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HAF book club: December poll and discussion

Started by Sandra Craft, November 21, 2018, 05:03:27 AM

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Sandra Craft

All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel.  In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini
In this tale revolving around not just parents and children but brothers and sisters, cousins and caretakers, Hosseini explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another; and how often we are surprised by the actions of those closest to us, at the times that matter most. Following its characters and the ramifications of their lives and choices and loves around the globe—from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos—the story expands gradually outward, becoming more emotionally complex and powerful with each turning page.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon
For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.

The Tortilla Curtain, by T. C. Boyle
A novel about middle-class values, illegal immigration, xenophobia, poverty, and environmental destruction. It was awarded the French Prix Médicis Étranger prize for best foreign novel in 1997.

Pulse: stories, by Julian Barnes
Fourteen stories about longing and loss, friendship and love, whose mysterious natures Barnes examines with his trademark wit and observant eye.  From an imperial capital in the eighteenth century to Garibaldi's adventures in the nineteenth, from the vineyards of Italy to the English seaside in our time, he finds the "stages, transitions, arguments" that define us. A newly divorced real estate agent can't resist invading his reticent girlfriend's privacy, but the information he finds reveals only his callously shallow curiosity. A couple come together through an illicit cigarette and a song shared over the din of a Chinese restaurant. A widower revisiting the Scottish island he'd treasured with his wife learns how difficult it is to purge oneself of grief. And throughout, friends gather regularly at dinner parties and perfect the art of cerebral, sometimes bawdy banter about the world passing before them.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Davin

Looks like the chosen book is: All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

I'll get a copy soon and start reading.
Always question all authorities because the authority you don't question is the most dangerous... except me, never question me.

Sandra Craft

I'm just going to go ahead and buy all the books on the list right now so I'll have them ready.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Sandra Craft

I'm 5 chapters from the end, and am finding this a very hard read.  It's a compelling story, and well-written, but this is my idea of a horror story -- not those silly, fun stories about zombies and vampires and whatnot -- and sometimes it's just overwhelming.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Sandra Craft

#4
Here is my review from FB:

Honestly, I might not have voted for it if I'd known more about it.  Not that it's not brilliant -- it deserved it's Pulitzer Prize -- but this book is my idea of a horror story, gut-churning and making me older by the end than I should be. Silly, fun stories about ghosts and vampires and such are just slightly gothy Aesop's Fables compared to the horrors in this book.

It starts in 1944 and travels backwards and forwards in time to tell the story of French Marie-Laure and Austrian Werner as they come of age during WWII, what each has to do to survive and how they meet, very briefly but significantly, towards the end of the war.

Marie-Laure lives with her widowed father near the Natural History Museum where he works. Because she went blind at an early age, she goes with her father to work every day and spends most of her time with the scientists who work there. Her favorite is Prof. Geffard whose specialty is mollusks. Meanwhile, in his free time Marie-Laure's father builds a miniature version of their Paris neighborhood to help her learn to get around on her own.

Werner and his younger sister Jutta are orphans who live in orphanage small enough to be run by a single adult, a Breton called Frau Elena. Werner early on displays a considerable mechanical gift, esp. with radios, and when this earns him an early place in a training school for Hitler Youth, he regards it only as a way of getting out of the depressing mining town he's living in. Jutta, on the other hand, is anti-Nazi from the start, causing conflict between them despite their closeness.

And that's all I'm going to say, other than there's a fabled diamond called The Sea of Flames which is said to have magical powers (what fabled diamond doesn't?) which the Natural History Museum possesses and has hidden, and that a Gestapo officer is determined to find, eventually leading to a conclusive meeting with himself, Werner and Marie-Laure.

The diamond, tho pivotal, was a minor point to me. I was consumed by that was happening to the people, civilians and soldiers, in wartime and Doerr does not spare that side of the story. Horrifying to consider that not only did it happen, but that it is happening today, every day, some place in this world.

Read it, but be warned that breaks will be needed (much like watching "Schindler's List"), something I think Doerr was well aware of since he had the goodness to make his chapters very, very short.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Davin

That's a good review. I'm having a hard time talking about it myself. Plus I didn't have much free time during my vacation. It was a good read but hit my guts very hard. I really liked the writing which is rare for me, but the content was rough to go through.
Always question all authorities because the authority you don't question is the most dangerous... except me, never question me.

Sandra Craft

Yeah, it took me a few days after I finished reading to do a review.  It's beautifully written, but an emotionally tough book.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany