August 2007

The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards
Edwards's assured but schematic debut novel (after her collection, The Secrets of a Fire King) hinges on the birth of fraternal twins, a healthy boy and a girl with Down syndrome, resulting in the father's disavowal of his newborn daughter. A snowstorm immobilizes Lexington, Ky., in 1964, and when young Norah Henry goes into labor, her husband, orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Henry, must deliver their babies himself, aided only by a nurse. Seeing his daughter's handicap, he instructs the nurse, Caroline Gill, to take her to a home and later tells Norah, who was drugged during labor, that their son Paul's twin died at birth. Instead of institutionalizing Phoebe, Caroline absconds with her to Pittsburgh. David's deception becomes the defining moment of the main characters' lives, and Phoebe's absence corrodes her birth family's core over the course of the next 25 years. David's undetected lie warps his marriage; he grapples with guilt; Norah mourns her lost child; and Paul not only deals with his parents' icy relationship but with his own yearnings for his sister as well.

July 2007

The Amateur Marriage A young Baltimore couple marries in the heat of World War: Pauline, impulsive, impractical, tumbles hit-or-miss through life, and Michael, ploddingly cautious, judgmental, and deliberate. Tyler's novel follows them through the ups and downs of their thirty years of marriage, raising their family and struggling to balance their deep-rooted differences, which may be too great to bridge.

The Historian June 2007

If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova's long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian. The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor." When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.
As well as numerous settings, both in and out of the East Bloc, Kostova has three basic story lines to keep straight--one from 1930, when Professor Bartolomew Rossi begins his dangerous research into Dracula, one from 1950, when Professor Rossi's student Paul takes up the scent, and the main narrative from 1972. The criss-crossing story lines mirror the political advances, retreats, triumphs, and losses that shaped Dracula's beleaguered homeland--sometimes with the Byzantines on top, sometimes the Ottomans, sometimes the rag-tag local tribes, or the Orthodox church, and sometimes a fresh conqueror like the Soviet Union.
Although the book is appropriately suspenseful and a delight to read--even the minor characters are distinctive and vividly seen--its most powerful moments are those that describe real horrors. Our narrator recalls that after reading descriptions of Vlad burning young boys or impaling "a large family," she tried to forget the words: "For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth." The reader, although given a satisfying ending, gets a strong enough dose of European history to temper the usual comforts of the closing words. --Regina Marler

Raising Cain May 2007

Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher's groundbreaking book, exposed the toxic environment faced by adolescent girls in our society. Now, from the same publisher, comes Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, which does the same for adolescent boys. Boys suffer from a too-narrow definition of masculinity, the authors assert as they expose and discuss the relationship between vulnerability and developing sexuality, the "culture of cruelty" boys live in, the "tyranny of toughness," the disadvantages of being a boy in elementary school, how boys' emotional lives are squelched, and what we, as a society, can do about all this without turning "boys into girls." "Our premise is that boys will be better off if boys are better understood--and if they are encouraged to become more emotionally literate," the authors assert. As a tool for change, Kindlon and Thompsom present the well-developed "What Boys Need," seven points that reach far beyond the ordinary psychobabble checklist and slogan list. Kindlon (researcher and psychology professor at Harvard and practicing psychotherapist specializing in boys) and Thompson (child psychologist, workshop leader, and staff psychologist of an all-boys school) have created a chilling portrait of male adolescence in America. Through personal stories and theoretical discussion, this well-needed book plumbs the well of sadness, anger, and fear in America's teenage sons. --Ericka Lutz --

Old Readings

For awhile, I was good at keeping track of what we were reading. I fell off the wagon, but here is what I have. I will post things as I find them. . .

It goes:
Date, Book, Author, Host

February-00, Einstein's Dreams, Alan Lightman, Lynnea West
March-00, A Map of the World, Jane Hamilton, Lisa Thompson
April-00, The Christmas Box, Richard Paul Evans, Karen Doerfler
May-00, A Widow for One Year, John Irving, Gina Sciola
June-00, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis, Amy O'Neill
July-00, The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russel, Kelli Cox
August-00, SUMMER VACATION
September-00, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou, Susie Sawyer
October-00, Ishmael, Daniel Quinn, Lisa Bekemeyer
November-00, Bridget Jones' Diary (Baby Shower for Maya) Helen Fielding, Gina Sciola
December-00
January-01, The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans, Karen Doerfler
February-01, Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver, Lynnea West
March-01, The Red Tent (Baby Shower for Luke), Anita Diamant, Susie Sawyer
April-01, Left Behind, Tim LaHaye, Gina Sciola
May-01, Bridget Jones' Diary The Movie, MOA
June-01, Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur S. Golden, Amy O'Neill
July-01, SUMMER VACATION
August-01, Bee Season (Wedding Shower for Gina), Myla Goldberg, Lisa Bekemeyer
September-01, Stolen Lives, Malika Oufkir, Kelli Cox
October-01, Big Stone Gap, Adriana Trigiani, Lynnea West
November-01, Charms for the Easy Life, Kay Gibbons, Susie Sawyer
December-01
January-02, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman, Lisa Bekemeyer
February-02, A Beautiful Mind The Movie, MOA
March-02, When Calls the Heart, Florence Denais
April-02, Cause Celeb, Helen Fielding, Michael Possehl
May-02, Back When We Were Grownups, Gina Schneeberger
June-02, Mermaids Singing, Kelli Cox
July-02, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Lynnea West
August-02, The New Birth Order Book, Kevin Lehman, Susie Sawyer
September-02, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, Brady Udall
October-02
November-02, A Girl Named Zippy, Haven Kimmel, Amy O'Neill
December-02
January-03
February-03, Satellite Sisters, Dolan Sisters, Fairview Hospital
March-03, Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris, The Good Earth
April-03, The Secret Life of Bees, Amy O'Neill
May-03, Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (Wedding Shower for Susie), Gottman, Lisa Bekemeyer
June-03, YEARLY PLANNING, Lynnea West
July-03, SUMMER VACATION
August-03, The Hiding Place, Trezza Azzopardi, Kelli Cox
September-03
October-03
November-03
December-03
January-04
February-04
March-04
April-04
May-04
June-04
July-04, Waiting, Ha Jin
August-04, Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, Sara Erdman, Lynnea West
September-04, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, Dr. Laura, Michele Carlson
October-04, The Devil Wears Prada, Natasha Rodich
November-04, Indian Restaurant

Social Club with Suggested Readings

Well girls, here we go a blogging. I figure we can actually think about our reading and write about our thoughts on our blog, and when we meet, stick to the social! How about we try to enter the age of the interactive internet and blog about our thoughts and musings? We have a great group of women that I admire. We have a history I want to preserve. We have thoughts that are worth saving and sharing with each other.