The Nightwatchman by Louise Erdrich

April 15, 2021 Zoom Host: Janna Attended by: Amy, Ruth, Mary Margaret, JJ, Pam T, Susan, Pam M, Kathryn

The book we were supposed to read: Only a few read it....only a few liked it..... The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich 4.13 · Rating details · 18,752 ratings · 2,597 reviews Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman. In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Blame it on Covid confusion! The two book selections got mixed up months. This is the book that some others read instead:

**A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller** “Once again, Megan Miranda has crafted the perfect summer thriller.” —Riley Sager, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Time I Lied The summer after a wealthy young summer guest dies under suspicious circumstances, her best friend lives under a cloud of grief and suspicion in this “clever, stylish mystery that will seize readers like a riptide” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) featuring “dizzying plot twists and multiple surprise endings” (The New York Times Book Review).~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We were a mess, all over the place with likes and dislikes and discussing two different books.~~~~~~~~ Hmmmmmm....who wrote all those positive reviews about The Last Houseguest?!? But the overall group consensus was to forget The Last Houseguest and select Deacon King Kong as our next book for May! Happy reading!

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half March 11, 2021 Zoom Host: Janna Attended by: Debra, Amy, Michelle, Pam M, JJ

From The New York Times (May 26, 2020) Book Review: In her new novel, “The Vanishing Half,” Brit Bennett brings to the form a new set of provocative questions: What if passing goes unpunished? What if the character is never truly found out? What if she doesn’t die or repent? What then? The book opens in 1968, with the return of the prodigal. Desiree has come home to Mallard after 14 years away, without her husband but bearing his bruises on her neck. She’s brought her small daughter, Jude, whose “blueblack” skin the town registers with horror. It will be Jude who encounters the vanished Stella years later, now living in California and married to a wealthy white man. Jude will befriend her aunt’s daughter — a flighty, blonde actress — who, like everyone else, is ignorant of Stella’s origins. Bennett is a remarkably assured writer who mostly sidesteps the potential for melodrama inherent in a form built upon secrecy and revelation. The past laps at the present in short flashbacks, never weighing down the quick current of a story that covers almost 20 years. Each chapter ends on a light cliffhanger, and the pages fairly turn themselves. Some depth is sacrificed for the swiftness; the book doesn’t burrow into the psychology of its characters so much as map the wages of artifice, fracture and loss across generations. Desiree pines for her missing sister. Jude is tormented by the absence of her father. Jude’s boyfriend, who is trans and trying to save up for surgery, mourns his own family. But Bennett excels in conjuring the silences of families and in evoking atmosphere: the claustrophobia of the small town and its scuzzy and beloved saloon (“Cold Women! Hot Beer!” its sign proclaims), the jazz clubs in New Orleans where the twins first taste freedom. There’s something deeply familiar but weightless about her settings. They are conjured not as real places, one feels, but as their mythologies, in how they exist in the imagination. We know these spaces not from life but from literature. **************************************************** Next Month: The NightWatchman by Louise Erdrich

Small Great Things by Jodi Piccoult

February 11, 2021 Zooom: Michelle, Janna, Ruth, Debra, Julie, Susan

In her highly-anticipated 2016 novel, SMALL GREAT THINGS, Jodi tackles the profoundly challenging yet essential con­cerns of our time: prejudice, race, and justice. "SMALL GREAT THINGS is the most important novel Jodi Picoult has ever written. Frank, uncomfortably introspective and right on the day’s headlines, it will challenge her readers...The difficult self awareness is what sustains this book...forcing engaged readers to meditate on their own beliefs and actions along with these characters....It's also exciting to have a high-profile writer like Picoult take an earnest risk to expand our cultural conversation about race and prejudice." Washington Post

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

January 14, 2021

Hostess: Amy Attendees via Zoom: Janna, Michelle, MaryMargaret, Susan, JJ, PamM, Ruth ***************************************** A Long Petal of the Sea With the Spanish Civil War as the setting, this book challenged our memories of history classes! From the author's website: In the late 1930s, civil war grips Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them desires. ************************************************************ Together with two thousand other refugees, they embark on the SS Winnipeg, a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda, to Chile: “the long petal of sea and wine and snow.” As unlikely partners, they embrace exile as the rest of Europe erupts in world war. Starting over on a new continent, their trials are just beginning, and over the course of their lives, they will face trial after trial. But they will also find joy as they patiently await the day when they will be exiles no more. Through it all, their hope of returning to Spain keeps them going. Destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world, Roser and Victor will find that home might have been closer than they thought all along. Lots of thoughtful discussion! Roser or Rose Air ? ************************************************************************************** Next month's selection: Small Great Things by Jodi Piccoult

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Dec 10, 2020 Anxious People by Fredrik Backman Host: Michelle Attendees: JJ, Janna, Debra, Ruth, Susan, Pam, Lisa,

We met yet again, some in person, and some via Zoom. This book generated a lot of discussion. The following is a review from the Washington Independent Review of Books sums it up perfectly: Anxious People: A Novel By Fredrik Backman; translated by Neil Smith Atria Books 352 pp. Reviewed by Robert Allen Papinchak October 15, 2020 A delightfully witty tale of disparate characters caught in a Rube Goldberg-like narrative. How do you follow up a sensational international bestseller like A Man Called Ove? Fredrik Backman does it spectacularly with the entertaining conundrum Anxious People. As equally idiosyncratic and iconoclastic as his debut, it is an outrageously hilarious, flawless novel about “how a bank robber failed to rob a bank but instead managed to spark a hostage drama.” It is the most bizarre heist story since Sidney Lumet’s “Dog Day Afternoon,” with narrative nods to Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto and O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief.” The dominoes start falling quickly when a bungled robbery turns into a mordantly serious situation. In many ways, it can be read as a locked-apartment mystery bonded with a unique variation on the police procedural. After the 39-year-old robber mistakenly attempts to steal from a cashless bank in a small Swedish town, the culprit stumbles into an open house on the day before New Year’s Eve. Inside, a ragtag group of eight — a real estate broker and unsuspecting prospective buyers — soon becomes trapped in a Rube Goldberg construction. Backman is sly. Nothing is as random nor as obvious as it appears. While he focuses on the current series of curious events in the apartment, he buttresses the character-driven plot with numerous backstories that link a bridge, suicides, and a peculiar drawing of a frog, a monkey, and an elk. Then, just when it seems as though everything has been sorted out, he turns it all topsy-turvy with a stunning revelation that would be a major spoiler to disclose. It would also ruin the fun of discovery. The two local detectives investigating the curiouser and curiouser case are father and son, Jim and Jack. They enter the daffy scene after the situation has ended. The supposed hostages have been released; there’s blood on the carpet; and the robbery suspect is nowhere to be found. With no experience with captor crisis, they rely on Google for advice. They disdain Stockholmers and the syndrome named after them. A good portion of the novel consists of exuberant recorded transcripts of witness interviews with the visitors to the apartment. That includes Zara, a condescending bank manager in therapy for depression; Julia and Ro, a pregnant lesbian couple struggling with the possibilities of parenthood; Estelle, a flummoxed looky-loo neighbor; Anna-Lena and Roger, a long-married couple of property flippers who know IKEA furniture when they see it; Lennart, a rabbit (don’t ask — just accept him in his underwear and socks and go with it) who had his own motives for being there; and the real estate broker, who frequently refers to her cleverly named firm, House Tricks. Backman juggles all of this with exquisite ease and his usual mellifluous style and grace. In the midst of the humor, he manages to inject poignant observations about life and death; love and marriage; parenting and divorce; and social and economic stress. The resolution, when it comes, is unexpected but perfect. Justice is served. Anxious People is a joy to experience, an absurdist black dramedy and lasting treasure for Backman fans. Robert Allen Papinchak is a former university English professor whose reviews and criticisms appear in newspapers, magazines, literary journals, and online including Publishers Weekly, the Los Angeles Review of Books, On the Seawall, World Literature, General consensus: Everyone's an idiot! "We readers were held hostage to find out what happens" We rated this book an exact 3.7 out of 5 Next month's selection: A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

The Lost Girls by Heather Young

Thursday Nov 5 Host: Roxanne Attendees (via Zoom and in person) : Janna, Ruth, Amy, Michelle, Pam M, Susan, Pam T

From GoodReads: In the summer of 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family’s vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys her mother, who spends the rest of her life at the lake house, hoping in vain that her favorite daughter will walk out of the woods. Emily’s two older sisters stay, too, each keeping her own private, decades-long vigil for the lost child. Sixty years later Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before she dies, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person to whom it might matter: her grandniece, Justine. For Justine, the lake house offers a chance to escape her manipulative boyfriend and give her daughters the stable home she never had. But it’s not the sanctuary she hoped for. The long Minnesota winter has begun. The house is cold and dilapidated, the frozen lake is silent and forbidding, and her only neighbor is a strange old man who seems to know more than he’s telling about the summer of 1935. Soon Justine’s troubled oldest daughter becomes obsessed with Emily’s disappearance, her mother arrives with designs on her inheritance, and the man she left behind launches a dangerous plan to get her back. In a house steeped in the sorrows of the women who came before her, Justine must overcome their tragic legacy if she hopes to save herself and her children. ************************* Most of us said we enjoyed this book, or at least we thought we enjoyed it until we dissected it at Book Club! Had it been a normal year we would have hated this book, but it was an entertaining book during Covid quaratine. We felt we needed more to either hate or like the characters. The author took on too much - too many story lines - and wasn't able to develop the characters in depth. Perhaps the most shocking observation we had was that there was no remorse from the two sisters concerning Emily! Our Covid rating was 3.5 - 4 for entertainment value. Next month's selection is Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

October 8, 2020 The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell Host: Janna Attendees: AMy, Michelle, Debra, Susan, Roxanne, Pam M Thanks Janna for hosting yet another HYBRID In-Person/Zoom/Phone book club.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Book of the Month - Review by Jordan Moblo: Told from three alternating points of view, The Family Upstairs is a fast-paced whodunit that will keep you guessing until the final delicious sentence. If I had any issues with the book, it would be that my productive Sunday afternoon came to a screeching standstill when I naively thought it would be a good idea to start this unputdownable read. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Libby Jones was adopted as a baby and grew up wondering who her birth parents were. Now an adult, she is stunned to receive a letter not only informing her who her mom and dad were, but also notifying her that she is the sole beneficiary of their abandoned London mansion. Said mansion just happens to be the location where her parents were found dead 25 years ago (of course!!). As Libby begins to unravel the secrets around her parents’ deaths, she soon suspects she might not be the only relative looking for answers. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * This pretty much sums it up for the PrincetonWalk Ladies, as well. A good who-dunnit which kept us reading and wanting more. Good discussion and a final review of 4 stars. For Nov: we will be reading

The Lost Girls by Heather Young