear of their lives behind the walls of their suburban security compounds. Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher moved as far from the city as they could, and settled in a tastefully "authentic" tract development just above Topanga Canyon. Au courant to a fault, Kyra brings home the bacon as a hot-shot real estate agent, while Delaney stands in as Mr. Mom--cooking their lowfat meals, seeing after their pets and their son, and writing a monthly column for a nature magazine. Below them, in the Canyon itself, Candido and America Ricon have crossed the Mexican border illegally and seek refuge of their own in the makeshift camp they've erected. Candido meets Delaney at the beginning of the story when Delaney runs him down with his car, and this pretty much establishes the tone of their relations throughout. Candido, as hapless as his namesake in Voltaire, wants only to work and look after his pregnant wife, but he's thwarted on every side by an exasperated white society with no room for him. Implausible circumstances keep bringing Delaney and Candido back to each other, and the tension that builds between them becomes an image of the ferocity that smolders within the city around them--exploding in an apocalyptic climax that combines a brushfire and a riot, with an earthquake thrown in for good measure. A morality play too obvious to be swallowed whole: Boyle's first real lemon so far. (Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 1995) Further information:

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Great House by Nicole Krauss

Monday, May 9 1 p.m.
Leader: Candace Plotsker-Herman

Reserve your copy of Great House by Nicole Krauss on ALIScat

Download the HW Readers' Packet, prepared by the Library Staff

BookList:: /* Starred Review */ Krauss, in her follow-up to the best-selling History of Love (2005), tells her story entirely through the voices of her characters. All of the elements of literary fiction are conveyed through the monologues of five people: a writer from New York, an angry Jewish father from Jerusalem, an American woman studying in Oxford, the baffled husband of a Holocaust refugee, and an éminence grise who wraps things up—but not too tightly. Readers follow the trail, set forth in straightforward narrative and flashbacks, of an immense desk, which casts its shadow (sometimes literally) over the lives of all five characters. The plot is intricate and rewards careful reading. Krauss’ masterful rendition of character is breathtaking, compelling, and reminiscent of ZZ Packer at her very best. In addition, the points of view of the various narrators, taken as a whole, present a broad picture of plot and motivation. Thematically strong, Great House examines the daily survival of Jews and demonstrates the destructiveness of lies and secrets within families. This tour de force of fiction writing will deeply satisfy fans of the author’s first two books and bring her legions more. -- Loughran, Ellen (Reviewed 09-01-2010) (Booklist, vol 107, number 1, p40)
Publishers Weekly:: /* Starred Review */ This stunning work showcases Krauss's consistent talent. The novel consists of four stories divided among eight chapters, all touching on themes of loss and recovery, and anchored to a massive writing desk that resurfaces among numerous households, much to the bewilderment and existential tension of those in its orbit, among them a lonely American novelist clinging to the memory of a poet who has mysteriously vanished in Chile, an old man in Israel facing the imminent death of his wife of 51 years, and an esteemed antiques dealer tracking down the things stolen from his father by the Nazis. Much like in Krauss's The History of Love, the sharply etched characters seem at first arbitrarily linked across time and space, but Krauss pulls together the disparate elements, settings, characters, and fragile connective tissue to form a formidable and haunting mosaic of loss and profound sorrow. (Oct.) --Staff (Reviewed August 9, 2010) (Publishers Weekly, vol 257, issue 31, p)
Library Journal:: In this latest from Krauss (The History of Love ), a huge old desk with many drawers becomes the symbol of love and loss for a host of characters from different countries and time periods. There is the New York woman who has written all her novels at the desk, which she was keeping for a Chilean poet who has since disappeared. Then there are the poet's daughter, who comes back years later to claim the desk; the antiques dealer who tracks down meaningful items from people's pasts; the brother and sister who live isolated in a Jerusalem home filled with other people's furniture; the elderly couple in England who live with the desk and a horrible secret; and the dictatorial father who desperately tries to understand his creative son. VERDICT While each character's story is engrossing, the connection among them is at times impossible to follow. Still, Krauss deals with heavyweight themes—the Holocaust, the different ways people cope with suffering, the special cruelty of fathers, the costs of creativity—with meditative, insightful prose that makes for an intense and memorable reading experience. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/10.]— Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Law Lib., Malibu, CA --Joy Humphrey (Reviewed August 1, 2010) (Library Journal, vol 135, issue 13, p69)
Kirkus:: A many-drawered writing desk resonates powerfully but for different reasons with the various characters in this novel about loss and retrieval from Krauss (The History of Love, 2005, etc.).This brain-stretching novel travels back and forth across years and continents. In 1972 New York, a young novelist named Nadia spends one magical evening with a Chilean poet, Daniel, who then returns to Chile. Daniel leaves in her care a desk he claims belonged to Federico Garcia Lorca. Shortly afterward, he dies at the hands of Pinochet's secret police. In 1999 a young woman named Leah announces to Nadia that she is Daniel's daughter and wants his desk returned. The reclusive Nadia lets Leah, who resembles Daniel, ship the desk to her home in Jerusalem but is emotionally devastated afterward—the desk represents her writing life. Her sense of herself as a woman and a writer deeply shaken, she decides to visit Jerusalem. Meanwhile in Jerusalem, a retired lawyer yearns to connect to his son Dovik, who has left his own legal career in England to move in with his father after his mother's funeral. Barely speaking, Dovik remains a frustrating mystery to his father. Back in 1970 in London, an Oxford professor finds his jealousy pricked when his wife Lotte, a writer and Holocaust survivor, gives her writing desk to the young poet Daniel, an admirer of her work. Only later, learning that Lotte gave up a baby for adoption before she married, does he realize that Daniel became a surrogate for her lost son. In 1998 in London, Leah is living with her brother when she goes to New York in search of the desk. While the disparate characters do not necessarily interact, their choices affect one another over the course of decades.Brainy and often lyrically expressive, but also elusive and sometimes infuriatingly coy; Krauss is an acquired taste.(Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2010)

Further information:

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine

Monday, March 7, 2011 1 p.m.

Discussion Leader: Ellen Getreu

Like Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, but modern! With middle aged and elderly women! Betty Weissmann is 75 when her husband decides that they have irreconcilable difference and seeks solace in the arms of another woman. Not only is Betty abandoned, but she is also kicked out of her beautiful apartment "until the divorce settlement comes through". Stunned, grieving, she retreats with her daughters (sensible Annie and emotional Miranda) to a cottage by the ocean, and that's where the adventure really begins!

Reserve your copy of The Three Weissmanns of Westport on ALIScat.org

Readers Packet for The Three Weissmanns of Westport - prepared by the Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library Staff

Book Reviews from the NovelistPlus database

BookList:: It may be hard to envision a novel of manners set in our ill-mannered times, but accomplished author Schine has captured the essence of Sense and Sensibility and dropped it into today’s Manhattan and Westport. The Weissmanns, elderly mother and two mature daughters driven to penury by divorce and career reversals, must rely on the beneficence of Cousin Lou for the shabby roof over their heads. Annie, still modestly employed as a librarian, has both salary and an apartment to sublet, so it falls to her to provide the income for the three. Alas, the other two spend money as if it were still the old days. Mother Betty affects widowhood as it is easier than the pending divorce. Sister Miranda finds inappropriate love. The wide-ranging cast of characters—fools, scoundrels, poseurs, the good-hearted, and secret heroes—provides interesting interplay.Wild coincidences abound, so that Manhattan, Westport, and Palm Springs are but mere extensions of the classic drawing room. There is sadness but also love in this thoroughly enjoyable, finely crafted modern novel. -- Hoover, Danise (Reviewed 01-01-2010) (Booklist, vol 106, number 9, p47)
Publishers Weekly:: A geriatric stepfather falls in love with a scheming woman half his age in Schine's Sense and Sensibility –flecked and compulsively readable follow-up to The New Yorkers . Betty Weissman is 75 when Joseph, her husband of nearly 50 years, announces he's divorcing her. Soon, Betty moves out of their grand Central Park West apartment and Joseph's conniving girlfriend, Felicity, moves in. Betty lands in a rundown Westport, Conn., beach cottage, but things quickly get more complicated when Betty's daughters run into their own problems. Literary agent Miranda is sued into bankruptcy after it's revealed that some of her authors made up their lurid memoirs, and Annie, drowning in debt, can no longer afford her apartment. Once they relocate to Westport, both girls fall in love—Annie rather awkwardly with the brother of her stepfather's paramour, and Miranda with a younger actor who has a young son. An Austen-esque mischief hovers over these romantic relationships as the three women figure out how to survive and thrive. It's a smart crowd pleaser with lovably flawed leads and the best tearjerker finale you're likely to read this year. (Feb.) --Staff (Reviewed December 21, 2009) (Publishers Weekly, vol 256, issue 51, p36)
Library Journal:: Drawing on Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility , Schine (The New Yorkers ) has written a witty update in which a late-life divorce exiles Betty Weissmann and her adult daughters, Annie and Miranda, from a luxurious life in New York to a shabby beach cottage in Westport, CT. Annie is the serious daughter and Miranda the drama queen. Both women find unexpected love, while Betty, a sweet, frivolous spendthrift, struggles with her newly impoverished state. What comfort the Weissmanns enjoy is owing to the generosity of Cousin Lou, a Holocaust survivor and real-estate mogul, whose goal in life is to rescue everyone, whether or not rescue is needed. While beautifully preserving the essence of the plot, Schine skillfully manages to parallel the original novel in clever 21st-century ways—the trip to London becomes a holiday in Palm Springs; the scoundrel Willoughby becomes a wannabe actor. VERDICT Austen lovers and those who enjoyed updates like Paula Marantz Cohen's Jane Austen in Boca and Jane Austen in Scarsdale should appreciate this novel. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/09.]—Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS --Andrea Kempf (Reviewed January 15, 2010) (Library Journal, vol 135, issue 1, p93)
Kirkus:: Already recognized for her own witty romantic comedies of manners, Schine (The New Yorkers, 2008, etc.) joins the onslaught of Austen imitators.Upper-middle-class, mostly Jewish New Yorkers take the place of British gentry in this Sense and Sensibility riff. After 48 years of marriage, 78-year-old Joseph Weissman leaves his 75-year-old wife Betty for Felicity Barrow, a younger woman with whom he works. Although Josie (as his stepdaughters call him) repeatedly swears he wants to be generous to Betty, Felicity manipulates him into closing Betty's credit-card accounts and forcing her out of the Weissmans' Upper West Side apartment she herself paid for decades ago. Fortunately, kindly Cousin Lou lends Betty his abandoned cottage in Westport, Conn., and Betty's daughters, outraged on their mother's behalf although they don't stop loving Josie, move in with her. Romantic, never married but often in love, 49-year-old Miranda is in dire financial straits herself, as scandals concerning the memoirists she represents threaten to bankrupt her literary agency. Sensible Annie, briefly married and long divorced, has successfully raised two sons while working at a privately endowed library. Now living in stoic loneliness, she has begun to fall in love with famous author Frederick Barrow, who happens to be Felicity's brother and whose grown offspring jealously guard his affections. In Westport, Annie is hurt when Frederick practically ignores her at a gathering at Cousin Lou's. Meanwhile, Miranda has an affair with the handsome young actor next door and falls seriously in love with his two-year-old son. Feisty Betty begins to refer to herself as a widow. In true Austen fashion, love and money conquer all, although Schine adds some modern sorrow and a slightly off-putting disdain for her male characters, who range from narcissistically foolish to, in what passes for the romantic hero, pragmatic and unoffending. Infectious fun, but the tweaked version never quite lives up to the original. (Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2009)

Further Reading:

Monday, January 10, 2011

The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald

Monday, February 7, 2011 1 p.m.
Discussion leader: Candace Plotsker-Herman

In the mid-twentieth century in a home economics program at a prominent university, real babies are being used to teach mothering skills to young women. For a young man raised in these unlikely circumstances, finding real love and learning to trust will prove to be the work of a lifetime. From his earliest days as a "practice baby" through his adult adventures in 1960s New York City, Disney's Burbank studios, and the delirious world of the Beatles' London, Henry House remains handsome, charming, universally adored--and never entirely accessible to the many women he conquers but can never entirely trust.

Reserve your copy of The Irresistible Henry House on ALIScat

Download the Readers' Packet, prepared by the Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library staff

Reviews from the NovelistPlus database:

BookList:: In 1946 Martha Gaines ran the practice house—a home-economics program for teaching young women how to be mothers—at Wilton College. Many babies passed through the house, but only Henry captured Martha’s heart, and she decided to keep Henry to raise as her own. At the tender age of 10, Henry finds out who his real mother is, and his life takes a turn from which he can’t recover. Hating Martha for lying to him, Henry begins planning his escape from the practice house and ultimately from Martha. What follows is a fascinating chronicle of his wandering life—from a boarding school for troubled teens to a cramped apartment with his birth mother in New York, the artists’ bull pen at Disney studios, the streets of London, and finally back home to Wilton College, where he can make peace with what Martha did to him so many years ago. Grunwald has created a wonderfully well-written story about a charming, lovable man who must learn to trust and love the women in his life. -- Kubisz, Carolyn (Reviewed 02-01-2010) (Booklist, vol 106, number 11, p26)
Publishers Weekly:: /* Starred Review */ Like T.S. Garp, Forrest Gump or Benjamin Button, Henry House, the hero of Grunwald’s imaginative take on a little known aspect of American academic life, has an unusual upbringing. In 1946, orphaned baby Henry is brought to all-girl’s Wilton College as part of its home economics program to give young women hands-on instruction in child-rearing (such programs really existed). Henry ends up staying on at the practice house and growing up under the care of its outwardly stern but inwardly loving program director, Martha Gaines. As a protest against his unusual situation, Henry refuses to speak and is packed off to a special school in Connecticut, where his talents as an artist and future lover of women bloom. After he drops out of school, Henry finds work as an animator, working on Mary Poppins , then on the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine . With cameos by Dr. Benjamin Spock, Walt Disney and John Lennon, and locations ranging from a peaceful college campus to swinging 1960s London, Grunwald nails the era just as she ingeniously uses Henry and the women in his life to illuminate the heady rush of sexual freedom (and confusion) that signified mid-century life. (Mar.) --Staff (Reviewed October 5, 2009) (Publishers Weekly, vol 256, issue 40, p3)
Library Journal:: For several decades beginning in the 1920s, some college home economic departments had practice houses, complete with practice babies for students to learn scientific principles of child and home care. The babies were orphans who spent a year tended by students before being adopted. Grunwald explores what life might have been like for one such baby. Henry House, the tenth Wilton College practice baby, earns his title of irresistible by learning early how to please eight different mothers. He's a master at keeping women engaged while never showing a preference. He learns how to imitate but not to create, a skill that helps him become a competent cartoon illustrator but not a true cartoonist. Not until he comes close to losing the one friend who knows him best does he begin to break the patterns learned as a baby. VERDICT This welcome variation of coming-of-age tales shares with Grunwald's previous novels (Whatever Makes You Happy; Summer ) a compelling web of characters and emotions that will please will please the author's fans and readers interested in novels with emotional depth. [Library marketing; ebook available 3/10: ISBN .]—Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC --Jan Blodgett (Reviewed November 15, 2009) (Library Journal, vol 134, issue 19, p60)
Kirkus:: /* Starred Review */ A "practice baby" grows up to be the most indifferent guy, in this multilayered new novel from Grunwald (Whatever Makes You Happy, 2005, etc.).As the baby boom begins in 1946, fictional Wilton College in Pennsylvania works hard to prepare young women for that all important MRS. degree. It even provides a home economics "practice house," where coeds can hone their mother craft by caring for an infant on loan from the local orphanage. Each foundling is surnamed House by decree of Wilton's middle-aged, widowed and childless doyenne of domestic science, Martha Gaines. Three-month-old Henry, the current rental baby, is diapered, bathed and bottle-fed by alternating shifts of college students under Martha's hypercritical supervision. Though she's firmly wedded to the parenting wisdom of that era (e.g., babies must be trained, not indulged), Martha finds long-dormant maternal yearnings awakened by winsome Henry. Through guile and well-placed blackmail she adopts him, and he remains at Wilton under the care of successive practice mothers. Manipulating multiple moms teaches Henry to view women as interchangeable pushovers. Female demands—especially Martha's—repel him. A talented artist, Henry finds a haven with his beatnik art teachers in boarding school, until the birth of their child displaces him. His birth mother Betty, now a Manhattan career girl, offers temporary asylum from Martha, then unceremoniously abandons him. He finds work in Hollywood as a Disney animator, painting penguins for Mary Poppins (another story about a mother substitute). Then he moves on to London at the height of the Swinging Sixties to help animate the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. Henry is both irresistible and impervious to women other than his childhood friend Mary Jane, adept at the approach-avoidance game that is his Achilles' heel. Then, one day Henry meets his narcissistic match in another former practice baby. The near-omniscient narration perfectly suits this story, which often reads like a rueful but wry case study of nurture as nightmare. (Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2010)

Monday, December 13, 2010

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

January 10, 2011 1 p.m.

Discussion Leader: Edna Ritzenberg

Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired) leads a quiet life in the village of St. Mary, England, until his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But will their relationship survive in a society that considers Ali a foreigner?

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Readers' Packet for Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Reviews from the NoveListPlus database:

BookList:

Change is threatening the little world of Edgecombe St. Mary. Lord Dagenham is about to sell off part of his ancestral estate to developers, and Pakistanis have taken over the village shop. Major Ernest Pettigrew is definitely old school, but he has been lonely since his wife died, and though he is is prey to various unattached ladies it is with shopkeeper Mrs. Ali that he forms a bond, nourished by their mutual interest in literature. Meanwhile, his ambitious son Roger comes to town with a sleek American girlfriend and starts renovating a nearby cottage. And the village ladies are busy hatching plans for the annual Golf Club dance, for which this year’s theme is “An Evening at the Mughal Court.” There is a great deal going on in these pages—sharply observed domestic comedy, late-life romance, culture clash, a dash of P. G. Wodehouse, and a pinch of religious fundamentalism. First novelist Simonson handles it all with great aplomb, and her Major, with his keen sense of both honor and absurdity, is the perfect lens through which to view contemporary England. -- Quinn, Mary Ellen (Reviewed 02-15-2010) (Booklist, vol 106, number 12, p37)

Publishers Weekly:

In her charming debut novel, Simonson tells the tale of Maj. Ernest Pettigrew, an honor-bound Englishman and widower, and the very embodiment of duty and pride. As the novel opens, the major is mourning the loss of his younger brother, Bertie, and attempting to get his hands on Bertie's antique Churchill shotgun—part of a set that the boys' father split between them, but which Bertie's widow doesn't want to hand over. While the major is eager to reunite the pair for tradition's sake, his son, Roger, has plans to sell the heirloom set to a collector for a tidy sum. As he frets over the guns, the major's friendship with Jasmina Ali—the Pakistani widow of the local food shop owner—takes a turn unexpected by the major (but not by readers). The author's dense, descriptive prose wraps around the reader like a comforting cloak, eventually taking on true page-turner urgency as Simonson nudges the major and Jasmina further along and dangles possibilities about the fate of the major's beloved firearms. This is a vastly enjoyable traipse through the English countryside and the long-held traditions of the British aristocracy. (Mar.) --Staff (Reviewed January 4, 2010) (Publishers Weekly, vol 257, issue 1, p1)

Library Journal:

/* Starred Review */ Sixty-eight-year-old Maj. Ernest Pettigrew has settled into a genteel life of quiet retirement in his beloved village of Edgecombe St. Mary. Refined, gentlemanly, unwaveringly proper in his sense of right vs. wrong, and bemused by most things modern, he has little interest in cavalier relationship mores, the Internet, and crass developments and is gently smitten by the widowed Mrs. Ali, the lovely Pakistani owner of the local shop where he buys his tea. After the unsettling death of his brother, Bertie, the Major finds his careful efforts to court Mrs. Ali (who shares his love of literature) constantly nudged off-course by his callow son, Roger; a handful of socialite ladies planning a dinner/dance at the Major's club; and the not-so-subtle racist attitudes his interest in Mrs. Ali engender. VERDICT This irresistibly delightful, thoughtful, and utterly charming and surprising novel reads like the work of a seasoned pro. In fact, it is Simonson's debut. One cannot wait to see what she does next. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/09.]—Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI --Beth E. Andersen (Reviewed December 15, 2009) (Library Journal, vol 134, issue 20, p101)

Kirkus:

Set-in-his-ways retired British officer tentatively courts charming local widow of Pakistani descent.Shortly after being informed that his younger brother Bertie has suddenly passed away from a coronary, Maj. Ernest Pettigrew answers his door to find Mrs. Ali, proprietress of his village food shop. She's on an errand, but when she steps in to help the somewhat older man during a vulnerable moment, something registers; then they bond over a shared love of Kipling and the loss of their beloved spouses. Their friendship grows slowly, with the two well aware of their very different lives. Though born in England, Mrs. Ali is a member of the Pakistani immigrant community and is being pressured by her surly, religious nephew Abdul Wahid to sign over her business to him. The major belongs to a non-integrated golf club in their village and is girding himself for a messy battle with his sister-in-law Marjorie over a valuable hunting rifle that should rightfully have gone to him after Bertie's death. He also must contend with his grown son Roger, a callow, materialistic Londoner who appears in the village with a leggy American girlfriend and plans to purchase a weekend cottage for reasons that seem more complex than mere family unity. Add to that a single mum with a small boy who bears a striking resemblance to Abdul Wahid, and you have enough distractions to keep the mature sweethearts from taking it to the next level. But the major rallies and asks Mrs. Ali to accompany him to the annual club dance, which happens to have an ill-advised "Indian" theme. The event begins magically but ends disastrously, with the besotted major fearing he has lost his love forever. His only chance at winning her back is to commit to a bold sacrifice without any guarantees it will actually work. Unexpectedly entertaining, with a stiff-upper-lip hero who transcends stereotype, this good-hearted debut doesn't shy away from modern cultural and religious issues, even though they ultimately prove immaterial. (Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2009) More information:

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Eva Moves the Furniture by Margot LIvesey

Monday, December 13, 1 p.m.
Discussion Leader: Ellen Getreu

Her father and aunt lovingly raise Eva McEwen, whose
mother has died in childbirth. Eva has two ghosts, a girl
and a woman, whom she calls “the companions” that only
she can see. Though the “companions” are there more for
her protection than to cause harm, they also seem to be
able to manipulate a variety of events in her life.

Reserve your copy of Eva Moves the Furniture by Margot Livesey on ALIScat

Download the Readers' Packet for Eva Moves the Furniture (requires Adobe Reader software)

Reviews from the NovelistPlus database:

BookList:: Eva McEwen is the engaging central character in Livesey’s newest novel, set in Scotland in the early 1900s. Eva draws her first breath as her mother’s life ebbs away under the strain of a laborious birth. Raised by her father and the practical Aunt Lily, Eva grows to be quite a respectable woman, but throughout her life she keeps a closely guarded secret about the “companions” who come and go in her life at their leisure. These specters most commonly take the form of a woman and a young girl, and they can be helpful as well as mischievous, often underhandedly manipulating events in Eva’s life. Eva’s undaunted tolerance of these apparitions and their activities is tinged with a subtle humor, but with the added melancholic flavor of a lonely girl who cannot be fearful of entities whose realm is also home to her departed mother. An enjoyable read that explores the esoteric essence of life, death, and undying love. (Reviewed July 1, 2001) -- Elsa Gaztambide
Publishers Weekly:: /* Starred Review */ After Criminals and The Missing World , it should be no surprise that the immensely talented Livesey continues to juxtapose strange events with mundane daily activities, sending a jolt through her ordinary characters and settings. The wonder is that she can draw readers into her world so gently that the barriers between reality and the fantastic quickly fall. The first time the narrator Eva McEwen sees her "companions" she is six, and living near the Scottish town of Troon with her middle-aged father and her aunt, who came to raise Eva after her mother died in childbed. Though much loved, Eva is lonely, and when a woman who "shone as if she had been dipped in silver" and a young girl with long braids and freckles appear one afternoon in the garden, she is at first unaware that they are not corporeal. The companions, as she comes to call them, are not visible to others, however, and their purpose in her life seems unclear. Twice they save her from fatal harm; twice they destroy a romance; often they are comforting; sometimes they signal their presence by moving furniture. Eva works as a nurse in a Glasgow infirmary during WWII, but the burden of her secret keeps her from achieving intimacy with anyone. When she does confide in a man she loves, a brilliant surgeon, heartbreak ensues. She seeks solace in her mother's native village of Glenaird, where she marries and has a daughter. But in a poignant denouement, the significance of the companions is made clear. With remarkable control, Livesey presents the companions in matter-of-fact detail, eschewing frissons of horror and providing a lucid explanation of their presence. Her restraint and delicacy, and the reader's identification with the appealing Eva, result in a haunting drama. Agent, Amanda Urban. (Sept.) Forecast: An author tour and strong word of mouth should spark this novel's sales. Every mother who yearns to protect her child will relate to Eva and react emotionally to Livesey's moving story. --Staff (Reviewed July 30, 2001) (Publishers Weekly, vol 248, issue 31, p57)
Library Journal:: (The following is a combined review for TRYST; POLLY'S GHOST; and EVA MOVES THE FURNITURE) The ghost story as romance has no better example than (o.p.), in which Hilary, a British soldier killed in battle, falls in love with Sabrina, the young bookish woman who comes to live in his house with her professor father and spinster aunt. Get out your hankies when you near the end. The mainstreaming of ghost stories can further be seen in the novels of several contemporary writers, leading perhaps to a new subgenre, the domestic ghost story. is the story of Polly Baymiller's attempt—even after her death from giving birth to her seventh child, Tip—to cherish and comfort him in the midst of loneliness, sorrow, and the pains of everyday life. Another mother who yearns to be part of her child's life from beyond the grave is found in . Eva McEwen first sees the woman and child ("the companions") when she is a child and well before she realizes that no one else can see them. The role that these two (ghosts?) play in Eva's life varies between a benevolent protectiveness and occasional hurtfulness. Livesey has many cards up her sleeve, and it's not until the very end that the reader (and Eva) understands what part the pair play in Eva's life. --Nancy Pearl (Reviewed October 15, 2002) (Library Journal, vol 127, issue 17, p120)
Kirkus:: /* Starred Review */ A haunting and haunted fourth novel from Livesey (The Missing World, 2000, etc.), this about a woman whose life is accompanied by invisible "companions" who shape her destiny in ways both helpful and harmful.Narrator Eva McEwen's mother Barbara dies on the day of Eva's birth in 1920. When she's six, playing outside her home in the Scottish lowlands, Eva meets a silver-haired woman and a freckled girl she soon realizes can't be seen by others. Raised by her elderly father and his sister Lily (the first in a series of characters rendered with extraordinary subtlety and depth), the lonely girl takes comfort from her invisible friends but also realizes that "the presence of the companions in my life was like a hidden deformity: ugly, mysterious, and incomprehensible." The figures rescue her from menacing gypsies, but they also fling furniture around her room and get her fired from her first job. When Eva becomes a nurse in Glasgow during WWII and falls in love with plastic surgeon Samuel Rosenblum, the companions destroy her chance to marry him. Or do they? Livesey's precisely calibrated narrative, characteristically cognizant of human complexities and contradictions, reminds us that we are both subject to forces beyond our control and responsible for our lives. It may be that Eva chose to let Samuel go, though she grieves for him even after she marries kind schoolmaster Matthew and bears a daughter, Ruth. Guilt over leaving her father and Aunt Lily further shadows her life, and her mother Barbara's absence remains an aching wound. The radiant yet unsettling climax suggests that Barbara also had companions, and that Ruth will make her own choice about whether she needs this otherworldly support. This isn't a ghost story, but rather a searching examination of how we deal with our ghosts. Livesey's scrupulous prose, lyrical yet classically exact, is the perfect vehicle to convey her multilayered insights.Pitiless, deeply moving, and terrifying: another flawless work from an uncompromising artist. (Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2001)

Margot Livesey talks about her writing, focusing on her 2009 book The House on Fortune Street.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Discussion leader: Edna Ritzenberg
Monday, November 15, 2 p.m. (please note time change)

Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a novice, pious nun leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor, Thomas Stone. They meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies giving birth to twin boys: Shiva and Marion.

Reserve your copy of Cutting for Stone on ALIScat.org

Reviews from the NoveList Plus database:

Publishers Weekly:
: /* Starred Review */ Lauded for his sensitive memoir (My Own Country ) about his time as a doctor in eastern Tennessee at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s, Verghese turns his formidable talents to fiction, mining his own life and experiences in a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations. Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a devout young nun, leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the arduous sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor bound for Ethiopia, Thomas Stone, who becomes a key player in her destiny when they meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies birthing twin boys: Shiva and Marion, the latter narrating his own and his brother’s long, dramatic, biblical story set against the backdrop of political turmoil in Ethiopia, the life of the hospital compound in which they grow up and the love story of their adopted parents, both doctors at Missing. The boys become doctors as well and Verghese’s weaving of the practice of medicine into the narrative is fascinating even as the story bobs and weaves with the power and coincidences of the best 19th-century novel. (Feb.) --Staff (Reviewed October 27, 2008) (Publishers Weekly, vol 255, issue 43, p32)


Library Journal:: Focusing on the world of medicine, this epic first novel by well-known doctor/author Verghese (My Own Country ) follows a man on a mythic quest to find his father. It begins with the dramatic birth of twins slightly joined at the skull, their father serving as surgeon and their mother dying on the table. The horrorstruck father vanishes, and the now separated boys are raised by two Indian doctors living on the grounds of a mission hospital in early 1950s Ethiopia. The boys both gravitate toward medical practice, with Marion the more studious one and Shiva a moody genius and loner. Also living on the hospital grounds is Genet, daughter of one of the maids, who grows up to be a beautiful and mysterious young woman and a source of ruinous competition between the brothers. After Marion is forced to flee the country for political reasons, he begins his medical residency at a poor hospital in New York City, and the past catches up with him. The medical background is fascinating as the author delves into fairly technical areas of human anatomy and surgical procedure. This novel succeeds on many levels and is recommended for all collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/08.]—Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta --Jim Coan (Reviewed January 15, 2009) (Library Journal, vol 134, issue 1, p85)


Kirkus:: There's a mystery, a coming-of-age, abundant melodrama and even more abundant medical lore in this idiosyncratic first novel from a doctor best known for the memoir My Own Country (1994).The nun is struggling to give birth in the hospital. The surgeon (is he also the father?) dithers. The late-arriving OB-GYN takes charge, losing the mother but saving her babies, identical twins. We are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1954. The Indian nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, was a trained nurse who had met the British surgeon Thomas Stone on a sea voyage ministering to passengers dying of typhus. She then served as his assistant for seven years. The emotionally repressed Stone never declared his love for her; had they really done the deed? After the delivery, Stone rejects the babies and leaves Ethiopia. This is good news for Hema (Dr. Hemalatha, the Indian gynecologist), who becomes their surrogate mother and names them Shiva and Marion. When Shiva stops breathing, Dr. Ghosh (another Indian) diagnoses his apnea; again, a medical emergency throws two characters together. Ghosh and Hema marry and make a happy family of four. Marion eventually emerges as narrator. "Where but in medicine," he asks, "might our conjoined, matricidal, patrifugal, twisted fate be explained?" The question is key, revealing Verghese's intent: a family saga in the context of medicine. The ambition is laudable, but too often accounts of operations—a bowel obstruction here, a vasectomy there—overwhelm the narrative. Characterization suffers. The boys' Ethiopian identity goes unexplored. Shiva is an enigma, though it's no surprise he'll have a medical career, like his brother, though far less orthodox. They become estranged over a girl, and eventually Marion leaves for America and an internship in the Bronx (the final, most suspenseful section). Once again a medical emergency defines the characters, though they are not large enough to fill the positively operatic roles Verghese has ordained for them.A bold but flawed debut novel. (Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2008)

Interview with Abraham Verghese (Random House.com)

Cutting for Stone at Barnes and Noble.com

Erica Wagner's NY Times Book Review, 2/6/09