|
|
Contemporary Fiction by Award Winning Authors
Book Discussion Series #22, SPRING 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012, 7:30 - 9:00 pm
Sunset Park by Paul Auster (Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, 2006) --
Miles is a fugitive. Poisoned by guilt over his stepbrother's death, he hasn't communicated with his loving father, a heroic
independent publisher; his kind English professor stepmother; or his flamboyant actor mother for seven years...Miles returns to
New York after things turn dicey over his love affair with a wise-beyond-her-years Cuban American teenager. As always with the
entrancing and ambushing Auster, every element is saturated with implication as each wounded, questing character's story illuminates our tragic flaws and profound need for connection, coherence, and beauty.
[Picador, 2011 PB 320 pp. ISBN 978-0312610678]
Wednesday, April 18, 2012, 7:30 - 9:00 pm
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht (Orange Prize for Fiction, 2011) --
The sometimes crushing power of myth, story, and memory is explored in this brilliant debut...Natalia Stefanovi, a doctor
living...in an unnamed country that's a ringer for Obreht's native Croatia, crosses the border in search of answers about the death of
her beloved grandfather, who raised her on tales from the village he grew up in, and where, following German bombardment in
1941, a tiger escaped from the zoo in a nearby city and befriended a mysterious deaf-mute woman.
[Random House, 2011, PB 353 pp. ISBN 9780385343848]
Wednesday, May 16, 2012, 7:40 - 9:00 pm
The Watery Part of the World by Michael Parker (North Carolina Award for Literature) --
In his latest novel, award winner Parker takes readers deep into two time periods in the same pocket universe of North
Carolina’s Outer Banks. Theodosia Burr Alston is traveling by ship to reunite with her father, disgraced Founder Aaron Burr. In
this reimagining of the real woman’s mysterious disappearance in 1813, Theodosia’s ship is attacked by pirates. Her apparent insanity spares her life. Theodosia finds herself stranded on a dismal island with no one but an old hermit with whom to share her
history. A parallel story set in 1970 focuses on her 20th-century descendants, the last two white women alive on the island, and
Woodrow, the black man who feels compelled to care for the women despite their complicated history...Against this backdrop,
Parker delves into the human heart and distills for his readers the truths found there.
[Algonquin, 2011 HC 261 pp ISBN 9781565126824]
|
|
|
