As far as I recall, this book was proposed by Carolyn Housman, when the club met at her home in Rockland, but what matter is that, 14 months later? We read it, we liked it (which, I suppose is true of most of our selections but never guaranteed). In any event, we met on Saturday,…
In 1860, as a young girl of 17, Lady Slane nurtures a secret, burning ambition—to become an artist. She becomes, instead, the wife of a great statesman and the mother of six children. Seventy years later, released by widowhood, and to the dismay of her pompous children, she abandons the family home for a tiny…
On an Illinois farm in the 1920s, a man is murdered, and in the same moment the tenuous friendship between two lonely boys comes to an end. In telling their interconnected stories, American Book Award winner William Maxwell delivers a masterfully restrained and magically evocative meditation on the past. Author William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was…
Sir Edward Feathers has had a brilliant career, from his early days as a lawyer in Southeast Asia, where he earned the nickname Old Filth (FILTH being an acronym for Failed In London Try Hong Kong) to his final working days as a respected judge at the English bar. Yet through it all he has…
This intense novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about – until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance
Originally published in 1942 (in Hungarian) and now rediscovered to international acclaim, this taut and exquisitely structured novel by the Hungarian master Sandor Marai conjures the melancholy glamour of a decaying empire and the disillusioned wisdom of its last heirs. Author Sándor Márai was a Hungarian writer and journalist. He was born in the city…
The Yacoubian Building, a once-elegant temple of Art Deco splendor in downtown Cairo, Egypt. Disparate lives converge, careening toward an explosive conclusion. Tragicomic, passionate, frank in its sexuality, and brimming with human compassion. Author Alaa Al-Aswany (1957) is an Egyptian writer, and a founding member of the political movement Kefaya. Aswany attended Le Lycée Français…
ORDINARY LOVEAt a reunion with her grown children, a woman recalls the long-ago affair that ended her relationship with their father–and changed all their lives irrevoccably.GOOD WILLDespite the carefully self-sufficient life he has designed for his small family, a man discovers that even the right choices have unexpected consequences–sometimes heart-breaking ones. Discussed September 10, 2016…
In her study of the married couple as the smallest political unit, Phyllis Rose uses the marriages of five Victorian writers who wrote about their own lives with unusual candor: Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and George Eliot–née Marian Evans. Published by VintageOct 12, 1984 | 336 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN…
