Book Club Kit Titles
The
19th Wife
by David Ebershoff
From
The New Yorker
This ambitious third novel tells two parallel
stories of polygamy. The first recounts Brigham Young's expulsion of one of
his wives, Ann Eliza, from the Mormon Church; the second is a modern-day
murder mystery set in a polygamous compound in Utah. Unfolding through an
impressive variety of narrative forms—Wikipedia entries, academic research
papers, newspaper opinion pieces—the stories include fascinating historical
details.
American
Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
From
Bookmarks Magazine
While critics couldn’t say for sure whether or not Sittenfeld captures the
exact thoughts of Laura Bush, they did agree that she creates a realistic
and highly sympathetic portrayal of the (soon-to-be former) First Lady. (The
author supposedly based the novel on Ann Gerhart’s 2004 biography, The
Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush.) Sittenfeld asks
provoking questions about marriage, loyalty, and responsibility. But many
reviewers couldn’t fundamentally understand why the very decent Alice had
supported her husband despite her doubts about his capabilities;
Sittenfeld’s pat, unsatisfactory answer is that Alice leads a life “in
opposition.” That, combined with the author’s obvious contempt for Charlie,
brought the reviews down a notch.
Behind
the Scenes at the Museum
by Kate Atkinson
From Publishers Weekly
The narrator's insistent voice and breezy delivery animates this enchanting
first novel by a British writer who won one of the 1993 Ian St. James Awards
for short stories. Ruby Lennox is a quirky, complex character who relates
the events of her life and those of her dysfunctional family with equal
parts humor, fervor and candor-starting with her moment of conception in
York, England, in 1959: "I exist!" Ruby then describes the family she is to
join. Her parents own a pet shop; her mother, Bunty, bitterly rues having
married her philandering husband, George, and daydreams about what her life
might have been. Ruby has two older sisters, willful Gillian and melancholy
Patricia. Through its ambitious structure, the novel also charts five
generations and more than a century of Ruby's family history, as reported in
"footnotes" that follow relevant chapters. (For example, a passage about a
pink glass button reveals the story of its original owner, Ruby's
great-grandmother Alice, who will abandon her young family and run off with
a French magician.) Ruby's richly imagined account includes both the details
of daily life and the several tragic events that punctuate the family's
mundane existence. Though the "footnote" entries are not quite as gripping
as those rendered in Ruby's richly vernacular, energetic recitation,
Atkinson's ebullient narrative style captures the troubled Lennox family
with wit and poignant accuracy.
Beside
a Burning Sea
by John Shors
From Publishers Weekly
Shors' sophomore effort (following Beneath
a Marble Sky), set on an island in the South Pacific during three weeks in
1942, features achingly lyrical prose, even in depicting the horrors of war.
After a U.S. hospital ship is torpedoed and sunk by the Japanese, a handful
of survivors struggle for survival on a remote island. They include the
captain and an officer; a Japanese prisoner, Akira, and two ship's nurses he
saved (one of them the captain's wife); and the ship's engineer, who saves a
Fijian stowaway, Ratu. Shors pays satisfying attention to class and race
dynamics, as well as the tension between wartime enemies. The survivors'
dignity, quiet strength and fellowship make this a magical read.
The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak
Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen
and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of
Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching,
Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids,
acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work
of their hands.
Driftless
by David Rhodes
From Publishers Weekly
After a 30-year absence from publishing due to a motorcycle
accident that left him paralyzed, Rhodes is back with a novel featuring July
Montgomery, the hero of his 1975 novel, Rock Island Line, which
movingly involves him with the fates of several characters who live in the
small town of Words, Wis. Through July, we meet Olivia Brasso, an invalid
who loses her family's savings at a casino; parolee Wade Armbuster, who
befriends Olivia after she is mugged; Winifred Smith, Olivia's new pastor;
Jacob Helm, a widower who finds himself falling in love with Winnie; Gail
Shotwell, a local musician who has an unusual reaction when her idol offers
to record one of her songs; and Gail's brother, Grahm, and his wife, Cora,
who blow the whistle on the milk cooperative that has been cheating them and
other farmers. It takes a while for all these stories to kick in, but once
they do, Rhodes shows he still knows how to keep readers riveted. Add a
blizzard, a marauding cougar and some rabble-rousing militiamen, and the
result is a novel that is as affecting as it is pleasantly overstuffed.
Eat,
Pray, Love
by Elizabeth Gilbert
From
The New
Yorker
At the age
of thirty-one, Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs of New York and
began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she wanted neither a
child nor a husband. Three years later, after a protracted divorce, she
embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for
pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special emphasis on gelato); an ashram
outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for "balancing."
The Faith Club
by Ranya Idliby
Ranya Idliby is a Palestinian Muslim; Suzanne Oliver, an ex--Catholic now in
the Episcopal Church; and Priscilla Warner, Jewish. Initially, the idea
behind establishing a faith club was simple--the three women would
collaborate on an interfaith children's book emphasizing the connections
among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that would reinforce the common
heritage the three religions share. In post-9/11 America, however, real life
began getting in the way.
Friday Night Knitting Club
by Kate Jacobs
From Publishers Weekly
Between running her Manhattan yarn shop, Walker & Daughter, and raising her
12-year-old biracial daughter, Dakota, Georgia Walker has plenty on her
plate in Jacobs's debut novel. But when Dakota's father reappears and a
former friend contacts Georgia, Georgia's orderly existence begins to
unravel. Her support system is her staff and the knitting club that meets at
her store every Friday night, though each person has dramas of her own
brewing.
The
Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society
by Mary Ann Shaffer
From Publishers Weekly
The letters comprising this small charming novel begin in 1946, when single,
30-something author Juliet Ashton (nom de plume Izzy Bickerstaff) writes to
her publisher to say she is tired of covering the sunny side of war and its
aftermath. When Guernsey farmer Dawsey Adams finds Juliet's name in a used
book and invites articulate—and not-so-articulate—neighbors to write Juliet
with their stories, the book's epistolary circle widens, putting Juliet back
in the path of war stories. The occasionally contrived letters jump from
incident to incident—including the formation of the Guernsey Literary and
Potato Peel Pie Society while Guernsey was under German occupation—and
person to person in a manner that feels disjointed. But Juliet's quips are
so clever, the Guernsey inhabitants so enchanting and the small acts of
heroism so vivid and moving that one forgives the authors (Shaffer died
earlier this year) for not being able to settle on a single person or plot.
Juliet finds in the letters not just inspiration for her next work, but also
for her life—as will readers.
The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
From Publishers Weekly
What perfect timing for this optimistic, uplifting debut novel (and
maiden publication of Amy Einhorn's new imprint) set during the nascent
civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to
raise white children but not to polish the household silver. Eugenia Skeeter
Phelan is just home from college in 1962, and, anxious to become a writer,
is advised to hone her chops by writing about what disturbs you. The budding
social activist begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the
country club sets relies and mistrusts enlisting the help of Aibileen, a
maid who's raised 17 children, and Aibileen's best friend Minny, who's found
herself unemployed more than a few times after mouthing off to her white
employers. The book Skeeter puts together based on their stories is scathing
and shocking, bringing pride and hope to the black community, while giving
Skeeter the courage to break down her personal boundaries and pursue her
dreams. Assured and layered, full of heart and history, this one has
bestseller written all over it.
Jesus
Land by Julia
Scheeres
This
riveting memoir is the story of Julia and her adopted brother, David.
Julia is white. David is black. It is the mid-1980s and their family
has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer
parks, and an all-encompassing racism. Julia and David are sent to a
religious reform school in the Dominican Republic by their violent father
and distant mother. Together, Julia and David strive to make it
through the ordeal of reform school.
A
Long Way Gone
by Ishmael Beah
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy
of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war goes beyond even the best
journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into
the horrors of warfare. Beah's harrowing journey transforms him overnight
from a child enthralled by American hip-hop music and dance to an internal
refugee bereft of family, wandering from village to village in a country
grown deeply divided by the indiscriminate atrocities of unruly, sociopathic
rebel and army forces. Beah then finds himself in the army—in a drug-filled
life of casual mass slaughter that lasts until he is 15, when he's brought
to a rehabilitation center sponsored by UNICEF and partnering NGOs.
Loving Frank
by Nancy Horan
From Publishers Weekly
Horan's ambitious first novel is a fictionalization of the life of Mamah
Borthwick Cheney, best known as the woman who wrecked Frank Lloyd Wright's
first marriage. Despite the title, this is not a romance, but a portrayal of
an independent, educated woman at odds with the restrictions of the early
20th century.
The Memory
Keeper’s Daughter
by Kim Edwards
This
riveting family drama from the author of the short story collection "The
Secrets of a Fire King" explores every mother's silent fears--losing a child
and that the child grows up without her.
Mockingbird
by Charles J. Shields
“To
Kill a Mockingbird” is the most widely read American novel ever. Yet its
creator, Harper Lee, has become a mysterious figure who routinely turns away
reporters. She has never been the subject of a book - until now.
“Mockingbird” is a portrait of this unconventional, high-spirited, and
sometimes hardheaded woman who loved her Southern home and the craft of
writing and who - from these undying affections - created a book whose power
has never diminished. After years of being asked by his students about Lee,
Charles J. Shields, a former English teacher, set out to trace her life
before the passing of time made it impossible to tell her story.
Out
Stealing Horses
by Per Petterson
From
The New Yorker
In this quiet but compelling novel, Trond Sander, a widower nearing seventy,
moves to a bare house in remote eastern Norway, seeking the life of quiet
contemplation that he has always longed for. A chance encounter with a
neighbor—the brother, as it happens, of his childhood friend Jon—causes him
to ruminate on the summer of 1948, the last he spent with his adored father,
who abandoned the family soon afterward. Petterson’s spare and deliberate
prose has astonishing force, and the narrative gains further power from the
artful interplay of Trond’s childhood and adult perspectives. Loss is
conveyed with all the intensity of a boy’s perception, but acquires new
resonance in the brooding consciousness of the older man.
A
Reliable Wife
by Robert Goolrick
From Publishers Weekly
Set
in 1907 Wisconsin, Goolrick's fiction debut (after a memoir, The End of the
World as We Know It) gets off to a slow, stylized start, but eventually
generates some real suspense. When Catherine Land, who's survived a
traumatic early life by using her wits and sexuality as weapons, happens on
a newspaper ad from a well-to-do businessman in need of a "reliable wife,"
she invents a plan to benefit from his riches and his need. Her new husband,
Ralph Truitt, discovers she's deceived him the moment she arrives in his
remote hometown. Driven by a complex mix of emotions and simple animal
attraction, he marries her anyway. After the wedding, Catherine helps Ralph
search for his estranged son and, despite growing misgivings, begins to
poison him with small doses of arsenic. Ralph sickens but doesn't die, and
their story unfolds in ways neither they nor the reader expect. This darkly
nuanced psychological tale builds to a strong and satisfying close.
The Reserve
by Russell Banks
From Publishers Weekly
Like Banks' two most recent novels—Cloudsplitter, a 1998 book about the
abolitionist John Brown, and The Darling, about the wages of '60s
radicalism—The Reserve looks backward, this time to the 1930s. The reserve
of the title is an Adirondack preserve, a membership-only sanctuary where
the very rich partake of woodland leisure, hunting, fishing, dining,
drinking, utterly remote from the anxiety and want that most Americans
experienced in 1936. Jordan Groves, a noted artist and illustrator, makes
his life literally and figuratively at the border of the property, along
with his wife, Alicia, and two sons, Bear and Wolf. Jordan Groves is a man's
man, flying his airplane daringly around the Adirondacks and trekking the
world in search of imagery and lovers. As is true of all the characters in
this novel, Groves is a person utterly without any sense of irony about
himself, and thus any awareness of the degree to which he is a creature of
what he claims to despise. Groves' unrecognized conflicts are forced into
consciousness through the agency of Vanessa Cole, the twice-divorced adopted
daughter of one of the Reserve's member families. Death, adultery and
homicide follow, shattering each of the would-be lovers' families. This is a
vividly imagined book. It has the romantic atmosphere of those great 1930s
tales in film and prose, and it speeds the reader along from its first
pages. Adapted from a review by Scott Turow
The Road
by Cormac McCarthy
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the
ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack
stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their
destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits
them there.
Sarah’s Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. De Rosnay's U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris
roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were
arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported
to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to
Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand
Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an
American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary
of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups.
Suite
Francaise by
Irene Nemirovsky
This stunning book
contains two narratives, one fictional and the other a fragmentary, factual
account of how the fiction came into being. "Suite Française" itself
consists of two novellas portraying life in France from June 4, 1940, as
German forces prepare to invade Paris, through July 1, 1941, when some of
Hitler's
occupying troops leave France to join the assault on the Soviet Union.
Sunflowers
by Sheramy Bundrick
From Publishers Weekly
In a knockout debut novel, art historian Bundrick (Music and Image in
Classical Athens) brings Vincent Van Gogh's paintings and personal story
to vibrant life. While Bundrick takes many liberties (recorded in an
author's note) in her fictionalized account of Van Gogh's affair with her
narrator, fille de maison Rachel Courteau, she gives Rachel such a
believable voice that the proceedings seem genuine. At 35, Van Gogh meets
lovable spitfire Rachel while surreptitiously sketching her in a garden.
Having taken refuge in an Arles brothel after the death of her parents,
Rachel greets Van Gogh as a customer not long after, and soon feelings
blossom between them. Visiting friend Paul Gauguin and the cloud of Van
Gogh's madness undercut the couple's bliss, as do financial troubles and
Rachel's life at the maison, where she's kept a virtual prisoner.
While infusing well-known historical moments (like Van Gogh's infamous
self-mutilation) with vivid details, humanizing Van Gogh and putting his
famous works in context, Bundrick generates an impressive volume of
suspense, delight and heartbreak.
A
Thread of Grace
by Mary
Doria Russell
Tracing
the lives of a handful of fascinating characters – a charismatic Italian
Resistance leader, a priest, an Italian rabbi’s family, a disillusioned
German doctor – Mary Doria Russell tells the little-known story of the vast
underground effort by Italian citizens who saved the lives of 43,000 Jews
during the final phase of World War II.
Three Cups of Tea
by Greg Mortenson
From
Bookmarks Magazine
While critics agree that
Three Cups of Tea should be read for its inspirational value
rather than for its literary merit, the book's central theme, derived from a
Baltistan proverb, rings loud and clear. "The first time you share tea with
a Balti, you are a stranger," a villager tells Greg Mortenson. "The second
time, you are an honored guest. The third time you become family." An
inspirational story of one man's efforts to address poverty, educate girls,
and overcome cultural divides,
Three Cups, which won the 2007 Kiriyama Prize for nonfiction,
reveals the enormous obstacles inherent in becoming such
"family."
Water for
Elephants by
Sara Gruen
Though
he may not speak of them, the memories still dwell inside Jacob Jankowski's
ninety-something-year-old mind. Memories of himself as a young man, tossed
by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most
Spectacular Show on Earth. Memories of a world filled with freaks and
clowns, with wonder and pain and anger and passion; a world with its own
narrow, irrational rules, its own way of life, and its own way of death. The
world of the circus: to Jacob it was both salvation and a living hell.