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Seven
Types of Ambiguity by Elliot Pearlman
Michele's & Sue's
book of the month is Seven Types of Ambiguity by Elliot
Pearlman. Australian writer Pearlman sets a high bar for
himself, and the result is a relentlessly driven story.
This is an epic novel about obsessive love in an age of
obsessive materialism. The basic thrust of the story is
about a man who has never gotten over a woman who left
him 10 years before and kidnaps her son. The book is segmented
in seven parts, each narrated by a different player in
the unfolding drama, with sections and scenes overlapping.
The characters are similar and yet different being incredibly
insightful, bright, and in tune with the human condition
regardless of age, sex, or social standing. This book
has awesome magnitude and scope of what is a phenomenal
piece of literature.
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Water
For Elephants by Sarah Gruen
Mindy's book of the
month is Water For Elephants by Sarah Gruen. Gorgeous,
brilliant, and superbly plotted, this book will sweep
you into the world of the circus during the Great Depression.
The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski,
recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the
Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling
circus he joined during the Great Depression. When 23-year-old
Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in
a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell
veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals
into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie
of exotic creatures, including a complex elephant that
only responds to Polish commands. He also falls into an
equally complex love with Marlena, one of the show's star
performers--a romance complicated by Marlena's husband,
the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his
wife and the animals Jankowski cares for. Gruen skillfully
humanizes the midgets, drunks, rubes, and freaks who populate
her book and with a showman's expert timing, saves a terrific
revelation for the final pages, transforming a glimpse
of Americana into an enchanting escapist fairy tale.
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Fresh
Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes
Alison Swan's book
of the month is Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great
Lakes. Alison, a close friend of ours, is the editor of
this book and also has a short story included. This collection
of nonfiction works by female writers focuses on the Midwest:
living with the five interconnected freshwater seas that
we know as the Great Lakes. Contributing to this collection
are renowned poets, essayists, and fiction writers, all
of who write about their own creative streams of consciousness,
the fresh waters of the Great Lakes, and the region's
many rivers. This book reminds us of the small transformative
moments we experience on and around our Great Lakes, and
it adds significantly to the record of the beauty we find
there, which will ultimately protect them.
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A
Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
Keith's book of the
month is A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, published in
1950. My good friend Michele turned me on to a book titled
1001 Books to Read Before You Die, which did cause some
angst but also spurred me to start reading at a voracious
pace. This classic of literature takes place on three
continents. It involves history, geography, travel, adventure,
misery, joy, evil, and love. Shute creates marvelous three-dimensional
characters. Even the countryside is like another character,
because it's so full and important to the story. It could
almost be two different books, such is the compelling
strength of the section set in World War 2 where our heroine
is leading a group of women who are captured and are being
marched between towns hundreds of miles by the Japanese
who weren't going to kill women and children but barely
had enough supplies for their own soldiers so they just
kept moving the women on. It's a great book with a beautiful
bittersweet ending.
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Kafka
on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Michelle's book of
the month is Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. This
magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope
and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch
the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it
is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy,
Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape
a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing
mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata,
who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now
is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most
basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their
odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched
throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events.
Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp
employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers
apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of
fish (and worse) fall from the sky. Extravagant in its
accomplishment, Kafka on the Shore displays one of the
world's truly great storytellers at the height of his
powers.
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The
Space Between Us
Mindy's book of the
month is The Space Between Us by Thirty Umrigar. Umrigar's
schematic novel illustrates the intimacy, and the irreconcilable
class divide, between two women in contemporary Bombay.
Bhima, a 65-year-old slum dweller, has worked for Sera,
a younger upper-middle-class Parsi woman, for years: cooking,
cleaning and tending Sera after the beatings she endures
from her abusive husband. Sera, in turn, nurses Bhima
back to health from typhoid fever and sends her granddaughter
Maya to college. Sera recognizes their affinity, despite
the different trajectories of their lives, circumstances
dictated by the accidents of their births. They are also
caged by the same strictures despite efforts to throw
them off. Class allegiance combined with gender inequality
challenges personal connection.
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Please
Don't Come Back From the Moon
Michelle's book of
the month is Please Don't Come Back From the Moon by Dean
Bakopoulos. The summer Michael Smolij turns 16, his father
disappears. One by one other men also vanish from the
blue-collar neighborhood outside Detroit where their fathers
before them had lived, raised families, and, in a more
promising era, worked. One man props open the door to
his shoe store and leaves a note: I'm going to the moon,
I took the cash. The wives drink, brawl, and sleep around,
gradually settling down to make new lives and shaking
off the belief in an American dream that, like their husbands,
has proven to be a thing of the past. Unable to leave
the neighborhood their fathers abandoned, Michael and
his friends stumble through their 20s until the restlessness
of the fathers blooms in them, threatening to carry them
away.
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Garlic
and Sapphires
This month's book
is Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl and was recommended
to us by Mindy and Michelle. This delicious new volume
of Reichl's memoirs recounts her adventures in deception
as she goes undercover in the world's finest restaurants
for the New York Times. As Reichl metes out her critical
stars, she gives a remarkable account of how one's outer
appearance can influence one's inner character, expectations,
and appetites. This book is as much fun to read as it
is to eat.
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Glass
Castle, A Memoir
Keith's book of the
month is Glass Castle, A Memoir, by Jeannette Walls.
A great read about Walls' unbelievable childhood. In the
beginning, Walls' family lived like nomads, moving among
Southwest desert towns. As the dysfunction of the family
escalates, Walls and her brother and sisters have to fend
for themselves, supporting one another and finally finding
the resources and will to leave home. Hers is a story
of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving
tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its
profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve
out a successful life of her own.
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Case
Histories
Sue's book of the
month is Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. The novel
opens with three case histories, crimes that occurred
up to 34 years ago. It is such a satisfying novel, one
that is aided by the compelling nature of a good mystery,
yet all the while Atkinson's language can't fail to delight,
being psychologically keen, whippet quick, and utterly
joyful. You will never want this book to end, yet, like
the best mystery novel, you'll stay up all night to find
out exactly how it does. Atkinson connects the lives of
her ensemble cast of characters with a blithe, fairytale-like
narration that can be, at turns, hilarious, macabre, and
suspenseful.
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The
No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
The month is The
No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by African-born author
Alexander McCall Smith. A pleasing novel about Mma (aka
Precious) Ramotswe, Botswana's one and only lady private
detective. Mma Ramotswe's cases come slowly and hesitantly
at first: women who suspect their husbands are cheating
on them; a father worried that his daughter is sneaking
off to see a boy; a missing child who may have been killed
by witchdoctors to make medicine; a doctor who sometimes
seems highly competent and sometimes seems to know almost
nothing about medicine. The desultory pace is fine, since
she has only a detective manual and her instincts to guide
her. Mma Ramotswe's love of Africa, her wisdom and humor,
shine through these pages as she sheds her own light on
the problems that vex her clients. Images of this large
woman driving her tiny white van or sharing a cup of bush
tea with a friend or client while working a case linger
pleasantly. This is a little gem of a book and a fun mystery
read.
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and independent bookstore.
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