Seven Days of Us: A Novel
by Francesca Hornak
Home Sweet Home (5/16/2017)
Author Hornak is a sharp observer of everyday modern life, as her popular column in the Sunday times attests. In Seven Days of Us her focused lens is pointed at each member of the Birch family in turn. Enforced togetherness, a component of any popular holiday, will resonate with readers wherever they live. Each family member has the opportunity for intimate communication with the others in a cherished country home. Grappling with the bonds of family makes for emotional struggles and revelations that will engage fans of family drama. The contemporary storylines, reflecting the conflicts of self-serving vs. self sacrifice and the caring for immediate family vs. caring for the global village, artfully unfold and draw the reader in. Sympathies for one character over another will stimulate book group discussion. Fans of Penelope Lively take note: Hornak crafts a country house novel for our times that begs comparisons with Lively's 2009 Family Album.
If We Were Villains
by M. L. Rio
The Bard at Broadwater (3/13/2017)
Here is a multidimensional story that hits all the right keys in the dramatic arsenal. And that is no surprise, given it is populated by a cast of Shakespearean actors. Creative arts-focused book groups take note! Here is a novel that will excite your discussion with its many layered references to the classics, the art of theater, and the coming of age of a group of earnest and dedicated young actors. The young thespians take a dark turn as they reach the end of their college training and their impassioned rivalries take on renewed vigor. Fueled by lust for success, each other and a drug and alcohol haze, the actors' personal ambitions, loyalty to each other and devotion to art all lay exposed. Omniscient narrator Oliver takes his time unfolding the action and the reader's patience may be tested by the fourth years' dramatics. Will they lose themselves in the personas of their roles or will their essential characters rise above the artifice of theater? M.L. Rio's story pays homage to Lord of the Flies, Donna Tartt's Secret History, an endless loop of Midsomer Mysteries and, of course, Dostoyevsky.
The Typewriter's Tale
by Michiel Heyns
Wry Along the Rother (12/27/2016)
Like all the dressmakers, shop girls, handmaids and paid companions before her the typewriter is afforded a view into another world. Her reticence is her passport into the creative mind of novelist Henry James. The reader sits on Frieda Wroth's shoulder as she types the great man's words and hears her thoughts as she anticipates the next word beyond his pause. In her workday as amanuensis she scarcely has time for thoughts of her own, and James is oblivious to her inner life. He occasionally offers her chocolate bars to keep up her strength, as she observes, a reflexive gesture similar to the treats dispensed to his dog.
What will she choose in her life outside the elegance of James' Georgian home in the Rye countryside? As a top student at her typewriter course she learned to become one with her machine, a seamlessly discrete recorder of the great thoughts of others. Exceptionally pragmatic Wroth accepts her need to work, retaining her own private ambitions. How will she act on these? Will she chose the safety of her constraints or step outside them and pursue her passions?
This novel intricately reproduces James' milieu and presents the reader with a tale both modern and mannered. As Mr. Heyns imagines the life of Wroth and James, so does the typewriter imagine hers and comes to the recognition of a truth - people collude in their own deception. Book Group Readers who enjoy re-imagined classics will be intrigued by the world of Henry James seen through the eyes of the unsung typewriter.
Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd, Russia, 1917 - A World on the Edge
by Helen Rappaport
No More Illusions (11/1/2016)
Ambitious in scope, comprehensive in the eyewitness accounts, including the horrific and gruesome loss of life, Helen Rappaport provides a detailed multilayered view on the eruption of Russian Revolution.
The scene is Petrograd, capital of Russia until 1918, teeming with foreigners, functionaries and those who serve them. It is the foreign eyewitnesses whom Rappaport coalesces her research around, and as she surely envisions her primary readership will be. We are on the streets with the embassy employees, their wives and family members, living the expat life in a grand city full of subtext and disillusion. Readers hoping for a close-up commentary from a single voice will be disappointed as Rappaport steers the handheld camera lens of her research down numerous avenues, side streets and alleys alongside 80 individual witnesses.
The tremendous wave of revolution transforms the city itself into a prime witness to the revolution. Readers will mine this work for names they recognize and discover new heroes among the unsung women working as journalists, nursing staff and revolutionary organizers – from the women warriors defending Mother Russia against German invasion to those who boldly take over the telephone exchange.
As Lenin consolidates his position, foreigners surrender their immunity to face the emergence of political forces suspicious of privilege, traditionally held power and economic superiority. James Stinton Jones, Westinghouse engineer at work on the tram system in Petrograd, observed: "The poorer classes of Russia … find themselves a political factor, they are hopelessly at sea, the prey of the last unscrupulous demagogue they have heard." Rappaport calls our attention to the eyewitness observations of the past, providing ample opportunity for contemporary comparisons to fuel lively book discussion.
The Book That Matters Most: A Novel
by Ann Hood
The Book that Matters Most (6/20/2016)
I read this as an ARC and was not disappointed. Anne Hood delivers a thoughtful and well-plotted novel that travels some familiar territory that should please her fans. Providence and Paris again feature in the action and are wonderful supporting players. The terrain of the book group is quite familiar - I lead discussion groups - and is authentically communicated. (What lengths we facilitators will go to with garb and gourmet treats to draw out the introvert bookworm!)
The many sides of grief are laid out for the reader to choose from for engaging with empathy. The classic mother-daughter dynamic is explored and there is a depth of understanding exhibited in these pages that is truly heartbreaking. The terrifying world of addiction and the youthful vulnerability to predators is as horrifying as the forest of grief. You may not like these characters but you will not be able to look away.
As for the power of books, Hood gives us a classic list of choices to beef up our own reading lists and doses her novel quite masterfully with the most alluring of literary devices and themes of each. And what tragic story does not crave a redemptive happy ending?
Elegantly drawn characters and the strong sense of place, added to my reading groups' familiarity with the nearby setting of Providence, will seed our book discussion with many piquant questions.
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