WPL BOOK CLUB SELECTIONS

Here are the lists of Wilmette Public Library's selections for book clubs. We include choices to appeal to all-award winners, best sellers, and just good reads.

WINTER 2010

The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent
A family’s dispute becomes a battle for life and death in this gripping novel based on a true story. 10-year-old Sarah Carrier tries to cope with life in Salem, Massachusetts after her mother is accused of being a witch. Sarah’s view of the mass hysteria and mayhem that sweeps through her close-knit community provides a fresh, unconventional take on this historic episode. Readers will appreciate the themes of family ties, conscience, and intolerance. (fiction)
Hurry Down Sunshine: A Father’s Story of Love and Madness by Michael Greenberg
A powerful family story that takes readers on an emotional roller coaster ride. From the summer when his fifteen-year-old daughter is struck mad, through subsequent visits to anyone who might be able to help, including psychiatrists and movie producers, Greenberg never lets go of his compassion and courage. (nonfiction)
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
These enchanting stories by a half American, half Pakistani writer speak of love, struggles for power, and small victories. They let us see into the lives of fascinating characters from all realms of Pakistani society: cosmopolitan, rural, young romantics and those long widowed. Nominated for the National Book Award, Mueenuddin has been compared to Jhumpa Lahiri and John Updike. (fiction)
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
A deeply moving vision of the sorrow, mystery, loveliness, and promise of several characters living in New York City in the 1970s. Winner of this year’s National Book Award for fiction, McCann’s story vividly comes to life against the backdrop of the city and the “artistic crime of the century”, a mysterious tightrope walker dancing between the Twin Towers. (fiction)
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
In 1925, renowned British explorer Percy Fawcett disappeared while searching for an ancient Amazonian civilization that may or may not have existed. Author Grann stumbled on a hidden trove of diaries that led him to try to solve “the greatest exploration mystery of the 20th century.” A gripping story of jungles, pestilence, and passion. (nonfiction)
The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren by Jonathan Lopez
This is the true story of art fraud set against the backdrop of World War II Europe and famous collectors like Andrew Mellon and Hermann Goering. The ingenious Van Meegeren was the key player in a high stakes game of illicit commerce, “a talented Mr. Ripley armed with a paintbrush”, and Lopez makes his story as engrossing as any fast-paced thriller. (nonfiction)
Old Filth by Jane Gardam
“Filth”, short for “Failed in London, Try Hong Kong,” is a disgruntled retired lawyer, recently widowed, who is now delving into the past that produced him. His flashbacks contrast British privilege with the chaos that ensued as the empire started to crumble. Gardam has won numerous awards and deserves to be better known in the United States. This witty, complex, and intelligent novel showcases the author’s talent. (fiction)
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
In this charming, funny novella, Queen Elizabeth II stumbles across a bookmobile on the palace grounds and discovers what the rest of us know: the pleasures of reading! As she spends more and more time with beloved books, she neglects her staff and her ceremonial duties. While the prime minister schemes to get her back to her duties, the Queen develops self-awareness, contemplation, and hidden talents. (fiction)

SUMMER 2009

Apples and Oranges by Marie Brenner
In this moving memoir, the author deftly traces the fascinating relationship she developed with her dying brother. Carl had left his career as a trial lawyer to become an apple farmer. Marie was a world-class journalist, a New York sophisticate, a symbol of all that her brother loathed. Even in childhood they had a contentious relationship. Yet, she abandons her life to try to help her brother when he is diagnosed with cancer. How they learn to love each other, while tracking down alternative treatments for Carl and investigating their complex family history, becomes an inspiring and liberating story.
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Enzo, a very philosophical and perceptive dog, narrates the tragic events in his owner’s life. Denny is a race-car driver who has been in a three-year custody battle over his daughter. With an amazing ability to “see” the world through the eyes of a dog, the author has fashioned a truly inspiring story about the power of relationships, and the acquiring of hope and redemption in the face of despair.
Away by David Sheff
While a brilliant and heartbreaking portrayal of addiction, this is most importantly a story of parental love and its redemptive power. Nic Sheff had been a charming, funny, popular kid before he became addicted to crystal meth. His family tried everything they could to help him, but the worry and stress took a tremendous toll. Nevertheless, David refused to give up on his son. This book grew out of an article in the New York Times Magazine that was hailed as a revelation and “while painfully candid….equally optimistic and powerful.”
Driftless by David Rhodes
Welcome to Words, Wisconsin, where July has finally found peace after two decades of drifting. A respected member of the town, he is the center of this suspenseful sequel to “Rock Island Line”. Through July we meet many intriguing characters like Gail, a musician who has a strange reaction to an offer to have one of her songs recorded by her idol, and Cora, a farmer’s wife who is intent on exposing agribusiness corruption. In vivid scenes involving gambling, family intrigue, miraculous cures, wisdom gained through hard work, and the great power of kindness, Rhodes has written a beautiful novel of an enthralling community.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Through the inner lives of a widow who serves as caretaker of a Parisian apartment building and a troubled young girl living there, the author engagingly comments on art, philosophy, Japanese culture, and social prejudices. A critical success in France, the story is by turns very funny and heartbreaking. The two main characters may hide their true talents from a world that they feel cannot appreciate them, but the reader surely will be won over by them.
The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
Having worked for NPR as a foreign correspondent, the author had been in many places reporting on tragic events. So he decided to go on a yearlong quest to find the world’s best unknown happy places. The result is a travelogue from the Persian Gulf to the Arctic Circle, finding happiness where we least expect it. Weiner does more than just report. He becomes a participant, whether meditating in Bangalore or meeting people in cafes and bus stops. His humor and intelligence shine through, making him a delightful road companion.
The Girl from Foreign by Sadia Shepard
In this vivid memoir, a young Muslim-Christian searches for ancient family secrets, leading her to an amazing discovery. Her grandmother was a descendant of the Bene Israel, a small Jewish community in India. The author writes about her journey to India to unlock the mysteries of her heritage, her religious and cultural revelations, and what it means to be on a search for self-discovery.
The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan
The author was happily married and the mother of two great kids, with a satisfying career as a newspaper columnist, when she found a lump in her breast. When her father, too, learns he has late-stage cancer, it’s time for Kelly to stop living in what she calls the Middle Place, “that sliver of time when parenthood and childhood overlap”, and to really grow up. What could have been a depressing chronicle of illness is instead a rich, funny, honest memoir about finding strength through home and family and celebrating being alive.
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
Hans is the Dutch-born narrator of this observant, perceptive novel about two great loves: the city of New York and the game of cricket. Feeling lost and adrift after 9/11, his wife and daughter having gone back to London, Hans seeks solace by striking up a friendship with another immigrant, a charming gangster from Trinidad named Chuck. Teeming with life and psychologically poignant, this book won the Pen/Faulkner Award.
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
In these thirteen linked stories, Strout creates a touching portrait of ordinary coastal Mainers. Olive, a retired math teacher and deplorer of what has happened to the world, interacts with family and friends in tales of rich emotional intensity. Although the townspeople’s lives are often focused on their fears and insecurities, they also include moments of humor and hope. People are sustained by the comfort of ordinary life and the sudden beauty of the natural landscape. These are powerful stories that will long be remembered.
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
This fictionalized account of the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations of thousands of Jewish families is told through the eyes of Julia, a contemporary American writer. When Julia and her husband move to France, she vows to find out what happened to the former occupants of their apartment. The author captures the insane world of the Holocaust and the efforts of a few brave people who stood against it. This haunting story, shocking and profoundly moving, will grab your heart.
Sonata for Miriam by Linda Olsson
The novel opens in New Zealand where Adam Anker, a middle-aged musician and professor, views a Holocaust exhibit in Aukland. He is startled to see a photograph of a young violinist from pre-war Poland with his birth name. Thus begins a journey into his past, which takes the story to Sweden and Poland. Adam's daughter, Miriam, who he raised alone, has died leaving him with no future. Now it's time to find out what his emotionally distant mother refused to talk about and who he is. The descriptions of New Zealand and Krakow take the reader there and the emotional lives of the characters are beautifully evoked.
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale
This true crime story takes place in mid-Victorian London. One of England’s first great detectives, Jack Whicher from Scotland Yard, tirelessly pursues every lead in the case of the murder of three-year-old Saville Kent. In crime annals, it ranks alongside the Lindbergh trial or the JonBenet Ramsey mystery. The author’s suspenseful narrative and detailed construction of the intellectual puzzle of finding the killer makes for a fascinating, chilling read.

WINTER 2009

Away by Amy Bloom
After her family is killed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian Leyb journeys to New York. The year is 1924 and Lillian is 22. She gets a job as a seamstress for the Goldfadn Yiddish Theatre and is befriended by one of the actors, Yaakov. When word arrives that Lillian’s young daughter may still be alive, Yaakov helps her to search throughout America in her quest to find Sophie. A familiar immigrant chronicle becomes an extraordinary saga of endurance and rebirth.
Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo
A road novel with a difference. When Otto’s parents are killed in a car crash, his New Age sister, Cecilia, decides to sell her half of the inherited farm to her guru, and asks Otto to drive him across the country to the farm. Otto, the skeptic, is incensed, but agrees. As they travel through the small towns of middle America, secularist Otto makes discoveries about the nature of the guru, and about himself. Often hilarious, this joyous treatment of spiritual material is a delight.
Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan
O’Nan has been called the “bard of the working class” and this novel is no exception. On the last day of business for a chain restaurant, the store’s dedicated manager, Manny DeLeon, wants to end by sticking by his commitment to perfection, but everything seems to conspire against him. With a cast of complex characters and a big heart, this is a story about everyday life in late 20th century America.
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
In the early 1990s war rages on a tiny island near New Guinea. All the whites have fled except Mr. Watts, who is married to a mysterious local woman. When he offers to take over teaching duties at the village school, he begins by reading Great Expectations to the class. The book becomes a refuge, an escape to another place for the children. This haunting fable explores the power and pitfalls of art, while also capturing the intricacies of human relationships.
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin
This absorbing group profile is based on exclusive interviews with the idiosyncratic men and women justices. From Kennedy’s sense of his own importance to Souter’s strange old-fashioned lifestyle, and Sandra Day O’Connor’s evolution as the powerful swing-voter, the author deftly distills issues and gives us a lively view of the Court’s internal workings and the impact of their personalities on important case decisions.
Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank by Lisa Margonelli
In her smart, funny, and surreal account of the oil industry, the author takes us on a one-hundred-thousand mile journey from the local gas station to a Texas drilling rig to a Nigerian warlord who changes oil prices from his cell phone. By making the links in the global oil chain come alive through the voices of the people involved, Margonelli proves herself to be a brilliant reporter on a topic with the potential for dire consequences.
Wandering Star by J. M. G. Le Clezio
This year’s Nobel prize winner for literature, Le Clezio is a French novelist who often writes tales of survival that are realistic and at the same time hauntingly romantic. This novel tells the story of two young women uprooted by the Holocaust. Esther survives the ordeal and makes her way to the new state of Israel. But as she nears her destination, she passes a group of equally desperate and displaced refugees, including Nejma, a Palestinian girl. Finely tuned to the paradoxes and problems of life, the author writes with deep compassion and admiration for the human spirit.
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Winner of the Man Booker Prize, this black comedy follows the transformation of one Indian taxi driver from an honest, hardworking but poor man into an entrepreneurial murderer. Where does his rage come from? Adiga uses his philosophical protagonist to write an absorbing story about social and economic injustice, and about finding decency in a corrupt world.
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
What would the earth be like if human beings suddenly disappeared? This is the premise of Weisman’s astonishing, revelatory report, combining science and speculation. From New York City’s subways filling with water and trees sprouting from streets, to petrochemical sites igniting, or bird and fish populations burgeoning to create another Eden, this is an environmental book that is entertaining without being overwrought or chiding.

SUMMER 2008

Grace (Eventually): thoughts on faith by Anne Lamott
In this collection of essays, the best-selling author delivers a funny and wise primer on faith and what it means to be fully alive to life’s blessings. Never preachy or self-righteous, she knows how to write honestly, with fresh insights into the human condition. Whether discussing the ravages of age, child rearing, or world peace, Lamott pulls you in with her warmth and common sense.
The House That George Built by Wilfrid Sheed
This eloquent homage to the Golden Age of American song will have you wanting to listen to Gershwin and Berlin and Porter all over again. Sheed writes with authority and love, making for a delightful insider’s history from one who mingled with the famous and shared their gossip.
How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman
For every patient who wants to get the best care from their physician, Groopman is a godsend. He is chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, teaches at Harvard Medical School, is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and knows how to write with compassion and understanding for the lay person. In this book he offers a window into the mind of the physician and insights into the doctor/patient relationship. He shows why doctors succeed and why they make errors. He also gives practical advice to help patients avoid pitfalls and communicate effectively with their doctor.
Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Al
In this very affecting memoir, the author tells her extraordinary life story. She takes us on her journey from a traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia to her intellectual awakening in the Netherlands, where she is elected to Parliament, and finally to her life under armed guard after her life is threatened. A courageous, inspiring tale and a powerful feminist critique of Islam from one who has first-hand experience.
The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein
The author wrote this moving memoir at the age of ninety-five, about growing up impoverished in an English mill town in the early 1900s. Harry’s father spends his meager wages on drink while his mother bravely does everything possible to keep her children warm and clothed and believing in a better future. Then Harry’s oldest sister does the worst possible thing: she falls in love with a non-Jew. Subtitled “a love story that broke barriers,” it’s a tale of family, neighbors, working class struggles, heartache, and the power of dreams.
Little Heathens: hard times and high spirits on an Iowa farm during the great depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
Charming and infused with real joy, Kalish’s story of growing up on her grandparents’ farm in a simpler time is a pleasure. Filled with stories of a close family who flourished despite daily struggles, it also revels in the remembered pleasures of cherished recipes, homemade beauty products, animal husbandry, and plain hard work.
The Maytrees by Annie Dillard
Dillard’s novel is the poetic story of an uncommon family living at the very tip of Cape Cod. Toby and Lou Maytree and their circle of friends inhabit mid-century bohemian Provincetown and are one with the dunes and sea surrounding them. They lead simple lives until there is a wrenching betrayal. Nature is rendered in loving prose, while the characters come alive with understated elegance. This is a quiet, lovely meditation on living a life of goodness and being fully aware of the vast beauty of our physical world.
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Aging widower Tron Sanders, who lives alone on the Norwegian tundra, just wants to take life one step at a time after his wife’s death. But his peaceful solitude is broken by the appearance of his only neighbor who he hasn’t seen in 50 years. Memories bubble to the surface, centering on his father’s World War II activities and a tragic accident in the summer of 1948. The novel shows how one summer can shape a person’s life, and how the past informs the present.
The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins
A Chicago Tribune “best book of the year” , this fictionalized account of the life of enigmatic photographer Edward Curtis is luminous. The mysterious, obsessive Curtis was known for his beautiful, brooding photos of the vanishing North American Indians. He also hobnobbed with the rich and famous, like Teddy Roosevelt. Wiggins has written a fast-moving novel with a range of viewpoints and interpretations, from the author’s own alter ego to Curtis’s wife Clara who loved the man and suffered for it.
Strange as This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake
This novel takes place against the horrific destruction of land and people in the Appalachian coalfields. Lace Ricker finds herself battling both outside forces of ruin and divisive developments within her own family. The mining companies are turning her beloved mountains into dust and toxic sludge but her husband refuses to fight the union bosses and her sons seem destined to get sucked into the maelstrom. The environmental tragedy of modern coal mining is beautifully juxtaposed against the anguish of one family.
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
A National Book Award finalist, this comic novel explores contemporary office life as one might dissect a family. It’s about survival in one of life’s weirdest environments, a satirical send-up of cubicle culture, but also a very affecting story about work, trust, relationships, and happiness.
The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath provide the backdrop for Burke’s enthralling detective novel of sin and redemption in Louisiana. Detective Robicheaux is assigned the task of investigating the shooting of two looters in a devastated wealthy neighborhood of New Orleans. He soon learns that they have ransacked the home of a mob boss. Burke is adept at creating rich prose and powerful images for a story that pulls the reader in while showcasing all that was wrong or right with the way we responded to this national disaster.
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
A young girl disappears. Many years later her great-niece Iris, who never knew she existed, gets a phone call that she is being released from a psychiatric hospital after sixty-one years. Why did Iris’s grandmother claim to be an only child? What other secrets will be uncovered with Esme’s reappearance? O’Farrell weaves a haunting tale of mystery, revenge, and family malice.

WINTER 2008

Climbing the Mango Trees by Madhur Jaffrey
The actress and authority on Indian food writes of her own childhood as one of six children in a well-to-do family in Delhi. Starting with her grandmother’s placing honey on her tongue when she was born, Jaffrey’s memories center around the food that was part of her Hindu culture. She also vividly remembers scenes from India’s history, the turbulent partition in the 1940s, the political strife that made friendships between Hindus and Muslims impossible, and the exotic monsoon climate. She includes favorite recipes.
The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
Set in rural Nebraska, Powers’ novel, which won the National Book Award, has several ambitious themes: how the cognitive brain works and can be damaged, the majesty of nature, complicated human relationships, and how we perceive ourselves. The story revolves around Mark Schluter, a young man whose head injuries from a mysterious car accident leave him unable to recognize his sister, Karin. She is desperate to cure him, so enlists the help of a famous neurologist, Gerald Weber (think Oliver Sachs). As he becomes involved in Mark’s case, his own personal and academic journey become an important part of the story. A fascinating look at the complexity of human life, the brain, and the forces of nature.
The Eighth Promise by William Poy Lee
If you enjoyed The Color of Water by James McBride, you’ll want to read this beautifully written memoir of another mother and son relationship, this time from the Chinese American immigrant experience. Lee’s rich story covers events from the ancient Chinese farming village of his mother’s youth to the housing projects of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Told in the voices of both mother and son, it is a gripping tale of betrayal, survival, triumph, and love.
The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
As three friends from their days at Brown University near 30, they struggle to find their places in the larger canvas of New York around the time of September 11. Danielle hopes to make it as a television producer, Julius barely makes a living as a gay freelance critic, and beautiful Marina, daughter of a famous social activist, can’t seem to complete her book on the cultural significance of children’s clothing. When Marina’s idealistic cousin “Bootie” arrives, he threatens to blow everything apart. Messud is a witty and wicked observer of pretensions in this comedy of manners.
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
Both medical thriller and vivid evocation of the city of London in the mid-1800s, Johnson tells the terrifying story of an unstoppable cholera outbreak. As the epidemic widened, an ingenious doctor and a local curate worked to solve the mystery of how the disease spreads. It is a colorful tale, from Dickensian squalor to how modern cities evolved, and how scientific inquiry has shaped the world we live in.
Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
This bestseller is a revealing account of the postwar administration of Iraq, by a former Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post. He focuses on the Green Zone, the American enclave that is an oasis in the middle of chaos. Here an occupational administration, selected for its loyalty to the Bush government, gets most things wrong, like having the Muslim staff serve pork at every meal, spending time revamping the Iraqi tax code, and mounting an anti-smoking campaign while Baghdad burns. The author’s portrait of misplaced idealism is evenhanded, using personal touches to bring home the larger implications of this story of disillusionment.
My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman
Known for her sharp wit and keen social observations, here Lipman takes on the subject of coming of age in the radical 1960s and 70s. Frederica’s parents are college professors and have raised her to be a free spirit and the school pet. But when she becomes a teenager, she feels they are “the most annoyingly evenhanded parental team in the history of civilization”, and she longs to escape her stifling life. Then everything changes with the arrival on campus of a new dorm mother, the glamorous Laura Lee French. The author delivers an enchanting story of conflicting moralities and allegiances.
Restless by William Boyd
This novel won the Costa (formerly Whitbread) Prize. It is an absorbing historical thriller, based on the story of a covert branch of British intelligence, created to try to get the United States to enter World War II. Someone tries to kill Sally Gilmartin, three decades after she worked as a spy. She now lives a quiet life in the Cotswolds, but is compelled to tell her daughter, Ruth, the truth about her past. She does so in written installments that describe how she was recruited and trained by another spy who becomes her lover. Ruth barely has time to process the shock of her mother’s true identity before she too is drawn into the race to find out who wants her mother dead.

SUMMER 2007

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this novel is based on the true story of how famous author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came to befriend a shy, friendless, half-Indian lawyer named George. When George is falsely accused of abominable crimes, Doyle, like his alter ego Sherlock Holmes, sets out to prove his innocence. In doing so, he also helps himself through a difficult personal crisis. Barnes adeptly handles themes of love, guilt, identity and honor in this engrossing story.
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Gilbert decides to go on a yearlong trip of recovery after a long, agonizing divorce. Her three main stops are Rome, an Indian ashram, and Bali, in an attempt to explore her competing desires for earthly pleasures and divine transcendence. In describing her experiences in each locale, her exuberance, wit, self-deprecating humor, and hard-won wisdom are insightful and delightful.
Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert
This calm and compelling report on the consequences of global warming lets facts rather than emotions tell the story. For example, nearly every major glacier in the world is melting rapidly. On a more upbeat note, Kolbert tells how one American city’s energy conservation campaign has been a great success and should be a model for us all. This book’s clear, powerful writing has been compared to Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. A real eye-opener.
Gatsby’s Girl by Caroline Preston
This novel was inspired by the intense relationship between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his first love, Chicago socialite Ginevra King. Preston reimagines Ginevra’s life from the heady, romantic first meeting with the struggling writer, then a Princeton undergrad, through her later disaffected, not so happy years. Ginevra was the basis for Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. This is a fascinating glimpse into the tragic life of Fitzgerald and the woman who was the inspiration for many of his female characters.
The Good, Good Pig by Sy Montgomery
When the author adopts a sickly runt, naming him Christopher Hogwood, little does she realize what a huge impact the pet will have on the whole community. He becomes a local celebrity, fomenting friendships, outpourings of caring, and new perspectives on the human-animal relationship. The author blends facts on animal behavior and natural history with humorous stories and insights into her own personal growth. A fresh look at the importance of caring for all the earth’s creatures.
Lapham Rising by Roger Rosenblatt
A wickedly comic sendup of the elites living in the Hamptons. Harry March, a 60 year old writer, is a recluse living in his family’s ancestral home with Hector, his born-again Christian talking dog. When “new money” billionaire Silas Lapham decides to build a mansion near his home, Harry becomes obsessed with sabotaging the new construction. A rich collection of satiric swipes at the self-importance that comes with being rich.
The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
As Russian émigré Marina descends into Alzheimer’s, her recollections of her early years working at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad become more vivid. When the city came under siege during World War II, museum workers stowed away treasures as their families sheltered in the basement. This novel shifts between these memories and contemporary America, where Marina’s granddaughter prepares for her wedding. Dean writes movingly of the power of memory, the difficulty of letting go, and the precarious state of mind that can come with age.
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
A reconsideration of the “myth” we’ve all learned about the voyage of the Mayflower and the founding of the Plymouth Rock colony. Philbrick’s mesmerizing account details the desperate circumstances of the settlers, the help they received from the Wampanoag Indians, the later strange war between the two camps, and the fascinating personalities of their leaders, including Miles Standish.
Plum Wine by Angela Davis-Gardner
It is 1966 and Barbara Jefferson is a young, lonely English teacher in Japan. She is befriended by Michiko, a fellow teacher and Hiroshima survivor. When he dies, he leaves Barbara a chest full of bottles of plum wine, each wrapped in rice paper covered with writing that turns out to be Michiko’s life story. Barbara enlists the help of Seiji to help her translate the papers. As she and Seiji fall in love, she learns more about both men’s pasts and how much the Japanese civilians suffered when the United States bombed them. Meanwhile her students are questioning her about America’s war in Vietnam. This novel is a sensitive, quietly intense exploration of the divide between cultures, and the juxtaposition of love and war.
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Do we really know what makes us happy? In this witty and surprising book, Harvard professor Gilbert sets out to reveal how our imaginations may be getting in the way of our ability to know what happiness really is. While humans spend a lot of time thinking about our futures and what needs to happen so we’ll be happy, we’re not very successful. Gilbert wants to know why we’re so bad at getting it right, and how we can improve. Often funny and playful, his book makes complicated ideas come alive, from psychology to cognitive neuroscience.
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
The author wrote this in France during 1941-1942, before she was sent to her death in Auschwitz. She was born a Russian Jew, but converted to Catholicism. The manuscript was preserved by her daughters, unread for 60 years. Finally published in France, where it has been a bestseller, it is composed of two novellas. The first describes the interconnected lives of a group of Parisians, all fleeing the city in advance of the German troops. In the second part, peasant farmers in 1941 find ways to coexist with their Nazi rulers. Nemirovsky was skilled at describing daily life, focusing on the emotional and very human dramas that go on, whether from the perspective of a farmer’s daughter or a bourgeois collaborator.
Sweet and Low: A Family Story by Rich Cohen
This is the “inside” story of a family business that became a global success, only to be nearly destroyed by that family’s bitter falling out. Cohen’s grandfather, Ben Eisenstadt was a short order cook who invented the famous pink packet of sugar substitute. While he amassed a great fortune, the company became infiltrated by corrupt Jewish gangsters, and a terrible scandal erupted involving Ben’s heirs. Both bittersweet and hilarious, Cohen has written a tender and tragic history of one amazing family and their American dream.
Theft by Peter Carey
Taking on the contemporary art world, Booker Prize-winning Carey’s latest novel is passionate, humorous and fresh. His story shows a fascination for the demonic side of creativity, as Michael Boone, an ex-famous painter, and his autistic brother become involved in a scheme to steal valuable paintings belonging to the father-in-law of femme fatale Marlene. Part thriller, part love story, Carey knows how to make characters come alive.
The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig
Set in the 1950s in rural eastern Montana, Doig has written a nostalgic story that begins with the closing of all of Montana’s one-room schoolhouses. As the Superintendent of Schools, Paul Milliron agonizes that the closings will also mean the death of rural neighborhoods. As he tries to come to terms with this, he remembers his own childhood in just such a school. Paul’s charming recollections show a love for the landscape and people he knew as a boy. Especially important was the brother of the family’s housekeeper, a bookish man who becomes the local schoolteacher and an inspiration. Doig’s writing soars with the sheer pleasure of language and character in a story of families struggling in a remote, harsh land.

WINTER 2007

A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus
A contemporary New York story in which Joyce and Marshall Harriman’s divorce battle echoes the country’s problems post 9/11. Kalfus is adept at portraying the black comedy in the couple’s narcissism while skewering the pieties surrounding the national trauma. He also reveals the powerful effect world events have on individual lives. This novel was nominated for a National Book Award.
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
Winner of the 2006 Booker Prize, this luminous novel is set in a corner of India where the borders of several Himalayan states meet. Patel is a retired judge who lives in isolated tranquility with his cook, his orphaned seventeen-year-old granddaughter, and a beloved dog. But his life is irrevocably altered when his granddaughter has an affair with a politically active teacher. Questions of cultural identity, modernity and class are explored.
Lincoln’s Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk
History from a psychological perspective. Shenk’s stylish exploration of how Lincoln’s depressive nature influenced his politics is a revelation. By a careful scrutiny of primary sources and the larger context of nineteenth century attitudes, he is able to give us a rare understanding of the sources of Lincoln’s greatness. His analysis also reveals how differently our own society views depression compared to the nineteenth century.
The March by E. L. Doctorow
This eminent writer’s latest novel captures the madness of war through a retelling of General Sherman’s march through Georgia during the Civil War. Real events and people are interwoven with fictional elements in a powerful evocation of that cruel time. Several of the characters we come to know deeply are Pearl, a plantation owner’s despised daughter who is passing as a drummer boy, Arly, a cunning Reb soldier who believes that God dictates events in his life, and the great but flawed William Tecumseh Sherman. This is a cautionary tale for our times as well.
Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow
Retired crime reporter Stewart Dubinsky discovers a secret manuscript written by his recently deceased father. It discloses his court-martial during World War II for assisting in the escape of a suspected spy. Stewart has to find out if he is “the son of a convict who’d betrayed his country” or if this was a miscarriage of justice. Along the way, he uncovers an amazing story of intrigue, romantic love, and bravery.
The River of Doubt by Candice Millard
A year after he lost a bid for the Presidency in 1912, Teddy Roosevelt embarked on a dangerous journey down an unexplored part of the Amazon. From raging rapids and boiling white water to Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows, the adventure proved to be fraught with danger. But it was just the type of therapy that Roosevelt craved, making his despair over politics seem trivial. He emerged triumphant, and this action-packed account of his ordeal is a truly inspirational tale.
Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie
Part political thriller, part comic folk tale, Rushdie delves into the roots of terrorism and the turmoil of different faiths and cultures trying to coexist. The American ambassador to India, a counterterrorist expert, is murdered by Shalimar, a Kashmiri actor and acrobat turned terrorist. Tension and suspense build as love, jealousy, and revenge are intertwined with larger affairs of state. Yet the author offers cautious optimism that there is a way to work out our differences, if ideologues and fanatics can be contained.
The Tender Bar by J. R. Moehringer
J. R. grew up fatherless, in a house crammed with cousins and ruled by a mean grandfather. Needing something outside this world, at the age of nine he turned to the corner bar, a sanctuary for all types of men. These colorful characters taught and tended to J. R., providing the “father” figures he longed for. He grew up to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper writer, and this is a first-rate memoir of a dysfunctional but tightly knit community that gave him a sense of belonging.

SUMMER 2006

Acts of Faith by Philip Caputo
The Sudanese civil war of the 1990s is the setting for this sharply observed, Pulitzer Prize winning novel. It depicts the lives of several aid workers, including two Americans intent on finding new purpose in their lives. Outwardly committed to helping the starving rebels who are fighting the hard-line Islamic government, their real agenda is more self-serving. A powerful story of epic proportions.
Broken For You by Stephanie Kallos
Margaret Hughes is an elderly woman living alone in her Seattle mansion when she learns she has a brain tumor. Instead of seeking treatment, she decides to take in a young boarder for company. But Wanda is not what she bargained for. She is a tough-as-nails stage manager still seeking the man who jilted her. As the relationship between these two women blossoms, ghosts from both their pasts complicate events. An offbeat, engaging novel with many memorable characters.
First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung
This riveting memoir by the woman who is now the spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World, puts us right in the center of the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia. Luong Ung was one of seven children of a privileged family until they were forced to flee and separate. Ung was trained as a child soldier, while her parents and several siblings went to forced labor camps. Yet she never lost hope. A courageous story of survival and triumph.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
An astonishing memoir from the daughter of a brilliant but alcoholic father and a free spirit mother who hated domesticity. Time and again this pair uproot their children, expose them to humiliations and deprivations, and leave them to find their own way in the world. Eventually the parents end up homeless on the streets of New York, by choice. Walls describes what it was like to grow up in such a dysfunctional family, but she never considers herself a victim. Her love for these neglectful, self-absorbed people shines through, and her powerful storytelling pulls us in.
The Ha-Ha by Dave King
Howard is a wounded Vietnam veteran trying to maintain a decent life in spite of his disabilities—he cannot read, write or speak. When his high school girlfriend asks him to take care of her son while she’s in rehab, it turns out to be a blessing in disguise. An inspiring novel about the nature of survival and hope.
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Spanning a 60 year period, this haunting novel takes readers from Nazi Europe to present day Brighton Beach. At the center of the story are Leo Gursky, a retired locksmith who emigrated after escaping SS officers in Poland, and Alma Singer, a fourteen-year-old who is the center of another family that has suffered. The complex way that these two come together and the surprising plot twists chronicle the triumph of the human spirit.
The Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
This novel recounts the true story of the author’s great-aunt Teresita. In 1873, in the turbulent Mexico of that time, she was born out of wedlock. But Teresita becomes a remarkable young woman, worshiped as a “curandera”, a folk healer. Dubbed “the Most Dangerous Girl in Mexico” for kindling a revolutionary spirit in her disciples, Teresita’s wild, romantic life is told in vivid prose that captures the turmoil of the time.
The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
The treacherous but lush Sundarban islands in the Bay of Bengal are the setting for this masterful novel about a young American marine biologist. Piya arrives in the islands to study a rare species of river dolphin. Her ensuing friendship with several locals reveals the violent history of the islands, and the ever present conflict between wildness and civilization. Ghosh explores philosophical questions about man’s place in nature while also brilliantly developing a suspenseful drama of romance and survival. This story is especially timely in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
This year marks the 100th anniversary of this seminal muckraking novel about the horrors of Chicago’s meatpacking industry at the turn of the century. It is the story of Jurgis Rudus, a young immigrant who finds work in the slaughterhouses, places of horrendous working conditions, poverty, disease, and despair.
Rules For Old Men Waiting by Peter Pouncey
Robert MacIver, a retired historian, is planning how to spend his last days after his beloved wife dies. He’s living in an unheated, dilapidated house on Cape Cod, in the middle of winter. Realizing he’d like to live out his remaining time with dignity, he decides to formulate “Ten Commandments for Old Men Waiting”. One of these is to work every morning, so he takes to writing a short story about WWI, drawing on interviews he conducted with returning veterans many years earlier. This luminous novel is “charged with the excitement of intelligent experience”.
She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Boylan began life as a male named James. In this autobiography, she details her lifelong struggle with her burgeoning femininity, and the path she followed to become a woman after living as a man for 40 years. Boylan married and fathered two children before making the change. Transsexuality is at the heart of this story, but don’t let that get in your way. This is a story about a person finding her way in life against enormous odds.
A Sudden Country by Karen Fisher
Emma Slavin was eleven years old when her family joined the 1847 Oregon migration. In a mesmerizing novel, Fisher brings to life what it was like to be part of the great wagon trains that helped settle the American West. An amazing story of survival in a beautiful but harsh land, and the liberating feeling of beginning anew.
Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the World and Across the Table by Linda Ellerbee
The author, a TV journalist and writer, has a passion for life accompanied by an equal passion for food and all its cultural significance. She is an amazing traveler, unafraid to venture out solo (she rented a house in Santorini for a month to write this collection of essays). Garlic soup with the expats in Mexico, a celebratory dinner in Rome, and Beluga caviar with Malcolm Forbes aboard his yacht are a few of the fascinating chapters. A witty, honest memoir for foodies and globetrotters.
Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Aleksievich
In 1986 the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occurred. This collection of haunting, true stories from that tragedy were recorded by a Ukranian journalist. They reveal the fear and uncertainty, but also the stoic bravery and black humor of those living in a now poisoned world. An important topic for our energy conscious times.
White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenway
This sensual novel about American teenaged sisters growing up in Hong Kong, in the shadow of the Vietnam War, is really about memory and loss. Frankie and Kate could not be more different from each other—Frankie is a rebellious risk taker, while her sister is wary and watchful. Both are caught up in the confusion and passion of their formative years. Against an alluring but dangerous background, pulsing with the vivid colors and sounds of the orient, the two girls’ complex relationship plays out.

WINTER 2006

The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin
This is the true story of the upper Great Plains blizzard of 1888 that claimed between 250 and 500 lives among the pioneers in Nebraska, the Dakota Territory, and Minnesota. Many of them were children, for schools were in session when the tempest roared across the plain, and the varied decisions that teachers made sealed the fate of their students. An adroit, perceptively told tale made personal by the details of the plight of five of these families.
How To Be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward
It’s been fifteen years since the day the three Winters sisters packed their most precious belongings in their mother’s Oldsmobile and planned to run away from home just as soon as school was out. Then 5-year-old Ellie disappeared, and the family never recovered. Now, armed with a grainy magazine photo of a young woman who might be a 20-year-old version of her beloved sister, Caroline begins a quest to find her. Ward’s smart novel is a satisfying blend of humor, poignant longing, and the power of love over loss.
Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Teenager Kafka Tamura runs away from his home in Tokyo to escape from his famous sculptor father, while elderly Satoru Nakata wanders his way through each day after a mysterious childhood accident turns his mind into a blank slate. The fate of these two strangers and how they intertwine is told in this imaginative, fantastical tale that blurs the lines between the real and surreal, while plumbing the depths of love, loneliness, and friendship.
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
A stunning novel in which Roth creates a mesmerizing alternate world. Charles Lindbergh defeats FDR in the 1940 presidential election, and Philip, his parents and his brother weather the isolationist, anti-Semitic political fallout. It is a story as suspenseful as the best thrillers and adept at illustrating how easily people can be persuaded by self-interest to abandon morality. Yet it is also a moving family drama, at times both touching and hilarious.
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Levy’s award winning novel deftly brings two families in the bleak England of 1948 into sharp focus. One is Jamaican and the other English, but both groups struggle with class, race, sex, and the everyday pain that people inflict on one another. We see events from each character’s perspective, thus highlighting the subjectivity of truth and the rationalizations that people tell themselves to be able to live with their weaknesses. A cinematic treatment with characters that are flawed but achingly human.
A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
The only child of multilingual, literature-loving parents, Oz was destined to be a writer, even though he harbored fantasies of a more heroic life. In a memoir as splendid as his fiction, he unfurls the complex story of his family history, one that encompasses the heartbreaks of the Diaspora and the Holocaust, and brings to vivid life the violence, fury, fear, determination, and sorrow that brought Israel into being. It is also an eventful, gently funny, often magical reminiscence that revolves most around Oz’s mother and her tragic death. A powerful story of the making of a writer.

SUMMER 2005

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
A suspense novel that combines elements of the traditional detective story with riveting psychological character studies. Exploring the fine line between love and obsession, and grief and recovery, three different decades-old mysteries land in the lap of private investigator Jackson Brodie. The result is a very entertaining look into the human heart.
Crossing California by Adam Langer
In Chicago's West Rogers Park neighborhood in 1979, California Avenue divides the "haves" on the west side from the "have nots" on the east. This novel uses that metaphorical division to explore the changes in the lives of three families as they confront universal themes like adolescent angst, the search for love, and finding one's identity.
Four Souls by Louise Erdrich
Fleur Pillager, a young Ojibwe woman, embarks on a journey to avenge the theft of her native land. But revenge exacts many prices that she hasn't foreseen. Rich details of Indian culture and community infuse a story of redemption, healing, and the astonishments of love.
Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
The Nobel Laureate's seriocomic novel examining the midlife crisis of an unhappy millionaire. Henderson is a larger-than-life 55-year-old who feels unfulfilled, even though he has money, a large family, and an important position. Thus he embarks on a spiritual journey to Africa, with important consequences.
Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life by Queen Noor
A sort of modern "The King and I", the love story of American born Lisa Halaby and the late King Hussein of Jordan is told against the larger canvas of Middle East turmoil. Queen Noor details her husband's struggles to create Arab unity and find peaceful coexistence with Israel. She herself is active in projects to improve Jordan's medical, educational and cultural facilities. This is a "royalty" story told by a smart, courageous woman.
Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This is the first installment of the memoirs of this Nobel Laureate. Garcia Marquez's astonishing memory weaves a captivating tale of his formative years. His portrayal of his loving family, his precocious determination to be a writer, his frank account of love affairs, and the story of Colombia's turbulent cultural history, are as powerful as his fiction.
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
This novel about a child who sues her parents for the rights to her own body, is a real page-turner. Anna was conceived in order to be the bone marrow donor for her older sister, who has cancer. The dilemmas faced by each member of the family are gripping, as is the court case, which takes a shocking turn. A courageous and heartbreaking story.
The News From Paraguay by Lily Tuck
Winner of the National Book Award, this is a historical epic and a sweeping love story. Franco is the future dictator of Paraguay when he becomes smitten by beautiful Ella as she rides horseback in a Paris park in 1854. He takes her back to his country, and the world she enters is a complicated one, with many adventures and richly drawn characters.
Shadow Divers: The True Adventures of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson
This is a riveting tale about two deep-sea wreck divers who discovered a mysterious hulk lying at a perilous depth off the coast of New Jersey. While it is an action packed story of the German U-boat and the lives it claimed, it also explores the personal odyssey of the divers.
Sweetwater by Roxana Robinson
After her husband dies, Isabel Green withdraws from life. She decides to remarry, to help her reconnect and find comfort. But that proves more complicated than she imagined. An intelligent novel of family ties, loss, and vulnerability that moves along with gathering force, against the majestic backdrop of the Adirondacks.
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
A staff reporter for the New Yorker, Gladwell excels at making complex theories clear and understandable. Here he explores the phenomenon that small changes can make big differences, that an idea or trend can have profound influences on social behavior.
Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David von Drehle
The Triangle Shirtwaist factory in NYC in 1911 became the site of the deadliest workplace fire in American history. This moving tale explains how it helped usher in the push for industry reforms, while giving a shocking, moment- by- moment account of the fire's spread, the lives lost, and the scandalous outcome of the owners' trial for manslaughter.
War Trash by Ha Jin
This powerful novel introduces us to the experience of Chinese soldiers held in U. S. POW camps during the Korean War. Ha Jin is a master at evoking vivid historical detail, building suspense, and exploring humanity in all its complexity.

WINTER 2005

Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama
Obama is the newly elected junior Senator from Illinois. The son of a white American mother and a black African father, he wrote this powerful biography before he was in the limelight. In it he candidly explores his rebellious teens, his activist years in Chicago dealing with poverty and corruption, and how he came to terms with his racial identity, especially after visiting his father’s extended family in Kenya.
Family History by Dani Shapiro
Rachel Jensen, a housewife and art restorer, thinks she has it all until tragedy strikes, involving her 13-year-old daughter Kate. This novel explores with mesmerizing intensity adolescent guilt, the frailty of marriage and parenthood, and the struggle to accept the limits of love.
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder
Dr. Farmer wants to change the world. Charismatic and charming, he is the recipient of a “genius” grant, a renowned infectious-disease specialist, an anthropologist, and the founder of a small public charity. This book explores Dr. Farmer’s philosophy, “the only real nation is humanity”. It also chronicles how he achieved such remarkable results in places like Haiti where his methods have resulted in better outcomes for poor tuberculosis patients than those in the United States.
She Is Me by Cathleen Schine
A funny and touching novel about three generations of women who wrestle with personal demons and their love for each other. Grandmother Lotte faces old age and cancer, mother Greta also has cancer and is starting to question her sexuality, and daughter Elizabeth has a three-year-old son, a live-in boyfriend, and is trying to write a screenplay for Madame Bovary. A hilarious yet wise look at the complicated nature of mother/daughter relationships.
Walking Into the Night by Olaf Olafsson
Christian Benediktsson is an Icelandic butler for William Randolph Hearst. A very private man, he performs his duties with efficiency and discretion, even as Hearst’s affairs are unraveling before their eyes. But in his youth, as World War I ends, he abandoned his wife and children in order to follow his great passion for another woman. Now wrestling with his guilt, he writes unsent letters to his wife back in Iceland, trying to make sense of loyalty and betrayal on many levels.

SUMMER 2004

The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home by George Colt
Built by Colt's great-grandfather one hundred years ago on Cape Cod, the author has written a loving memoir to the place as he anticipates its sale.. Evoking universal memories of the bittersweet delights of summers past, he uses what may be "the last" visit to the house to describe the societal and personal events that affected his Boston Brahmin family over the years, both good and bad.
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Young Nazneen leaves her Bangladeshi village and is sent to London to marry an older man. There she observes her neighbors, raises a family and learns to truly love. This beautiful book is about honesty, bravery, love and the kindness of strangers.
The Colour by Rose Tremain
1860's New Zealand is the setting for this passionate story about immigrants caught up in that country's gold rush. It's a sweeping historical adventure encompassing lives lived at full tilt, awesome landscapes, and the human heart laid bare.
Crabwalk by Gunter Grass
Nobel author Grass again explores Germany's tortured past. This novel begins with a torpedoed Nazi cruise ship that results in the death of 9,000 people. The consequences for many people involved, right up to the present, are told in an engrossing story and a meditation on Germany's struggle with its wartime memories.
Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town by Paul Theroux
This is the writer's "experience of vanishing" into the African continent, where his encounters with the natives, aid workers and other tourists make for entertaining reading. Yet he also offers a sobering look at the social and political chaos that engulfs most of Africa today.
Fabulous Small Jews by Joseph Epstein
A short story collection by a local author. With Jewish Chicago as the background, the stories thoughtfully explore how people make sense of life, live honest lives, and die at peace. The characters tend to be hardworking and solitary, having survived poverty, the Holocaust, tough working conditions, and much more.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Politics takes a back seat in this beautiful story of two friends, the wealthy Amir and his servant, Hassan. It opens during the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy and chronicles what happens to this boyhood friendship as the wrenching contemporary history of their country unfolds.
The Mammoth Cheese by Sheri Holman
Eleven premature babies are born to dog trainer Manda Frank in a little Virginia town, and thus begins this moving and pleasurable novel. Full of diverse characters in a vivid setting, including the making of a 1,235-pound cheese in an attempt to save the family farm, the author explores the burdens and joys of rural America.
Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire
A beautifully wrought memoir of growing up in colorful 1950s Havana and then the devastation caused by Castro's coming to power. The son of a judge, Eire was eventually shipped off to Florida and he never saw his father again. This book is both an ode to paradise lost and a captivating baring of the author's soul.
Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath by Kate Moses
Covering the last few months of the poet's life, the author focuses most on the collapse of her marriage to Ted Hughes, and the fevered activities leading up to her suicide. The author deftly captures the mood and emotions of that manic time, while also portraying Plath's joy in words and images, her fierce motherhood, and domestic drive.

WINTER 2004

The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster
David Zimmer is trying to rebuild his life, with little success, after a terrible tragedy leaves him without family. When he stumbles on the strange case of a 1920s silent film star who disappeared without a trace, very unexpected things start to happen. A many-layered, complex novel, suffused with warmth and wisdom.
Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
Stories from three generations of the Reyes family are woven together in this Mexican-American saga. Narrated by young “Lala”, a shrewd observer of every aspect of life, the annual trip from Chicago to grandmother’s house in Mexico City becomes the inspiration for a novel rich in characters, action, love and humor.
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
This thriller-like true history tells the story of two extraordinary men during one of Chicago’s shining moments, the World’s Fair of 1893. Daniel Burnham, the fair’s architect, had to deal with incredible challenges, including the death of his partner, on his way to ensuring the fair’s success. Meanwhile, H.H. Holmes was equally creative as a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Both the magic and the horrifying dark side of 19th century Chicago come alive for the reader.
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
This tale is set amid the opulence and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul. It is part murder mystery, part novel of ideas, and part love story. The sultan has commissioned the best artists of Turkey to create a great book with illuminations in the European Renaissance style. But Islam deems figurative art an affront, and thus this undertaking is fraught with danger. When one of the miniaturist artists disappears, the pictures themselves hold the clues to the mystery. Pamuk won the IMPAC Dublin Award for this jewel of a novel.
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
During the Ayatollah’s strict regime in Iran, the author secretly met with seven female students to read and discuss prohibited works from “decadent” Western Literature. At first shy and intimidated, slowly the women “shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color”. Over two years, the sessions expanded to discussions of love, marriage, the indignities of living in such a repressive society, and other issues. This memoir is a testament to the power of literature to change lives.

SUMMER 2003

The Caprices by Sabina Murray
Amazon.com wrote, "With none of the nostalgia that mars so many books about World War II, ...this short story collection covers the unfamiliar territory of the Pacific Campaign - Malaysia, the Philippines, New Guinea - and the all-too-familiar territory of human suffering ... brilliant and affecting."

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
Kate is a successful Canadian zoologist, used to dissecting and analyzing. When she narrates the story of the tragedy that changed her family twenty years earlier, and that she must now come to terms with, the result is a beautifully crafted novel that will leave readers fascinated.

Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee
Indian tradition meets the American way of life for three daughters. Tara, the narrator of the story, now lives in San Francisco and is a single parent. Her world suddenly changes when a stranger comes to her door claiming to be a member of her family. To determine the truth, she must get beyond the traditions and taboos of India and the immigrant communities of the U.S.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller
Born in England and now living in Wyoming, Fuller lived in Rhodesia during that country’s civil war (1971-1979). “With a unique and subtle sensitivity to racial issues, Fuller describes her parents’ racism and the wartime relationships between blacks and whites through a child’s watchful eyes” according to Publishers Weekly.

Embers by Sandor Marai
Two old men, once best friends, meet after 41 years apart. The setting, an old Hungarian castle, evokes dark fairy tales and the magical realism of many Latin American novelists. But the book really captures the glamour of the fin de siecle era before the wars, and the twisted bonds of friendship and betrayal.

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathon Safran Foer
A young Jewish American writer searches in the Ukraine for the woman who might have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. This novel is full of charm and humor at the same time it reveals the dark forces of family and history.

Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser
A frightening expose of the ubiquitous and seemingly lawless food industry that dominates the American diet. Similar to Upton Sinclair’s classic, The Jungle, this sociocultural investigation will make all of us more careful eaters.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
After a terrible shipwreck, Pi, the son of a zookeeper, finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a Bengal tiger for company. “A fabulous romp... ‘a story that will make you believe in God’ as one character says” wrote Publishers Weekly. The 2002 winner of the Booker Prize.

Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Lily Owen grows up motherless and neglected on a S. Carolina peach farm. When her beloved nanny must leave town in a hurry after insulting some belligerent white men, Lily flees with her. This novel, about the search for a mother and the need to mother oneself, does a wonderful job of depicting the crucial elements of character building.

A Simple Habana Melody by Oscar Hijuelos
Hijuelos addresses the question, can there be, after Buchenwald, any more rumbas? However, set just after World War II when the aging composer Israel Levis returns to his childhood home of Havana after many years in Europe, this is not primarily a war novel. Rather, it is about the richness of memory, and music, after much suffering.

Three Junes by Julia Glass
The setting shifts from Greece to Scotland, Greenwich Village and the Hamptons, during three important summers for the members of the McLeod family. “Alternately joyful and sad, this exploration of modern relationships and the families people both inherit and create for themselves is highly recommended” wrote Library Journal.

Unless by Carol Shields
A Canadian writer is happily married with three children. Suddenly, her eldest daughter becomes a “street person”. How did this beautiful, caring, sweet young lady turn into a filthy, mute beggar with a sign reading “goodness” around her neck? Shields uses this central conundrum and a mother’s grief to reflect on writing, modern womanhood, power, family, and love. A story that grabs the reader on many levels.

Below are the Winter 2003 Book Club selections. Chosen to represent a range of interests, it is hoped these books will stimulate thought and discussion among our diverse group of readers. As always, your comments and suggestions are welcome.

AMERICAN CHICA: TWO WORLDS, ONE CHILDHOOD by Marie Arana. This memoir and love story is full of the tension wrought by two cultures colliding. The author’s North American mother fostered independent self-reliance and her South American father emphasized tradition and family loyalty. Arana, the editor of the Washington Post Book World, combines her journalistic eye with an endearingly humorous style.

ATONEMENT by Ian McEwan. An English country estate in 1935 is the opening setting for this award-winning novel. The events of one scorching summer afternoon change forever the lives of the Tallis family. But what actually did happen? Through the coming years, including the tragedy of World War II, themes of injustice, responsibility, guilt, and atonement are masterfully explored.

BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS by Dai Sijie. Two friends stave off despair during the Cultural Revolution in China through their discovery of a cache of books written by classic European authors. They weave wonderful stories from their forbidden reading, enchanting other villagers and a charming peasant girl.

THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT by Sloan Wilson. The 1955 bestseller has been reissued with a new introduction by Jonathan Franzen. Capturing the mood of a generation, here is the story of Tom and Betsy Rath, a young couple with everything going for them in the optimistic post-war era. Tom finds himself caught up in the corporate rat race, and his voyage through that world eventually leads to the realization of the importance of responsibility and integrity. A story that seems especially appropriate for our current time.

THE PICKUP by Nadine Gordimer. Julie Summer is one of South Africa’s privileged minority. But she longs to be bohemian, and takes up with an illegal immigrant from a poor Arab country. As their relationship deepens, Nobel Prize-winner Gordimer eloquently explores the psychological nuances and the broader impact of racism, economic chaos, and the world’s desperate outcasts.

YEAR OF WONDERS by Geraldine Brooks. A small town in Derbyshire becomes a target for the horrific 17th century plague. As the population succumbs, the survivors choose to stay put and prevent the contagion from spreading, while helping each other as best they can. A skillful construction of how ordinary people cope with extraordinary circumstances.

SUMMER 2002

BECOMING MADAME MAO by Anchee Min. She began as a beautiful actress, but became the "white boned demon" during her reign of terror. Min grew up fascinated by this complex woman, and in this novel she moves back and forth between stories of the film star and the evil dictator, and how China shaped her.
BEL CANTO by Ann Patchett. Winner of the Pen/Faulkner award, "Patchett's tragicomic novel - a fantasia of guns and Puccini and Red Cross negotiations - invokes the glorious, unreliable promises of art, politics, and love" wrote the New Yorker in 2001.
BOTANY OF DESIRE by Michael Pollan. This work ingeniously explores the reciprocal relationship between people and domesticated plants. Four fundamental human desires - sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control are paired with the plants that satisfy them: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes.
DEATH OF VISHNU by Manil Suri. Vishnu is the odd-jobs man for a Bombay apartment complex. As he lies dying, the building's tenants' lives unfold around him. Their stories, and Vishnu's fevered recollections of his past, blend comedy, Hindu mythology, and much compassionate tenderness.
EMPIRE FALLS by Richard Russo. The author again tells of blue-collar life, but this time he sets in motion a large cast of characters from every social stratum in their depressed mill town. Russo's comedic timing, great dialogue and poignant story made this the 2002 winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
EXPECTING ADAM by Martha Beck. "Wickedly funny and wrenchingly sad memoirs of a young mother awaiting the birth of a Down Syndrome baby while simultaneously pursuing a doctorate at Harvard" wrote Kirkus Reviews in 1998.
A GESTURE LIFE by Chang-rae Lee. Franklin Hata, Korean-born, brought up in Japan, and now living in a New York suburb, has tried to fit in with each of these cultures. Through Franklin's compelling life the novel explores the dilemma of being an outsider, and the heartbreaking lengths a person will go in order to adapt.
IN SUNLIGHT, IN A BEAUTIFUL GARDEN by Kathleen Cambor. The Johnstown PA flood of 1889 unleashes nature's wrath on a beautiful Memorial Day weekend. Both the town's wealthy industrialists, enjoying their gentlemen's club, and the less fortunate who live below the dam that burst, are forever scarred by this tragedy that took over 2000 lives. The author tells the story from many socioeconomic perspectives, intertwined with a lyrical, bittersweet romance involving pampered, elite Nora and working class protestor Daniel.
INTERPRETER OF MALADIES by Jhumpa Lahiri. "In Lahiri's sympathetic tales, the pang of disappointment turns into a sudden hunger to know more...She breathes unpredictable life into the page, and the reader finishes each story reseduced, wishing he could spend a whole novel with its characters" wrote The New York Times Book Review in 1999.
ONE THOUSAND WHITE WOMEN by Jim Fergus. Little Wolf, chief of the Cheyenne, suggests to President Ulysses S. Grant that peace could be established if his tribe were given white women as wives. Mary Dodd soon finds herself traveling west and her historic adventures are affectingly portrayed in this novel.
THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe. First published in 1959, this worldwide classic masterpiece is still relevant for today. Okonkwo is a successful, solid man in his tribe, but he also exhibits all-too-human flaws well-known in Greek tragedy. It is a simple tale, set in Nigeria before and after the coming of colonialism, but it resonates with a keen awareness of the qualities all men have in common.
WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS by Kazuo Ishiguro. Christopher Banks is an English boy born in Shanghai before World War I. Orphaned at age nine, he grows up to be a renowned detective focused on unraveling the mystery of the disappearance of his parents, while the Sino-Japanese War rages. This many-layered story illuminates the power of one's past to determine memory, perception, and understanding.

WINTER 2002

A Bend In the River by V. S. Naipaul
Naipaul won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature. This 1979 work explores the complex inner turmoil of a man caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and the tenacious hold of past traditions.
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Winner of the Booker Prize, this novel entwines the stories of two sisters. One of them dies early on, and the surviving sister, Iris, gradually reveals the mystery of Laura’s death. The story also includes Laura’s novel-within-the-novel, a science fiction work, and many family secrets are revealed as the big conflicts of the twentieth century unfold.
Founding Brothers: the revolutionary generation by Joseph J. Ellis
Ellis focuses on six crucial moments in the early days of the republic, each illustrating the personal, intimate nature of politics at the time, and the ongoing debate over the meaning of the American Revolution.
How I Came Into My Inheritance by Dorothy Gallagher
“No memoir about caring for elderly parents is quite like this one, a piercingly funny book ... Gallagher opens with the sickroom of Bella and Izzy, her Russian-Jewish mother and father, then takes their stories backward in time through the chapters of the American immigrant experience.” Time, December 24, 2001.
Lying Awake by Mark Salzman
“The life of a modern nun is often misjudged, mysterious, and quizzical. When a nun is the recipient of mystical visions and ecstasies, and the fame that results from them, her life is all the more fascinating.” Booklist, September 15, 2000.
Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult
‘Two worlds collide when high-profile Philadelphia attorney Ellie Hathaway decides to reevaluate her life and travel to ... Amish country. She stays with relatives, hoping to find the tranquility that she knew as a child, but instead she becomes entwined in the murder trial of her relative’s niece.” Booklist, April 15, 2000.

2001-2002

BEE SEASON by Myla Goldberg. "Nine-year-old Eliza is a seemingly unremarkable girl who is caught by surprise by an extraordinary gift for spelling, which rescues her from the oblivion of the ordinary. This beautifully wrought story of a child's pains and joys and a family's unraveling marks the memorable debut of a talented storyteller." Library Journal, March 1, 2000.
BEING DEAD by Jim Crace. "In his latest novel, Crace archly explores life and death and the effect of chance upon the two. From the very beginning we learn that Celice and Joseph, two married, middle-aged zoologists, are murder victims. From there the book moves backward and forward in time, changing points of view along the way, to show why they came to be where they were when they were murdered and what happened after their deaths." Booklist, April 1, 2000.
CORELLI'S MANDOLIN by Louis de Bernieres. "This novel, set on the idyllic Greek Island of Cephallonia, follows the lives of its inhabitants from the peaceful days before World War II through the Italian occupation of the island... It is funny, heartbreaking, and horrifying in its fictional testimony to the changes war exacts...A tour de force depiction of the triumph of life over evil." Booklist, September 15, 1994.
DISGRACE by J.M. Coetzee. "David Lurie, 52-year-old divorced literary scholar, is disgraced for sexually harassing one of his college students. Refusing to submit to 'counseling,' he loses his job... and moves in with his beloved daughter Lucy on her small farm in the eastern Cape [South Africa]." Winner of the Booker Prize in 1999. Booklist, November 15, 1999.
ENGLISH PASSENGERS by Matthew Kneale. "The novel follows the voyage of the Sincerity, a smuggling vessel that takes on a party of highbrow landlubbers bound for the island of Tasmania...These men have a terrible surprise in store for them. Tasmania's British colonists have been warring with the Aborigines, and the Sincerity is sailing unwittingly into the heart of darkness." Winner of the Whitbread Award for Book of the Year in 2000. Time, February 19, 2001.
A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS by Dave Eggers. "Eggers describes his parents' horrific deaths from cancer within a few weeks of each other during his senior year of college, and his decision to move with his eight year-old brother, Toph, from the suburbs of Chicago to Berkeley, near where his sister, Beth, lives." Publishers Weekly, December 13, 1999.
HUMAN STAIN by Philip Roth. "Coleman Silk, at 71 a distinguished professor at a small New England college, has been harried from his position because of what has been perceived as a racist slur...In a dazzling coup, Roth turns all expectations on their heads, and begins to show Silk in a new and astounding light, as someone who has lived a huge lie all his life, making the fuss over his alleged racism even more surreal." Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2001. Publishers Weekly, March 27, 2000.
LADIES AUXILIARYby Tova Mirvis. "The world of this confident, insightful debut novel is the tightly knit Orthodox Jewish community of Memphis, Tenn., a social structure that unravels when an unconventional New York convert settles there with her five-year-old daughter...Generous with humor and compassion, Mirvis paints tenderly nuanced portraits of strong female characters while scrutinizing an entrenched religious subculture whose traditions are threatened by modern temptations." Publishers Weekly, August 9, 1999.
ON THE REZ by Ian Frazier. Frazier's book is about the Oglala Sioux who live on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. "As Frazier serendipitously shuttles his narrative between Pine Ridge visits and snippets of Indian history, a fascinating picture emerges of a people struggling with the consequences of old wrongs and human orneriness." Time, January 24, 2000.
SAMURAI’S GARDEN by Gail Tsukiyama. "An extraordinarily graceful and moving novel about goodness and beauty...Tsukiyama uses the Japanese invasion of China during the late 1930s as a somber backdrop for her unusual story about a 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen who is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis." Booklist, March 1, 1995.
WHITE TEETH by Zadie Smith. "White Teeth, a multigenerational, multiethnic, somewhat zany novel, is the ambitious undertaking of first-time novelist Smith. Set in London and spanning more than 25 years, with recollections and accounts back to earlier days, it presents the combined story of the Jones and Iqbal families." Winner of the Whitbread Award for First Novel in 2000. Booklist, April 1, 2000.
A YEAR BY THE SEA by Joan Anderson. "Curling up with this autobiography will refresh readers' souls and adjust their attitudes. With their two sons grown and married, Anderson and her husband decided to take a 'vacation' from their long marriage...During the year-long separation, Anderson reestablished her connection to nature and was able to discover new hope." Library Journal, March 15, 1999.

WINTER 2000-2001

AHAB'S WIFE by Sena Jeter Naslund. "This narrative, written in Una's voice, captures the exciting and pivotal times of mid-nineteenth-century New England, reflecting the pressing issues of the day, such as slavery, the position of women, and the influence of religion. It is part adventure, part love story, brimming with references to literature..." Booklist, August 1999.

THE FISH CAN SING by Halldor Laxness. Laxness won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955 and this is one of his finest novels. Several narrative strands come together in an orphan's coming-of-age story, a tragic tale of a renowned singer, and a wonderfully evocative portrait of Reykjavik at the beginning of the twentieth century, poised between quaint old customs and modern times.

GALILEO'S DAUGHTER by Dava Sobel. "The daughter of the title was Virginia, the eldest of Galileo's three children. She spent her adult life in a convent... From there she carried on a lifelong correspondence with her father - doting, supportive, stylish letters. Science writer Sobel...translated them and made them the basis of this lucid review of Galileo's life and scientific achievements." Scientific American, January 2000.

GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE by Susan Vreeland. "Each chapter reveals a new layer of meaning and import. The novel follows the trail of an "unknown" painting by the Dutch master Vermeer...from the time of its creation in seventeenth-century Holland to the present day....True to the spirit of Vermeer, Vreeland uses art as a vehicle for capturing special moments in the lives of ordinary people." Booklist, September 1, 1999.

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN by Jonathan Lethem. "Tourette's syndrome sleuth...Lionel Essrog....is seeking nothing, not the mother who left him ...until his boss, his savior and protector, mobster/detective Frank Minna is murdered while investigating a case. Lionel devotes himself to tracking down the murderer. What a wild Coney Island Cyclone ride of a chase it is!" Library Journal, February 1, 2000.

PLAINSONG by Kent Haruf. "A stirring meditation on the true nature and necessity of the family. Among the several damaged families in this beautifully cadenced and understated tale is that of Tom Guthrie, a high-school history teacher in small Holt, Colorado, who’s left to raise his two young sons, Ike and Bobby, alone when his troubled wife...abandons them altogether." Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 1999.

Spring 2000

EUCALYPTUS by Murray Bail. A contemporary rendering of a fable set in the outback of Australia. A wealthy landowner stipulates that only the man who is able to name the hundreds of varieties of eucalyptus that he has planted on his land can marry his beautiful daughter.
HANNA'S DAUGHTERS by Marianne Fredriksson. A much talked about best seller in Europe. This novel explores the relationships and patterns of behavior of three generations of women in a Swedish family: grandmother, mother and daughter.
THE HOURS by Michael Cunningham. Using Virginia Woolf''s Mrs. Dalloway for inspiration, the author improvises a tale, much in the way one jazz musician improvises on another's music, and interweaves the simple stories of a day in the life of three different women in three different eras.
PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN by Simon Winchester. The strange, but true story of the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary is revealed in the telling of the unusual relationship of its editor and one of its main contributors, an American Civil War veteran who, unbeknowst to the editor, was a criminally insane murderer.
RED TENT by Anita Diamant. This historical novel, set in Old Testament times and using biblical tales, focuses on the life of Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob, to illuminate what life might have been like for her and others during this period.
SOMETHING TO DECLARE by Julia Alvarez. The best-selling author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents skillfully and engagingly relates her early life in the Domincan Republic, her family's immigration and adjustment to life in the U.S. and her development as a writer.
UNRAVELLING by Elizabeth Graver. Set in 19th century New England, this novel tells the story of Amiee Slater, an intelligent and independent young woman who chooses to lead a nonconformist life. A familiar tale, masterfully and vividly told.

Summer 2000

AMY & ISABELLE by Elizabeth Strout “ A lyrical, closely observant first novel, charting the complex, resilient relationship of a mother and daughter... Part of the novel’s power derives from Strout’s ability to set Amy and Isabelle’s painful struggles within the larger context of a small town.” Kirkus Reviews, November, 1998.
ESCAPE THROUGH THE PYRENEES by Lisa Fittko The spellbinding memoir of the author and her husband’s life in France during World War II as Jewish leftists, active in the anti-Fascist German resistance and their heroic work escorting small groups of refugees over the Pyrenees from France to Spain and freedom at a great risk to their own lives.
ESPERANZA’S BOX OF SAINTS by Maria Amparo Escandon “Widow Esperanza grieves the unexpected loss of her only child during a routine tonsillectomy... She then sees the face of San Judas Tadeo, patron of desperate causes...and hears him say Blanca is not dead... She takes a third class bus to Tijuana in search of Blanca... her picaresque quest is at times unexpectedly hilarious.” Booklist January 1, 1999.
EVENING NEWS by Marly Swick “Swick’s fourth book and second novel is an engrossing domestic melodrama carved from the same vein so successfully mined by writers like Sue Miller and Jane Hamilton. Things begin explosively with the accidental shooting of two year old Trina by her nine year old half brother Teddy. Trina dies and the story of the loss’s effect on her survivors is told in the juxtaposed narratives of guilt-ridden Teddy and the children’s stricken mother Giselle.” Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 1998.
FATAL STORM by Robert Mundle “Only 44 of the 115 yachts that started the race [the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race] finished, 5 yachts sank, 7 were abandoned, 6 sailors died and 57 racers had to be rescued from the hurricane-strength winds and up to 90 foot swells. Mundle, a sailor and journalist who reported the awful tragedy live on Australian TV, relies on 124 interviews with survivors to relive the terror and excitement of a storm every bit as fierce as that described in Sebastian Junger’s Perfect Storm.” Library Journal. September 1, 1999.
GARDENS IN THE DUNES by Leslie Silko “There are many wonderful moments in this ambitious tale of Native America in conflict with paternalistic white culture, unquestionably the best fiction yet from Silko. It’s settings are the southwestern and northeastern U.S., England, and Europe near the end of the 19th century and its resonant theme is the imperfect adaptation of a girl of the (Arizona) Sand Lizard Indian tribe and an educated woman seeking independence to each other’s starkly contrasting ‘worlds’. ”Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 1999.
THE LADIES’ MAN by Elinor Lipman “A romantic comedy of errors by the novelist whose previous labors in this vineyard (Isabel’s Bid, 1995), have established her as a master hand...Funny, dumb, good-natured, predicable and slick: Lipman knows what to do and does it very well.” Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 1999.
THE LOVE OF A GOOD WOMAN: STORIES by Alice Munro “...Munro packs each paragraph with a wealth of significant details, articulates the thoughts of a wide array of curious characters and captures the mixed signals embedded in exchanges between women friends, husbands and wives, or children and parents. Booklist, September 1, 1998.
THE NIGHT INSPECTOR by Frederick Busch “This story is set in New York City in 1867, and also in the painfully vivid memories and premonitions experienced by its narrator, Civil War casualty William Bartholomew, a former Northern sniper whose destroyed visage is concealed beneath a specially constructed mask...Another stunning dramatization of Busch’s commanding theme: that the world is a battlefield of chaos and dangers from which the innocent must - and may never - be protected.” Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 1999.
THE SPIRIT CATCHES YOU AND YOU FALL DOWN by Anne Fadiman “...tells the story of a Hmong family’s experience with the American health care system and highlights many of the weaknesses of what some describe as the best health care system in the world. Fadiman writes beautifully and weaves the story of the Lees, their doctors, and the social and political history of the Hmong people and their unwilling immigration to the U.SA. into a book that is difficult to put down once started.” New England Journal of Medicine.,
THE SONG OF THE LARK by Willa Cather In this most autobiographical of Willa Cather’s novels, Cather exquisitely portrays the artistic development of Thea Kronberg, a talented singer growing up in the unsophisticated West of Colorado, and her ascent as an opera singer on the cultured East coast.
THE TRAVELLING HORNPLAYER by Barbara Trapido “With tenderness and wit, Trapido weaves together a huge cast of characters in contemporary England and tells a story of family love and grief, passionate sex and betrayal, and bleak coincidence.” Booklist, January 1, 1999.

Compiled by Louise Pacholik, Reference Librarian

1999-2000

DANCING AFTER HOURS: STORIES by Andre Dubus. "In his first collection of short fiction in 7 years, the great Dubus returns with 14 luminous stories...Charged with emotion and rendered in fluid, elegant language, these stories speak to the sacredness of life in all its forms." Booklist, January l, 1996
LE DIVORCE by Diane Johnson. "...delightful comedy of manners and morals, money, marriage, and murder, as wickedly funny as it is deeply insightful. And at the center of it all is the irrepressible Isabel -- captivated by everything Paris has to offer, including one handsome, worldly French diplomat...Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 29, 1996
ENDURANCE: SHACKLETON'S INCREDIBLE JOURNEY by Alfred Lansing. A riveting narrative of Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated expedition in 1914 to cross the Antarctic overland. It recounts the crew's desperate efforts to stay alive in the most hostile of environments." 'Endurance' is one of the most gripping, suspenseful, intense stories anyone will read." Chicago Tribune, April 26, 1959
A HOPE IN THE UNSEEN: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY FROM THE INNER CITY TO THE IVY LEAGUE by Ron Suskind. "...tells the story of one African American youth's rise from Anacostia, in southeast Washington D.C. to the ivied halls of Brown University. Suskind weaves interviews with Cedric, his family, teachers, and friends into a narrative that shows the challenges facing a ghetto youth bent on academic achievement. " Kirkus Reviews , March 15, 1998
INTO THE FOREST by Jean Hegland. "Hegland's mesmerizing first novel is set in the near future, when a distant war has brought about the collapse of industrialized America and in particular, left two sisters secluded in the Northern California forest and facing the challenges of survival with diminishing supplies, growing fear of predatory outsiders, no electricity, and no telephone." Booklist, July 19, 1996
A PATCHWORK PLANET by Anne Tyler. "Tyler's latest novel tells the story of a year in the life of 30 year old Barnaby Gaitlen who, despite coming from a wealthy family, works as an odd-job man. Tyler uses Barnaby to explore the theme of circumstances, weighed against virtue and luck in building an honorable life." Library Journal, May, 1998
POISONWOOD BIBLE by Barbara Kingsolver. In 1959, Baptist missionary Nathan Price, along with his wife and four daughters, is assigned to the Belgian Congo. "Poisonwood Bible is ultimately a novel of character, a narrative shaped by keen-eyed women contemplating themselves and one another and a village whose familiarity it takes a tragedy to discover." New York Times Book Review, October 18, 1998
REEDS IN THE WIND by Grazia Deledda. "Published in Italy in 1913 but never translated into English, this richly atmospheric novel by Deledda (1871-1936), the second woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (1926)...beautifully captures the rough, malaria-ridden Sardinian setting, where superstition vies with theology, folklore has a strong hold on the imagination, and the sound of the accordion fills the courtyard with moans and shouts." Publishers Weekly, September 21, 1998
ROXANNA SLADE by Reynolds Price. "Roxanna Slade, born with the century, looks back from the near present over her long and (seemingly) uneventful life as a wife and mother in a small North Carolina town...A lovingly detailed record of a long and seemingly modest life, given resonance by the prolific Price's extraordinary language and his sharp eye for the subtle complexities of character." -Kirkus Reviews , April, 1998
TORTILLA CURTAIN by T. Coraghessan Boyle. Depicts the very different lives of illegal aliens Candido and America Rincon and the suburban, middle class Mossbacher family when their lives become intertwined because of an automobile accident. "This highly engaging story subtly plays on our consciences, forcing us to form, confirm, or dispute social, political and moral viewpoints." Booklist, June 1, 1995
WHEN MEMORY SPEAKS by Jill Kerr Conway. "...a thoroughly engaging history of the modern memoir, covers many topics, such as the difference between the autobiographies of men, who structure their life stories according to the archetypical Greek hero, and women, who cast themselves in the role of the romantic heroine, who is passive until compelled to altruistic action by some external force.." Booklist, February 15, 1998

Compiled by Louise Pacholik, Reference Librarian.

1998-1999

American Pastoral by Philip Roth. "Swede" Levov's American dream life is shattered when his daughter becomes a terrorist during the Vietnam War years.
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. Chosen as one of the best books of the century by the British public, Birdsong is a graphic World War I saga with romance.
Echo House by Ward Just. The timely story of three generations of a powerful Washington, D.C. family who consider government service to be their birthright.
The Family Markowitz by Allegra Goodman. Goodman's interlocking short stories touch on family life, relationships, Jewish identity and God.
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. One of the greatest and most significant American novels follows the Joad family during the Depression.
How Stella Got Her Groove Back by Terry McMillan. Stella, a successful Black investment analyst and divorced mother of a young son, takes a vacation to Jamaica and falls in love with a man half her age.
Life Without Water by Nancy Peacock. This first novel looks back on a child's view of her family's unconventional communal lifestyle during the sixties.
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. One of the most popular books of 1998, this stunning novel immerses the reader in the world of a geisha, from childhood through old age.
Miriam's Kitchen by Elizabeth Ehrlich. This is a true account of an assimilated Jewish woman's attempt to learn the traditions of her ancestors and the role these customs play in her daily life.
Snow in August by Pete Hamill. A friendship between an 11-year-old Irish Catholic boy and an elderly Jewish rabbi in 1940's Brooklyn has far reaching consequences.
Straight Man by Richard Russo. William Henry Deveraux is almost 50 and stuck as the English chair at West Central Pennsylvania University in this funny yet serious novel.
Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin. This noted author's memoir of growing up in 1940's Long Island, in love with her family and baseball, is a picture of a feisty girlhood before feminism.

Compiled by: Amy Barrow, Reference Librarian

1997-1998

An American Requiem by James Carroll
At Home In Mitford by Jan Karon
Before Women Had Wings by Connie May Fowler
A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr
The Color Of Water by James McBride
Going To the Sun by James McManus
Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser
My Summer With George by Marilyn French
Remembering Laughter by Wallace Stegner
The Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham
Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett
Zenzele by J. Nozipo Maraire

Compiled by: Amy Barrow, Reference Librarian

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