|
2012 Reading
List:
For discussion on January 5th:  The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart.
Set in the first half of the twentieth century, but reaching back to Bavaria in the late nineteenth century, The Stone Carvers weaves together the story of ordinary lives marked by obsession and transformed by art. At the centre of a large cast of characters is Klara Becker, the granddaughter of a master carver, a seamstress haunted by a love affair cut short by the First World War, and by the frequent disappearances of her brother Tilman, afflicted since childhood with wanderlust. From Ontario, they are swept into a colossal venture in Europe years later, as Toronto sculptor Walter Allward's ambitious plans begin to take shape for a war memorial at Vimy, France. Spanning three decades, and moving from a German-settled village in Ontario to Europe after the Great War, The Stone Carvers follows the paths of immigrants, labourers and dreamers. Vivid, dark, redemptive, this is a novel of great beauty and power. February:  The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan
An enchanting historical epic of grand passion and adventure, this debut novel tells the captivating story of one of India''s most controversial empresses -- a woman whose brilliance and determination trumped myriad obstacles, and whose love shaped the course of the Mughal Empire. Skillfully blending the textures of historical reality with the rich and sensual imaginings of a timeless fairy tale, The Twentieth Wife sweeps readers up in Mehrunnisa''s embattled love with Prince Salim, and in the bedazzling destiny of a woman -- a legend in her own time -- who was all but lost to history until now. March:  To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.
Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.
April:  Shelf Monkey, by Corey Redekop
Thomas Friesen has three goals in life: get a job, make friends, and find a good book to curl up with. After landing a job at READ, the newest hypermegabookstore, he feels he may have accomplished all three. All is not peaceable within the stacks, however, as discontent steadily rises, aimed squarely at talk show host Munroe Purvis, whose wildly popular book club is progressively lowering the IQ of North America. But the bookworms have a plan -- plots are being hatched and the destruction of Munroe is all but assured. As Thomas finds himself swept along in the maelstrom of insanity, he wonders if reading a book is all it''s cracked up to be.
May:The Virgin Cure, by Ami MacKay  Following in the footsteps of The Birth House, her powerful debut novel, The Virgin Cure secures Ami McKay''s place as one of our most beguiling storytellers.
"I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart." So begins The Virgin Cure, a novel set in the tenements of lower Manhattan in the year 1871. As a young child, Moth''s father smiled, tipped his hat and walked away from his wife and daughter forever, and Moth has never stopped imagining that one day they may be reunited - despite knowing in her heart what he chose over them. Her hard mother is barely making a living with her fortune-telling, sometimes for well-heeled clients, yet Moth is all too aware of how she really pays the rent.
June:  Left neglected, by Lisa Genova
Sarah Nickerson is like any other career-driven supermom in Welmont, the affluent Boston suburb where she leads a hectic but charmed life with her husband Bob, faithful nanny, and three children-Lucy, Charlie, and nine-month-old Linus. Between recruiting the best and brightest minds as the vice president of human resources at Berkley Consulting; shuttling the kids to soccer, day care, and piano lessons; convincing her son's teacher that he may not, in fact, have ADD; and making it home in time for dinner, it's a wonder this over-scheduled, over-achieving Harvard graduate has time to breathe. A self-confessed balloon about to burst, Sarah miraculously manages every minute of her life like an air traffic controller. Until one fateful day, while driving to work and trying to make a phone call, she looks away from the road for one second too long. In the blink of an eye, all the rapidly moving parts of her jam-packed life come to a screeching halt. A traumatic brain injury completely erases the left side of her world, and for once, Sarah relinquishes control to those around her, including her formerly absent mother. Without the ability to even floss her own teeth, she struggles to find answers about her past and her uncertain future. Now, as she wills herself to regain her independence and heal, Sarah must learn that her real destiny-her new, true life-may in fact lie far from the world of conference calls and spreadsheets. And that a happiness and peace greater than all the success in the world is close within reach, if only she slows down long enough to notice. July:Unless, by Carole Shields  "Unless you're lucky, unless you're healthy, fertile, unless you're loved and fed, unless you're offered what others are offered, you go down in the darkness, down to despair."
Reta Winters has many reasons to be happy: Her three almost grown daughters. Her twenty-year relationship with their father. Her work translating the larger-than-life French intellectual and feminist Danielle Westerman. Her modest success with a novel of her own, and the clamour of her American publisher for a sequel. Then in the spring of her forty-fourth year, all the quiet satisfactions of her well-lived life disappear in a moment: her eldest daughter Norah suddenly runs from the family and ends up mute and begging on a Toronto street corner, with a hand-lettered sign reading GOODNESS around her neck.
GOODNESS. With the inconceivable loss of her daughter like a lump in her throat, Reta tackles the mystery of this message. What in this world has broken Norah, and what could bring her back to the provisional safety of home? Reta's wit is the weapon she most often brandishes as she kicks against the pricks that have brought her daughter down: Carol Shields brings us Reta's voice in all its poignancy, outrage and droll humour.
Piercing and sad, astute and evocative, full of tenderness and laughter, Unless will stand with The Stone Diaries in the canon of Carol Shields's fiction.
August:  Half Blood Blues, by Esi Edugyan
Paris, 1939. A young, black, brilliant trumpet-player, Hieronymus, is hauled off by the Nazis to Mauthausen based on the colour of his skin. As the novel unfolds, Sid, the narrator and conscience of the novel, details the friendships, love affairs, and treacheries that led to Hiero's horrific fate. From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris, Sid, with his distinctive and compelling German-American slang, leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world, and into the heart of his own guilty conscience. Half-Blood Blues, the second novel by an exceptionally talented young writer, is an enticing, electric story about music, race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of others, in the name of art.
September:  The Bishop’s Man, by Linden MacIntyre
The year is 1993 and Father Duncan MacAskill stands at a small Cape Breton fishing harbour a few miles from where he grew up. Enjoying the timeless sight of a father and son piloting a boat, Duncan takes a moment's rest from his worries. But he does not yet know that his already strained faith is about to be tested by his interactions with a troubled boy, 18-year-old Danny MacKay.
Known to fellow priests as the "Exorcist" because of his special role as clean-up man for the Bishop of Antigonish, Duncan has a talent for coolly reassigning deviant priests while ensuring minimal fuss from victims and their families. It has been a lonely vocation, but Duncan is generally satisfied that his work is a necessary defense of the church. All this changes when lawyers and a policeman snoop too close for the bishop's comfort. Duncan is assigned a parish in the remote Cape Breton community of Creignish and told to wait it out. October:  The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is a rich story about secrets, ghosts, winter, books and family. The Thirteenth Tale is a book lover's book, with much of the action taking place in libraries and book stores, and the line between fact and fiction constantly blurred. It is hard to believe this is Setterfield's debut novel, for she makes the words come to life with such skill that some passages even gave me chills. With a mug of cocoa and The Thirteenth Tale, contentment isn't far away. November:  Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by H. Simonson
Written with a delightfully dry sense of humour and the wisdom of a born storyteller, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand explores the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of family obligation and tradition.
When retired Major Pettigrew strikes up an unlikely friendship with Mrs. Ali, the Pakistani village shopkeeper, he is drawn out of his regimented world and forced to confront the realities of life in the twenty-first century. Brought together by a shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship on the cusp of blossoming into something more. But although the Major was actually born in Lahore, and Mrs. Ali was born in Cambridge, village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as a permanent foreigner. The Major has always taken special pride in the village, but will he be forced to choose between the place he calls home and a future with Mrs. Ali?
No book for DecemberJanuary 2013: Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes February 2013: Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia, by Janet Wallach |
|
|
Algonquin Book Club