First Friday Book Discussion Group

1st FRIDAY

BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP

11:00 A.M.

March 5, 2010

House of Splendid Isolation by Edna O'Brien (Ireland)

An elderly Irish woman develops a relationship with an escaped IRA terrorist who has sought refuge in her home in O'Brien's 14th novel.

January 8, 2010

Loving Che by Ana Menendez (Cuba)

From the product description:  "A young Cuban woman has been searching in vain for details of her birth mother. All she knows of her past is that her grandfather fled the turbulent Havana of the 1960s for Miami with her in tow, and that pinned to her sweater-possibly by her mother-were a few treasured lines of a Pablo Neruda poem. These facts remain her only tenuous links to her history, until a mysterious parcel arrives in the mail. Inside the soft, worn box are layers of writings and photographs. Fitting these pieces together with insights she gleans from several trips back to Havana, the daughter reconstructs a life of her mother, her youthful affair with the dashing, charismatic Che Guevara and the child she bore by the enigmatic rebel.

November 6, 2009

Links by Nuruddin Farah (Somalia)

Gripping, provocative, and revelatory, Links is a novel that will stand as a classic of modern world literature. Jeebleh is returning to Mogadiscio, Somalia, for the first time in twenty years. But this is not a nostalgia trip-his last residence there was a jail cell. And who could feel nostalgic for a city like this? U.S. troops have come and gone, and the decimated city is ruled by clan warlords and patrolled by qaat-chewing gangs who shoot civilians to relieve their adolescent boredom. Diverted in his pilgrimage to visit his mother's grave, Jeebleh is asked to investigate the abduction of the young daughter of one of his closest friend's family. But he learns quickly that any act in this city, particularly an act of justice, is much more complicated than he might have imagined.

September meeting cancelled.

Check back later for the date this book will be discussed.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)

The 1958 novel chronicles the life of Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo (Ibo) community, from the events leading up to his vanishment from the community for accidentally killing a clansman, through the seven years of his exile, to his return. Addresses the problem of the intrusion in the 1890's of white missionaries and colonial government into tribal Igbo society, and describes the simultaneous disintergration of its protagonist Okonkwo and of his village. The novel was praised for it's intelligent and realistic treatment of tribal beliefs and of psychological disintegration coincident with social unraveling. Things Fall Apart helped create the Nigerian literary renaissance of the 1960's.

July 10, 2009

City of the Queen: A novel of Colonial Hong Kong
by Shih Shu-Ching (Taiwan)

Shih sets her epic tale of one beautiful and determined woman's family amid Hong Kong's rich and complex history, capturing in vivid detail the unique tensions and stmosphere that have characterized the city. The novel introduces a range of Chinese and British characters to examine the complicated relationships between colonizer and colonized in a perceptive psychological portrayal of the effects of colonialism.

May 1, 2009

Brothers by Da Chen (China)

At the height of China’s Cultural Revolution a powerful general fathered two sons. Tan was born to the general’s wife and into a life of comfort and luxury. His half brother, Shento, was born to the general’s mistress, who threw herself off a cliff in the mountains of Balan only moments after delivering her child. Growing up, each remained ignorant of the other’s existence. In Beijing, Tan enjoyed the best schools, the finest clothes, and the prettiest girls. Shento was raised on the mountainside by an old healer and his wife until their deaths landed him in an orphanage, where he was always hungry, alone, and frightened. Though on divergent roads, each brother is driven by a passionate desire—one to glorify his father, the other to seek revenge against him.