Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr
By Richard Rhodes
Discussion Date:  Monday, March 11, 2013 at 1:00 PM
Discussion Leader: Jane Isaacson Shapiro 
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a remarkable story of science history: how a ravishing film star and an avant-garde composer invented spread-spectrum radio, the technology that made wireless phones, GPS systems, and many other devices possible.

Beginning at a Hollywood dinner table, Hedy's Folly tells a wild story of innovation that culminates in U.S. patent number 2,292,387 for a "secret communication system." Along the way Rhodes weaves together Hollywood’s golden era, the history of Vienna, 1920s Paris, weapons design, music, a tutorial on patent law and a brief treatise on transmission technology. Narrated with the rigor and charisma we've come to expect of Rhodes, it is a remarkable narrative adventure about spread-spectrum radio's genesis and unlikely amateur inventors collaborating to change the world. (randomhouse.com)

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Website for the Hedy Lamarr Foundation

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Monday, February 11, 2013

At 1:00 PM

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Discussion Leader:  Ellen Getreu

On their wedding day, a young couple--Florence, daughter of an Oxford academic and a successful businessman, and Edward, an earnest history student with little experience of women--looks forward to the future while worrying about their upcoming wedding night.

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Booklist Reviews

/*Starred Review*/ In previous novels, McEwan has measured the effect of the cataclysmic moment on personal lives. And he has never shied away from full-tilt exploration of the tensions inherent in human sexuality. These two predilections merge, almost gently, in his new novella, which, despite its short length, is anything but small in its creative concept and the consequent poignancy it arouses in the reader. This achingly beautiful narrative, which seamlessly flows between the points of view of the two primary characters, peers behind closed doors, but never lasciviously, at a young married couple on their honeymoon night. The time is the brink of the 1960s, but the young couple's virginity, and their stiltedness in general and certainly with each other (McEwan makes certain to take several glances backward to fill in their separate biographical and psychological profiles), seems a remnant of Victorian times rather than anticipating the free and easy sexuality of the decade to come. The cataclysmic moment here is simply a case of premature ejaculation during the couple's first lovemaking; and from that incident, which under normal circumstances, with normally accepting and loving individuals, would have been a minor glitch in their marital history, immediately arises a deep misunderstanding that proves disastrous to the marriage. Conventional in construction and realistic in its representation of addled psychology, the novel is ingenious for its limited but deeply resonant focus. ((Reviewed March 15, 2007)) Copyright 2007 Booklist Reviews.

BookPage Reviews

McEwan explores the damage done by things left unsaidIn his last novel, Saturday, Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan confined his narrative to a single day, managing to convey a life—a lifetime even—within those limited boundaries. Always a master of concision, McEwan has pared down the parameters of story even further in his brief but incisive new work, On Chesil Beach. The crucial action in On Chesil Beach takes place within just a few hours on the wedding night of a young English couple in 1962. The year is key, for though chronologically part of the decade, 1962 was, culturally, eons away from the "Swinging Sixties" that would usher in new freedoms and laissez-faire attitudes about sex just a few years later. Newlyweds Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting, not long out of university, are both still virgins on their wedding night, and the overlapping anticipation and anxiety of what they will encounter in the marriage bed provide the drama of the story. They live, we are told, in "a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible." So, as they eat their supper in the room of a Georgian inn on the Dorset coast, just a few hours after their marriage, Edward and Florence each think, but never speak, about what they hope will or will not soon transpire in the adjoining bedroom. For Edward, it promises to be the fulfillment of his long endured abstinence. He loves Florence passionately and without equal, and believes he has been considerate, even noble, in not forcing the physical element of their relationship before their marriage vows. Florence loves Edward with equal ardor, but she plainly fears whatever she is going to encounter, and the information that she has obtained from "a modern, forward-looking handbook that was supposed to be helpful to young brides, with its cheery tones and exclamation marks and numbered illustrations" has only heightened her fears. Their thoughts, and the narrative, flow freely in time, as each recalls the events that have brought them to this point. Edward, the son of the headmaster of a rural primary school south of Oxford, grew up in a loving home clouded by the presence of a brain-damaged mother. Florence's upper-middle-class North Oxford family was far more concerned with creature comforts and keeping up appearances. Florence has broken from convention by studying music. An outstanding violinist, her energies are focused on honing the abilities of her string quartet and advancing its success. Edward, with a first in history from London University, is somewhat adrift career-wise, until his future father-in-law offers him an entirely unsuitable job with the family firm. He can always write history books on the side, he reasons, with youthful optimism. Both Florence and Edward are intelligent, agreeable people with progressive ideas (they meet at a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament gathering), ideally suited for each other in temperament and interests, which makes it all the more painful as we watch their future evaporate because of misunderstandings and unspoken sentiments. McEwan has a knack for getting beneath the skin of lovers, and because we, as readers, are privy to inner thoughts that Edward and Florence never convey—we come to know each better than they can ever know each other. It is this frustrating disconnect that gives On Chesil Beach its cumulative, albeit quiet, power. Really no more than a novella, the book nonetheless has the wisdom and depth that characterize all of McEwan's work. As always, his prose is elegant and restrained, yet knowing in its subtle details. With efficiency, he captures the mood of Britain at a transitional time, with empire and influence waning and a new generation attempting to find its place. McEwan accomplishes much in a deceptively small story that purports to be simply about a few hours on a wedding night in a second-rate hotel overlooking the English Channel. Like Howard's End or The End of the Affair, On Chesil Beach is a haunting book about missed opportunities, misapprehensions and the irreparable damage done by things left unsaid. Robert Weibezahl, author of the novel The Wicked and the Dead, is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Copyright 2007 BookPage Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

Shy musician Florence and her fianc‚, earnest Edward, look forward to married life, but a momentary misunderstanding on their wedding night changes everything. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal Reviews

It is 1962, and college graduates Florence and Edward, very much children of late 1950s London, are ready to launch themselves as a couple. Musical Florence is hoping for a concert career and looking forward to the wedding she believes will truly define her adulthood. Edward, a budding historian from a troubled family, envisions lifelong domestic joy with his beautiful fiance. However, both are plagued by private anxieties they can't bring themselves to discuss. As Edward plans an idyllic beachside wedding night, he broods about overcoming Florence's physical shyness given his own sparse experience. He has no idea she is terrified of sex but has grimly resolved to do her submissive duty. The results are false assumptions, confusion, and a nightmarish (and graphically described) sexual disaster that destroys the marriage even before it starts. McEwan's (Saturday ) brief, affecting tale of romantic dreams overthrown by adherence to social constructs that are about to change radically is a strong effort from this Booker Prize winner. Recommended for most adult fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/07.]—Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA [Page 82]. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Not quite novel or novella, McEwan's masterful 13th work of fiction most resembles a five-part classical drama rendered in prose. It opens on the anxious Dorset Coast wedding suite dinner of Edward Mayhew and the former Florence Ponting, married in the summer of 1963 at 23 and 22 respectively; the looming dramatic crisis is the marriage's impending consummation, or lack of it. Edward is a rough-hewn but sweet student of history, son of an Oxfordshire primary school headmaster and a mother who was brain damaged in an accident when Edward was five. Florence, daughter of a businessman and (a rarity then) a female Oxford philosophy professor, is intense but warm and has founded a string quartet. Their fears about sex and their inability to discuss them form the story's center. At the book's midpoint, McEwan (Atonement , etc.) goes into forensic detail about their nave and disastrous efforts on the marriage bed, and the final chapter presents the couple's explosive postcoital confrontation on Chesil Beach. Staying very close to this marital trauma and the circumstances surrounding it (particularly class), McEwan's flawless omniscient narration has a curious (and not unpleasantly condescending) fable-like quality, as if an older self were simultaneously disavowing and affirming a younger. The story itself isn't arresting, but the narrator's journey through it is. (June) [Page 33]. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information. Read Jonathan Lethem's Review in The New York Times  Read a review from The Guardian

 

  

Monday, January 14, 2012

 at 1:00 PM

Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron

Discussion Leader: Edna Ritzenberg

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BookList:

Sheltered within the rural confines of his impoverished Tutsi village, Jean Patrick dreams of one day running in the Olympics. But as he grows stronger and faster, so does the conflict between his tribe and the Hutus. Jean Patrick has an exploitable talent, however. His feet can carry the dreams and demands of his country to the outside world, so he is given privileges and concessions other Tutsis are not. Yet when the violence starts, not even those advantages can protect him, his family, and the woman he loves from the slaughter and devastation of a heinous civil war. Awarded the prestigious Bellwether Prize for its treatment of compelling social issues, Benaron’s first novel is a gripping, frequently distressing portrait of destruction and ultimate redemption. If there is an irony about it, it’s that its pace is often sluggish, which diminishes its emotional impact. Still, Benaron sheds a crystalline beacon on an alarming episode in global history, and her charismatic protagonist leaves an indelible impression. -- Haggas, Carol (Reviewed 10-15-2011) (Booklist, vol 108, number 4, p28)

Publishers Weekly:

/* Starred Review */ Set in the years leading up to the Rwanda genocide, Benaron’s Bellweather Prize–winning debut novel follows Jean Patrick Nkuba, “the jewel in Rwanda’s crown,” a Tutsi boy with a gift for running. Jean Patrick dreams of representing Rwanda in the Olympics, but must contend with abject poverty, an ethnic quota system, and savage bullying. He runs Olympic-qualifying times, moving closer to his dreams as tensions rise between the governing Hutus and the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Force), a Tutsi-led rebel army. Jean Patrick gains the favor of the president, but falls in love with a journalism student participating in antigovernment activism, and finds himself entangled in a vast and calamitous game of political chess. “Something unimaginable is coming,” warns his brother, a rebel soldier, and when the long-smoldering tensions between the Hutus and Tutsis erupt into a hellish conflagration, Jean Patrick must run away from the country he has spent his life running for. Benaron accomplishes the improbable feat of wringing genuine loveliness from unspeakable horror. She renders friendships and families with tenderness and sincerity, and lingers on the goodwill that binds a fractious community, even as those tethers grow taut and, finally, snap. She regards even the genocidaires with clear-eyed charity, allowing moral complexity to color the perversity of their deeds. It is a testament to Benaron’s skill that a novel about genocide—about neighbors and friends savagely turning on one another—conveys so profoundly the joys of family, friendship, and community. This powerful novel recounts inhumanity on a scale scarcely imaginable, yet rebukes its nihilism, countering unforgivable violence with small mercies and unyielding hope. (Jan. 17) --Staff (Reviewed September 26, 2011) (Publishers Weekly, vol 258, issue 39, p)

Library Journal:

/* Starred Review */ We first meet Jean Patrick Nkuba in 1984 Rwanda as he and his family mourn the death of Jean Patrick's father in a car accident. In the decade to come, we follow Jean Patrick through secondary school, where he becomes both a scholar and a gifted middle-distance runner. His dreams of achieving Olympic glory seem assured, but he is Tutsi, and Rwanda's Hutu-Tutsi tensions are steadily increasing. In the violent explosion of 1994 what happens to Jean Patrick and his family reflects the collective experience of Rwanda's 800,000-plus genocide victims. First novelist Benaron, who has actively worked with refugee groups, won the 2010 Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction for this unflinching and beautifully crafted account of a people and their survival. In addition, she compellingly details the growth and rigorous training of a young athlete. VERDICT Readers who do not shy away from depictions of violence will find this tale of social justice a memorable read, and those interested in coming-of-age stories set in wartime will want it as well. Highly recommended; readers who loved Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner will appreciate.— Jenn B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll.-Northeast, TX --Jenn B. Stidham (Reviewed August 1, 2011) (Library Journal, vol 136, issue 13, p81)

Kirkus:

/* Starred Review */ Benaron's first novel, about a young Rwandan runner whose Olympic ambitions collide with his country's political unrest, is the recipient of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for "fiction that addresses issues of social justice." In the 1980s, Jean Patrick Nkuba and his older brother Roger are both talented athletes and scholars living an idyllic existence with their Tutsi parents at the school where their father teaches. Then Jean Patrick's father dies in a car crash just as tensions begin to build between the Tutsis and Hutus. Although the Tutsis are increasingly discriminated against, Jean Patrick's running talent sets him above the fray, especially after his Olympic potential is recognized in his early teens. Even Roger, who has joined the Tutsi Rebels, wants Jean Patrick to do whatever it takes to represent Rwanda in the Olympics. So Jean Patrick follows his Hutu Coach from high school to college. At first Coach arranges for Jean Patrick to have false Hutu identification papers. Then the government decides that allowing a Tutsi to complete internationally will bolster its human-rights reputation so Jean Patrick is made the Tutsi exception and treated like a beloved celebrity. He even attends a reception with the president. Meanwhile he has fallen in love with Bea despite Coach's disapproval--Bea and her journalist father are Hutu dissidents against the repressive Hutu government--and made friends with a visiting professor from Boston. As the conflict intensifies, Jean Patrick must make increasingly difficult choices, a key one being whether to trust Coach. The escalating violence of Hutus against Tutsis becomes a national mania that ultimately controls Jean Patrick's personal destiny. The politics will be familiar to those who have followed Africa's crises (or seen Hotel Rwanda), but where Benaron shines is in her tender descriptions of Rwandan's natural beauty and in her creation of Jean Patrick, a hero whose noble innocence and genuine human warmth are impossible not to love.(Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2011)

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Monday, December 17, 2012 at 1:00 PM

Lots of  Candles, Plenty of  Cake by Anna Quindlen

Discussion Leader: Ellen Getreu                                           

                                            

Publishers Weekly:

Weary, battle-hardened reflections on growing older infuse this latest collection of essays by novelist and former New York Times columnist Quindlen (Every Last One). Having chimed in copiously in previous memoirs on now familiar talking points such as raising children, finding life’s balance as a working mother, achieving marital harmony and doling out feminist lessons to three grown children, Quindlen has found one nut to polish in a gratifying sense of survival on her own terms. Now in her late 50s, having lived much longer than her mother, who died when Quindlen was 19, the author finds herself shocked to hear herself referred to as elderly, and no longer troubled by the realization that her sense of control over events is illusory. In essays such as “Generations” and “Expectations,” she is careful to pay homage to the women like her mother who grew up before the women’s movement and thus had fewer choices. Yet Quindlen sees much work still to be done, especially in breaking glass ceilings and in assumptions about women’s looks—including her own. Cocooned in her comfortable lifestyle between a New York City apartment and her country house, surrounded by accumulated “stuff” that is beginning to feel stifling, certain of her marriage-until-death and support of her BFFs, Quindlen holds for the most part a blithe, benign view of growing older. Yet in moments when she dares to peer deeper, such as at her Catholic faith or within the chasm of solitude left by children having left home, she bats away her platitudinous reassurances and approaches a near-searing honesty. (May) --Staff (Reviewed April 2, 2012) (Publishers Weekly, vol 259, issue 14, p)

Library Journal:

Before she published six best-selling novels (e.g., Every Last One ); wrote her million-copy best seller, A Short Guide to the Happy Life ; and won a Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column "Public and Private," Quindlen attracted eager readers with her Times column "Life in the 30s." Now she's in her fifties and ready to talk about women's lives as a whole. With an eight-city tour and lotsof promotion. --Barbara Hoffert (Reviewed December 1, 2011) (Library Journal, vol 136, issue 20, p94)

Kirkus:

A humorous, sage memoir from the Pulitzer winner and acclaimed novelist. Like having an older, wiser sister or favorite aunt over for a cup of tea, Quindlen's (Every Last One, 2010, etc.) latest book is full of the counsel and ruminations many of us wish we could learn young. The death of her mother from cancer when she was 19 had a profound effect on the author, instilling in her the certainty that "life was short, and therefore it made [her] both driven and joyful" and happy to have "the privilege of aging." In her sincere and amusing style, the author reflects on feminism, raising her children, marriage and menopause. She muses on the perception of youth and her own changing body image--one of the "greatest gifts [for women] of growing older is trusting your own sense of yourself." Having women friends, writes Quindlen, is important for women of all ages, for they are "what we have in addition to, or in lieu of, therapists. And when we reach a certain age, they may be who is left." More threads on which the author meditates in this purposeful book: childbirth, gender issues, the joy of solitude, the difference between being alone and being lonely, retirement and religion. For her, "one of the greatest glories of growing older is the willingness to ask why, and getting no good answer, deciding to follow my own inclinations and desires. Asking why is the way to wisdom." A graceful look at growing older from a wise and accomplished writer--sure to appeal to her many fans, women over 50 and readers of Nora Ephron and similar authors.(Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2012) 

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How it All Began by Penelope Lively

Monday November 12 at 1:00 PM
Discussion Leader: Candace Plotsker-Herman

When Charlotte Rainsford is accosted by a petty thief on a London street, the consequences ripple across the lives of acquaintances and strangers alike....Through a richly conceived and colorful cast of characters, Penelope Lively explores the powerful role of chance in people's lives and deftly illustrates how our paths can be altered irrevocably by someone we will never even meet. (Penguin Group USA)

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Reviews

BookList:

/* Starred Review */ The ruling vision of master British novelist Lively’s latest delectably tart and agile novel is the Butterfly Effect, which stipulates that “a very small perturbation” can radically alter the course of events. The catalyst here is a London mugging that leaves Charlotte, a passionate reader and former English teacher become adult literacy tutor, with a broken hip. She moves in with her married daughter, Rose, to recuperate. Rose works for Henry, a lord and once-prominent historian, whose ego is as robust as ever but whose mind is faltering as he attempts to launch a BBC documentary to hilarious effect. With Rose out helping her mother, Henry prevails upon his daughter, Marion, an interior designer, to accompany him out of town, where she meets a too-good-to-be-true client. When she texts her lover, who deals in architectural salvage (tangible history), to postpone a rendezvous, his wife intercepts the message. Charlotte begins tutoring Anton, a smart and soulful East European, who affirms her ardor for language and story and awakens Rose out of her smothering stoicism. Throughout this brilliantly choreographed and surreptitiously poignant chain-reaction comedy of chance and change, Lively (Family Album, 2009) shrewdly elucidates the nature of history, the tunnel-visioning of pain and age, and the abiding illumination of reading, which so profoundly nourishes the mind and spirit. -- Seaman, Donna (Reviewed 12-15-2011) (Booklist, vol 108, number 8, p23)

Publishers Weekly:

Charlotte, who is in her 70s, is mugged, leaving her injured and without her handbag. This delightful, absorbing novel relies on a sophisticated and skillfully realized structure to introduce and then follow its endearingly ordinary characters. Though Charlotte’s incident proves to be the first domino to fall, she herself recedes into the background as her daughter, her middle-aged ESL student, her boss, and her boss’s niece come to the fore, going about the business of their daily lives and loves, all on a somewhat different path than they would have, had not Charlotte broken her hip. The interdependency of the characters’ lives, which they remain largely unaware of, builds intriguing momentum, and the pace quickens as the novel develops. Throughout, prolific Booker Prize–winning author Lively (for Moon Tiger) illustrates her knack for charming familiarity and just the right dash of surprise. (Jan.) --Staff (Reviewed November 7, 2011) (Publishers Weekly, vol 258, issue 45, p)

Library Journal:

/* Starred Review */ In her latest title, the Booker Prize-winning author of Moon Tiger explores the far-reaching effect of happenstance, as individual circumstances shift, lives change, and the known is perceived in an altogether new light. The novel opens with the mugging of retired schoolteacher Charlotte Rainsford on a London street. Subsequently, a diverse cast of richly embroidered acquaintances and strangers find their lives irrevocably altered by this event, which many of them haven't even heard about. We see how the mugging affects Charlotte's daughter Rose, who works for a historian desperate to return to the limelight, and the spillover to his niece Marion, a cash-poor interior designer hunting for a business partner while carrying on an affair eventually revealed through a stray cell-phone call. Lively delivers her story about these intertwined lives with faultless dexterity, sly humor, keen insight, and deft economy. VERDICT Lively's 12th novel is a feel-good masterpiece that will delight faithful fans as well as those new to the work of this consummate storyteller. [See Prepub Alert, 8/1/11.]— Joyce Townsend, Pittsburg, CA --Joyce Townsend (Reviewed December 1, 2011) (Library Journal, vol 136, issue 20, p115) 

Visit Penelope Lively's official website             

 Read Michiko Kakutani's Review in The New York Times

   Read Susann Cokal's Review in The New York Times Book Review

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Read a Review from The Guardian 

View the Reading Guide from Penguingroup.com 

 

The List by Martin Fletcher

Monday October 15, at 1:00 PM

Discussion Leader: Edna Ritzenberg



"London, October 1945. Austrian refugees Georg and Edith await the birth of their first child. Yet how can they celebrate when almost every day brings news of another relative or friend murdered in the Holocaust? Their struggle to rebuild their lives is further threatened by growing anti-Semitism in London's streets; Englishmen want to take homes and jobs from Jewish refugees and give them to returning servicemen....
In The List, [NBC News correspondent ]Fletcher investigates an ignored and painful chapter in London’s history. The novel is both a breathless thriller of postwar sabotage and a heartrending and historically accurate portrait of an almost forgotten era...."                                                           (us.macmillan.com)

Reviews

Booklist Reviews

NBC special correspondent Fletcher (Walking Israel, 2010) makes his fiction debut with a moving novel based on his parents' lives. In London at the end of WWII, the Jewish refugees who settled there to escape Hitler are facing anti-Semitism in their new home. Edith and Georg, who are expecting their first child, spend their days looking for work and trying to learn the fates of the family members left behind in Vienna. Edith mends nylon stockings, while Georg, a lawyer, tries to find a suitable position. Battling the prevailing attitude that Jews are occupying real estate and filling jobs that should belong to returning British soldiers, they often wonder why they left Europe. Still, visits to the refugee center to check the lists of the dead and the missing remind them of their luck. A long-lost cousin, Anna, who survived the camps, finds them and moves in among the eccentric occupants of their boardinghouse. She befriends Ismail, an Arab from Cairo who is involved in mysterious business. The British occupation of Palestine and the Zionist efforts—including terrorism—to create a Jewish homeland are cause for both hope and feat. Fletcher has written a touching story that brings a little-known aspect of Jewish history to life. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

Having fled the Nazis, a young Austrian couple in 1945 London discovers that for Jews like them, the war did not end with VE Day. While they desperately seek word on the possible survival or whereabouts of family members sent to concentration camps, petitions are being signed by anti-Semitics in their neighborhood of Hampstead to "send the aliens home"—ostensibly to clear space and jobs for returning British soldiers.Veteran NBC correspondent Fletcher's engrossing first novel, loosely based on his parents' story, captures a neglected piece of postwar history through the plight of the spirited Edith, who is seven months pregnant with her first child following a miscarriage, and Georg, a reserved lawyer reduced to making buttons for a living. When Edith's first cousin Anna unexpectedly arrives, traumatized by her time in Auschwitz, she raises hope, however dim, that other relatives will follow, maybe even Edith's father. It's a time when the horrific truths of the camps are not yet widely known or understood—and when lies about Jews, including the notion they have any "home" to return to—are passed off as truth. Drawn to Ismael, an Egyptian Arab who despite his seeming antagonism toward Jews has a habit of coming to their rescue, Anna slowly emerges from her personal darkness. The lightly veiled truth is that Ismael is actually Israel, part of a secret plot to assassinate British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin for his part in the blockade to limit the number of Jews allowed into Palestine. Fletcher (Walking Israel, 2010, etc.) is more convincing as a domestic observer than a spy/political-thriller writer. As fact-based as this book may be, the narrative is a bit too neatly tied up and cozy with coincidence for the novel to gain as much traction as it could have. But this is still a powerful, affecting work. A post-Holocaust novel that should be required reading wherever lessons about the plight of modern-day European Jews are taught. Copyright Kirkus 2011 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

In NBC special correspondent Fletcher's satisfactory first novel, Viennese Jewish refugees Edith and Georg Fleischer build their new life in 1945 London while Zionist revolutionaries plot an assassination that could jeopardize all asylum seekers in Britain. Living in a Hampstead boarding house, the Fleischers are expecting their first child while waiting to hear news of their relatives (most of whom perished in concentration or death camps) and find out whether they can stay in Britain. Edith's cousin Anna arrives, but her time at Auschwitz has changed her almost beyond recognition. After Edith makes a speech at a meeting about repatriation petitions, Georg becomes a target for retribution. The mysterious Ismael, an Egyptian Arab living at the boarding house, steps in to protect Georg, beginning an unlikely alliance. Meanwhile, in Palestine, the Lehi—a group considered to be freedom fighters, or terrorists, take your pick—plot to force out the British and open the border to any Jews who wish to enter. There are jarring shifts in point of view and shallow descriptions, but the novel's warmth and humor will have readers rooting for the Fleischers and the neighbors who, in the wake of horror, become their new family. (Oct.) [Page ]. Copyright 2011 PWxyz LLC Reserve your copy of The List Read a review from thejewishweek.com Read a review from JewishJournal.com Read an interview with Martin Fletcher on jspace.com



Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Monday, September 10, 1 p.m.

Discussion leader:  Ellen Getreu

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, longtime New Orleans residents Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun are cast into an unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water. In the days after the storm, Abdulrahman traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. A week later, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared-- arrested and accused of being an agent of al Qaeda.

Reviews:

Booklist Reviews *Starred Review* Eggers burst onto the scene in 2000 with his hugely successful memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Unlike many memoirists, he has resisted the temptation to parcel out the unpublished parts of his life into yet more memoirs. Instead, in his most compelling works since his debut, he has told the stories of others. What Is the What (2006) explored, in novel form, the ordeals of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese "lost boy," and now Eggers chronicles, as nonfiction, the tribulations of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian American painting contractor who decides to ride out Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Although his wife, Kathy, leaves town with their four children, Abdulrahman (known as Zeitoun because few locals can pronounce his first name) stays behind, hoping to protect their home, their job sites, and their rental properties. After the storm, he paddles the flooded streets in a canoe, rescuing stranded people, feeding trapped dogs, and marveling at the sometimes surreal beauty of the devastation. Was it God's plan that he help others? he wonders. Then people in uniforms take him at gunpoint and incarcerate him. There are no charges, only the guards' insistence that he is "al Qaeda" and "Taliban." Zeitoun's odyssey—23 days of grueling imprisonment, held incommunicado and deprived of all due process—is but one nightmare of many lived after Katrina. But it is exceptionally well told: here, as in What Is the What, Eggers employs a poetic, declarative style, shaping the narrative with subtlety and grace. More importantly, it is exceptionally well chosen. In the wake of disaster, we often cling to stories reassuring us that we respond to trials heroically. But Zeitoun reminds us that we are just as capable of responding to fear fearfully, forgetting the very things we claim to value most. Heartbreaking and haunting. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

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• Visit the website of The Zeitoun Foundation
• 
  
• Timothy Egan's Review in The New York Times Book Review
• 
  
• Alexandra Alter's Review in the Wall Street Journal