Novel about Hemingway's first wife starts off the year

When: January 26, 2018
Where: Irina's
Book: The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

From Goodreads:

"A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.

Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway and her life changes forever. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group—the fabled “Lost Generation”—that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Despite their extraordinary bond, they eventually find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they’ve fought so hard for.

A heartbreaking portrayal of love and torn loyalty, The Paris Wife is all the more poignant because we know that, in the end, Hemingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but Hadley."

Short stories on sex, love and parenthood end November

When: Friday, November 24th at 7:30pm
Where: Kay's
Book: Jellyfish by Janice Galloway


From Amazon.co.uk:

"Sex and Love and Parenthood. In this sparkling and powerful new collection, Janice Galloway takes on David Lodge's assertion. Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life's the other way round and scent-marks her multi-layered fiction with what she believes to be the greater truth. Razor sharp tales of two of the most powerful human experiences from one of our country s best loved and most acclaimed authors."

Praise for Janice Galloway's short stories:

'Stories that walk with steady, nerve-cracking skill down a nightmare edge. A virtuoso work.' -- New Statesman

'Blood is a salutary collection. It heightens and dignifies the human, and does it with writing that veers between the good and the simply superb. A writer of passion and virtuosity shines through.' -- Scotland on Sunday

'Genuinely unnerving. This is a fierce, troubling new writer.' -- Observer

'Galloway flecks her hard-edged realism with impressionist grace-notes, a potent mixture that confirms her as one of Scotlands best young writers.' -- Sunday Telegraph

Click here for a review in the Guardian

Memoir on fighting cancer focus of October meeting

When: Friday, October 27 at 7:30pm
Where: Eva's (Aida's choice)
Book: Dying to be Me by Anita Moorjani 



From Barnes and Noble: " In this truly inspirational memoir, Anita Moorjani relates how, after fighting cancer for almost four years, her body—overwhelmed by the malignant cells spreading throughout her system—began shutting down. As her organs failed, she entered into an extraordinary near-death experience where she realized her inherent worth . . . and the actual cause of her disease. Upon regaining consciousness, Anita found that her condition had improved so rapidly that she was able to be released from the hospital within weeks . . . without a trace of cancer in her body!
     Within these pages, Anita recounts stories of her childhood in Hong Kong, her challenge to establish her career and find true love, as well as how she eventually ended up in that hospital bed where she defied all medical knowledge."

Novel combines 'accessible yarn with a suspenseful puzzle', Boston Globe

When: Friday, September 29 at 7:30pm

Where: Vicky's
Book: Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

"For over a decade, Jenna Metcalf obsesses on her vanished mom Alice. Jenna searches online, rereads journals of the scientist who studied grief among elephants. Two unlikely allies are Serenity Jones, psychic for missing people who doubts her gift, and Virgil Stanhope, jaded PI who originally investigated cases of Alice and her colleague. Hard questions and answers." - Goodreads

"Readers can usually count on blockbuster novelist Jodi Picoult for two things. First is a smart, accessible yarn with a suspenseful puzzle at its core that will keep readers enthusiastically turning the page..." - Boston Globe

Memoir 'an exploration of resilience' and 'a celebration of the liberating power of literature'

When: Friday, August 25 Sept 1 at 7:30pm

Where: Catherine

Book: Reading Lolita in Tehrain

Author: Azar Nafisi

"Published in 2003, it has been on the New York Times bestseller list for over one hundred weeks and has been translated into thirty-two languages."

 - Wikipedia

"Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi's living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature." 

-GoodReads

Amazon.com link

'A lovely heartwarming, and humorous tale that snags your heartstrings'

When: Friday, June 30 at 7:30pm

Where: Maya's TBD

Book: Britt-Marie Was Here

Author: by Fredrik Backman 

Information from GoodReads.com:

"Britt-Marie can’t stand mess. A disorganized cutlery drawer ranks high on her list of unforgivable sins. She is not one to judge others—no matter how ill-mannered, unkempt, or morally suspect they might be. It’s just that sometimes people interpret her helpful suggestions as criticisms, which is certainly not her intention. But hidden inside the socially awkward, fussy busybody is a woman who has more imagination, bigger dreams, and a warmer heart that anyone around her realizes. 

When Britt-Marie walks out on her cheating husband and has to fend for herself in the miserable backwater town of Borg—of which the kindest thing one can say is that it has a road going through it—she finds work as the caretaker of a soon-to-be demolished recreation center. The fastidious Britt-Marie soon finds herself being drawn into the daily doings of her fellow citizens, an odd assortment of miscreants, drunkards, layabouts. Most alarming of all, she’s given the impossible task of leading the supremely untalented children’s soccer team to victory. In this small town of misfits, can Britt-Marie find a place where she truly belongs?" For more click here.

Compelling and timely novel on refugee's struggle

When: SATURDAY June 3rd at 7:30pm (meeting moved again)*
Where: Eva's
Book: Dalila
Author: Jason Donald

****Jason is a friend of our book club and will be in the area the weekend of the meeting and is planning to attend our meeting. He wrote part of the book while living in Saanenland.*****

Review in the Guardian

From Amazon.com:
"'As compelling as it is tough, sidestepping piety in favour of clear-eyed infectious anger.' - Rebecca Nicolson Sunday Times

Irene Dalila Mwathi comes from Kenya with a brutally violent personal history. Once she wanted to be a journalist, now all she wants is to be safe. When she finally arrives, bewildered, in London, she is attacked by the very people paid to protect her, and she has no choice but to step out on her own into this strange new world. Through a dizzying array of interviews, lawyer’s meetings, regulations and detention centres, she realises that what she faces may be no less dangerous than the violence she has fled...."

Link to the buying the book on Amazon.com.

* Meeting moved to accommodate holiday and the author's presence

Are people in Switzerland happier?

Next Meeting

When: April 28 at 7:30pm
Host: Kevin
Book: The Geography of Bliss
Author: Eric Weiner

Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, The Geography of Bliss takes the reader from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author's case, moments of "un-unhappiness." 

The book uses a beguiling mixture of travel, psychology, science and humor to investigate not what happiness is, but where it is. Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? < Read more

Tales of love and injustice

When: March 31 at 7:30pm
Where: Vré's
Book: How to be Both
Author: Smith Ali

Review in the Guardian


From GoodReads:

"Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith’s novels are like nothing else. A true original, she is a one-of-a-kind literary sensation. Her novels consistently attract serious acclaim and discussion—and have won her a dedicated readership who are drawn again and again to the warmth, humanity and humor of her voice.

How to be both is a novel all about art’s versatility. Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real—and all life’s givens get given a second chance.

A NOTE TO THE READER:
Who says stories reach everybody in the same order?
This novel can be read in two ways and this book provides you with both.
In half of all printed editions of the novel the narrative EYES comes before CAMERA.
In the other half of printed editions the narrative CAMERA precedes EYES.
The narratives are exactly the same in both versions, just in a different order.

The books are intentionally printed in two different ways, so that readers can randomly have different experiences reading the same text. So, depending on which edition you happen to receive, the book will be: EYES, CAMERA, or CAMERA, EYES. Enjoy the adventure"

'Riveting' memoir ends February

When: February 24  March 3 at 7:30pm
Where: Jackie
Book: Chinese Cinderella: The Secret Story of an Unwanted Daughter
Author: Adeline Yen Mah
Here's the preview from GoodReads:

"A riveting memoir of a girl's painful coming-of-age in a wealthy Chinese family during the 1940s.

A Chinese proverb says, "Falling leaves return to their roots." In Chinese Cinderella, Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair. Adeline's affluent, powerful family considers her bad luck after her mother dies giving birth to her. Life does not get any easier when her father remarries. She and her siblings are subjected to the disdain of her stepmother, while her stepbrother and stepsister are spoiled. Although Adeline wins prizes at school, they are not enough to compensate for what she really yearns for -- the love and understanding of her family.

Following the success of the critically acclaimed adult bestseller Falling Leaves, this memoir is a moving telling of the classic Cinderella story, with Adeline Yen Mah providing her own courageous voice."