Algonquin Book Club Previous Books Special Events Supplementary Reading Contact         With members from all over the region, we join together to share a common interest in literature.  The club meets at the Petawawa Public Library.   News:    We respectfully ask that ABC meetings remain perfume-free.

2010 Reading List: For discussion on September 2: The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson On a burn ward, a man lies between living and dying, so disfigured that no one from his past life would even recognize him. His only comfort comes from imagining various inventive ways to end his misery. Then a woman named Marianne Engel walks into his hospital room, a wild-haired, schizophrenic sculptress on the lam from the psych ward upstairs, who insists that she has known him, in fact, for seven hundred years.     October: When a tragic event occurs, nearing the end of Avery's time in Egypt, he and Jean return to separate lives in Toronto; Avery to school to study architecture and Jean into the orbit of Lucjan, a Polish émigré artist whose haunting tales of occupied Warsaw pull her further from her husband, while offering her the chance to assume her most essential life. Breathtaking, vivid in its exploration of both the physical and emotional worlds of its characters, intensely moving and lyrical, The Winter Vault is a radiant work of fiction and contains all the elements for which Anne Michaels is celebrated. November: Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones The novel is set against the stunning beauty of the island of Bougainville in the South Pacific. Thirteen-year old Matilda lives on a copper-rich tropical island that has been shattered by war, from which the teachers have fled along with everyone else. Only one white man chooses to stay behind- eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn. He sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and steps in to teach the children, when there is no one else, and his only lesson consists of reading from his battered copy of Great Expectations, a book by his friend, Mr. Dickens. First the children and then the entire village, are rivetted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip, their imaginations aflame with dreams of Dickens's London and the larger world. But in a ravaged place where even children are forced to live by their wits and daily survival is the only objective, imagination- it turns out - is a dangerous thing. (published 2007. 256 Pages)   December:  no book    January (2011):   Late Nights on Air, by Elizabeth Hay   Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in the Canadian North. There, in Yellowknife, in the summer of 1975, he falls in love with a voice on air, though the real woman, Dido Paris, is both a surprise and even more than he imagined. Dido and Harry are part of the cast of eccentric, utterly loveable characters, all transplants from elsewhere, who form an unlikely group at the station. Their loves and longings, their rivalries and entanglements, the stories of their pasts and what brought each of them to the North, form the centre. One summer, on a canoe trip four of them make into the Arctic wilderness (following in the steps of the legendary Englishman John Hornby, who, along with his small party, starved to death in the barrens in 1927), they find the balance of love shifting, much as the balance of power in the North is being changed by the proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline, which threatens to displace Native people from their land.      February (2011):   The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who, for their part, are barely aware of her existence. Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter. Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renée's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.   March (2011):   The Magician's Assistant, by Ann Patchett Ann Patchett's writing delves into a new world with each successive novel. This time she takes us on a captivatingly American journey of love, loss, and redemption. Patchett uses a delightfully modern story to explore timeless questions that will resonate with many readers: what is the true nature of love, and how well do we trust ourselves to find it? Patchett's prose is careful and measured, yet also lush and elegant; she fully assumes the role of her heroine while encouraging us to take her hand on this surprising journey. The Magician's Assistant is fun, endearing, kind, and moving; it expertly explores new territory in the complex search for love.