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Fiction Book Suggestions Wanted: June & July 2009

Assist us in selecting our upcoming FICTION book for group discussion in this forum. A minimum of 5 posts is required to participate here!
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Chris OConnor

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Fiction Book Suggestions Wanted: June & July 2009

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Fiction Book Suggestions Wanted: June & July 2009

Please use this thread for making fiction book suggestions that you think would make for a great discussion period during June & July 2009. And please provide a link to Amazon.com where your book suggestion can be researched.

So what would you like to read?
Last edited by Chris OConnor on Sun May 03, 2009 10:57 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Thrillwriter

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Well, of course I would recommend Vengeance Settles the Score by Diana Bain A page turner and a good read. :up:
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Going to Meet the Man: Stories - James Baldwin

Here's a follow up to Dreams From My Father for you all.

Review
With the exception of "The Man Child," a macabre, faintly Lawrentian study of repressed love between two white men in the rural South, all of Baldwin's tales here deal in one form or another with the Negro problem. Technically, a good portion of the work is crude and unconvincing. "Come Out the Wilderness" and "Previous Condition," for example, rest on slight themes: the first concerning a Negro girl's hapless involvement with an opportunistic white Village artist, and the second presenting the frustrations of a Negro actor when he is denied lodgings in a white neighborhood. "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon" is an ironic mood piece, a chronicle of a Negro expatriate in Paris: on the verge of fame and fearful of returning to the states, the singer discovers that his friend, a Tunisian outcast, is not above stealing from people of his own race. "Sonny's Blues" is an over-long, over-loud lament of a doomed jazz musician who becomes a junkie, ending on a muted moment of recognition between himself and his square brother. "The Rockpile" is a brief , bitter account of children blighted by Harlem family life. The title story is reminiscent of Baldwin's recent play Blues for Mr. Charlie; the white protaganist, a deputy sheriff, is momentarily impotent until aroused by a terrible memory: as a boy, he witnessed, along with his gloating parents and other adults, the brutal castration and burning of an uppity Negro. All of these tales have an undeniable urgency, power and anger, yet only "The Outing" achieves true artistry, probably because it is the most personal and not melodramatic at all. Symphonic in structure, mixing religious and sexual motifs, encompassing various shades of characters and situations against the background of a boat trip up the Hudson, "The Outing" is memorable in every sense; funny, sad, colorful, it is a triumphant performance. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their head above water. It may be the heroin that a down-and-out jazz pianist uses to face the terror of pouring his life into an inanimate instrument. It may be the brittle piety of a father who can never forgive his son for his illegitimacy. Or it may be the screen of bigotry that a redneck deputy has raised to blunt the awful childhood memory of the day his parents took him to watch a black man being murdered by a gleeful mob.

By turns haunting, heartbreaking, and horrifying--and informed throughout by Baldwin's uncanny knowledge of the wounds racism has left in both its victims and its perpetrators--Going to Meet the Man is a major work by one of our most important writers.

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June & July 2009

Just like with the non-fiction book suggestion thread I'm changing this discussion period to June & July 2009 instead of April & May 2009. There simply aren't enough suggestions and overall activity to warrant another book poll and discussion period starting so soon. :hmm:
Last edited by Chris OConnor on Sat May 02, 2009 2:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Last Orders by Graham Swift

“On a bleak spring day, four men meet in their favorite pub in a working-class London neighborhood. They are about to begin a pilgrimage to scatter the ashes of a fifth man, Jack Dodds, friend since WWII of three of them, adoptive father to the fourth. By the time they reach the seaside town where Jack's "last orders" have sent them, the tangled relationship among the men, their wives and their children has obliquely been revealed. Swift's lean, suspenseful and ultimately quite moving narrative is propelled by vernacular dialogue and elliptical internal monologues. Through the men's richly differentiated voices, the reader gradually understands the bonds of friendship, loyalty and love, and the undercurrents of greed, adulterous betrayal, parental guilt, anger and resentment that run through their intertwined lives. Each of them, it turns out, has a guilty secret, and the ironies compound as the quiet dramas of their lives are revealed. Amy, Jack's widow, does not accompany the men; she chooses instead to visit her and Jack's profoundly handicapped daughter in an institution, as she has done twice a week for 50 years. Swift plumbs the existentialist questions of identity and the meaning of existence while remaining true to the vocabulary, social circumstances and point of view of his proletarian characters. Written with impeccable honesty and paced with unflagging momentum, the novel ends with a scene of transcendent understanding.”

Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay


“After being fired from his latest television job, a disgraced Harry Boyd returns to his radio roots in the northern Canadian town of Yellowknife as the manager of a station no one listens to, and finds himself at the center of the station's unlikely social scene. New anchor Dido Paris, both renowned and mocked for her Dutch accent, fled an affair with her husband's father, only to be torn between Harry and another man. Wild child Gwen came to learn radio production, but under Harry's tutelage finds herself the guardian of the late-night shift. And lonely Eleanor wonders if it's time to move south just as she meets an unlikely suitor. While the station members wait for Yellowknife to get its first television station and the crew embarks on a life-changing canoe expedition, the city is divided over a proposal to build a pipeline that would cut across Native lands, bringing modernization and a flood of workers, equipment and money into sacred territory. Hay's crystalline prose, keen details and sharp dialogue sculpt the isolated, hardy residents of Yellowknife, who provide a convincing backdrop as the main cast tromps through the existential woods. (Apr.)”

Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden

“From internationally acclaimed author Joseph Boyden comes an astonishingly powerful novel of contemporary aboriginal life, full of the dangers and harsh beauty of both forest and city. When beautiful Suzanne Bird disappears, her sister Annie, a loner and hunter, is compelled to search for her, leaving behind their uncle Will, a man haunted by loss.While Annie travels from Toronto to New York, from modelling studios to A-list parties,Will encounters dire troubles at home. Both eventually come to painful discoveries about the inescapable ties of family. Through Black Spruce is an utterly unforgettable consideration of how we discover who we really are.”
The Guardians by Ana Castillo

"I don't think they could come up with a horror movie worse than the situation we got going on en la frontera," muses Milton, a man who has seen it all and now, in old age, is nearly blind. Milton is one of four transfixing voices telling the grim story of life along the border between the U.S and Mexico. Castillo writes fiction and poetry of earthy sensuality, wry social commentary, and lyrical spiritualism that confront the cruel injustices accorded women and Mexicans in America, legal and otherwise. In this tightly coiled and powerful tale, Regina, a virgin-widow in her fifties living in rural New Mexico, cares for her unusually disciplined teenage nephew, Gabo, who believes he's destined for the priesthood. Gabo's father often crosses the border to visit, but this time something has gone wrong, and given the gruesome fate of Gabo's mother, there is cause for alarm. As Gabo intensifies his prayers and penance, Regina, a teacher's aide unaware of her allure, asks Miguel, a chivalrous activist history teacher, for help, and he, in turn, enlists his covertly resourceful grandfather, Milton. At once shatteringly realistic and dramatically mystical, Castillo's incandescent novel of suffering and love traces life's movement toward the light even in the bleakest of places. Donna Seaman”

Dreamspeaker by Anne Cameron

“First a multiple award-winning film produced for television, then a novel and winner of the 1978 Gibson Literary Award, then a perennial bestseller, Dreamspeaker is the powerful and deeply moving story of a boy caught between two worlds, who learns too late the healing strength of faith and love. In a desperate attempt to escape the institution where he has been committed and to exorcise the unnamed evil that haunts him, Peter Baxter runs deep into the forests of British Columbia. Hungry, injured and pursued by inescapable horror, Peter is rescued by an old Native Dreamspeaker and his mute companion. Through their teachings, Peter discovers the power of the Indian spirit world--and the courage to face his terror alone.”

OR

Hardscratch Row by Anne Cameron

“West coast writer Anne Cameron has, in her new book Hardscratch Row, focused her clear and earthy gaze on the self-assured, middle-class Canadian mentality. She's gone traipsing down its corridors, wrenching open old doorways long since papered over with complacency and surface politeness, to probe fusty interior cavities and shadowy compartments, unearthing hoary tribal taboos, class prejudices and social stigmas. These she has poked and prodded, blinking and skulking, into the cold light of day—and then, quixotically, perversely, hilariously, transformed them into the heart-warming qualities of real and likeable characters in this gently pointed tale of survival, rejuvenation, and essential family values.
They are a rag tag lot for sure, the siblings who are at the story's center, together with their assorted children, lovers, ex-lovers and loosely defined and extended family relations. Meet Kitty the female rodeo clown, her lesbian lover Christie, with newly orphaned Noel in tow, and the beautiful Savannah, who, as a teenaged runaway, took up, simultaneously, with three swarthy Sikh brothers, any one of whom may have fathered any one of her several racially-mixed children, the first arriving when she was fifteen. There's Glen the gay brother dying of AIDS, Jim the crazy artist, his girlfriend Audrey, the town tramp, and Seely the single mother of two snarly teenagers. The assemblage seems tailor-made to leave any conservative reader, possessed of firm assumptions about just what's normal and correct (the "shocked and appalled bunch" as Cameron calls them) shocked and appalled. Cameron turns assumptions on their head, however, by having the characters themselves simply refuse to inhabit their appointed slots. However anarchic the exterior of their lives, and whatever damage their pasts may have wrought, Kitty, Jim, Savannah, Seely and entourage, are, it turns out, just decent people attempting to negotiate life and its many complexities (relationships, aging, kids, work) with all the grace, dignity and above all, humour, they can manage. What emerges is a gentle, low-key, slice-of- life portrait of some very imperfect people who "on the whole, more or less, so to speak and all things considered, [had] done O.K." It's familiar territory for the author, who has made a career out of chronicling life on the fringe of society, and she is, in this case, clearly pushing buttons with considerable glee.
The story opens with the death of Glen, which becomes the catalyst for a reunion of the principle characters. Although well into adulthood at the outset of the story, the siblings have, we come to understand, shared a hellish childhood, no thanks to a neglectful, alcoholic mother, and an absent father. Circumstances dictate that this temporary arrangement gradually become more permanent, and this fractured, scattered family slowly begins to reconfigure itself around the sole symbol of love and stability in their collective past—their late grandmother's house. This rebuilding culminates in a tentative reconciliation with the estranged father.
It would be inaccurate to say that nothing much happens in this novel—with two deaths within the first thirty pages, a collective haunting, a matriarchal showdown, a fiery car crash and miraculous rescue, a wedding, and a reconciliation, of sorts—quite a bit, in fact, happens. However, these events are not the main focus of the story. They function, instead, as landmarks, boulders in the stream, around which daily existence, with its relentless and untidy tumble of small decisions, immediate practical details, petty considerations, meals, and laundry, flows. The narrative arc is wide and leisurely, with any heavy drama occurring far off-stage, while the minute-to-minute business of living is lovingly chronicled with, at times, almost documentary precision. Readers fond of action- or incident-driven plot may find this problematic, the long passages chronicling the logistics of, for example, performing farm chores with a gimpy leg, tedious, the lack of a bold and definitive climax unsatisfying. Others, however, will appreciate the subtle way in which the quotidian gradually triumphs over old pain, and tragedy is slowly washed over by time, as this motley crew eat, and sleep, bicker, tease, and talk their way back into being a family.
What tension there is in the story arises primarily from two sources. First, there is a conflict between what the reader expects and what the characters actually does; here the degree of tension depends on the reader's own attitudes towards race, sexual orientation, gender roles, mental illness, and the nuclear family. Through her characters, Cameron confronts some fairly prickly social issues. The relationship between Savannah and her three Sikh lovers is perhaps the most obvious case in point. From a conventional standpoint it might appear to be the final degradation of family and societal values—and, indeed, there is opposition to the arrangement, not only from a disapproving community, but also from the families on both sides. Bindi, the formidable mother of Savannah's partners, ignites a feud by contending that the children, born out of wedlock to a white mother, have no souls, while Jim, in particular, had in the past always been critical of the inter-racial (as opposed to the supernumerary) aspects of his sister's arrangement. Over time, however, it becomes clear that "the Dads" as the three Sikh brothers are affectionately known, have conducted themselves with fastidious integrity—lovingly and unquestioningly providing for their children, even though no one is absolutely sure which of the brothers has fathered whom, their dealings with Savannah and her family fair and generous. Savannah, for her part, has proven to be a responsible, attentive and talented mother.
The gradual realization that the family is at a pivotal point in its development is a more subtle source of tension. The main characters are survivors of an awful past, who have, individually, managed to make their way in life, and maintain their humanity. What remains to be seen is whether or not at this stage they can progress beyond survival to reinvent themselves, collectively, as a family, however unorthodox. History is hard to bury—anger boils and spouts around the periphery of the narrative like a brewing summer storm. Old hurts and grievances linger and new irritations and frustrations arise. For all their folksy wisdom, homespun humour, and wry and teasing ways, Cameron's characters are real people, not saints, and forgiveness and accommodation, when it comes at all, is neither easily attained nor absolute.
Although this family is still very much a work in progress the general movement (from death to a wedding, tentative reconciliation and acceptance) is positive, and although the trappings of a 'normal' family life are still nowhere in sight, the foundations (caring, cooperation, accommodation and loyalty) do seem to be in place. One can't help but wish them well.
Kerry Riley (Books in Canada)”

The Guardians by Ana Castillo

“I don't think they could come up with a horror movie worse than the situation we got going on en la frontera," muses Milton, a man who has seen it all and now, in old age, is nearly blind. Milton is one of four transfixing voices telling the grim story of life along the border between the U.S and Mexico. Castillo writes fiction and poetry of earthy sensuality, wry social commentary, and lyrical spiritualism that confront the cruel injustices accorded women and Mexicans in America, legal and otherwise. In this tightly coiled and powerful tale, Regina, a virgin-widow in her fifties living in rural New Mexico, cares for her unusually disciplined teenage nephew, Gabo, who believes he's destined for the priesthood. Gabo's father often crosses the border to visit, but this time something has gone wrong, and given the gruesome fate of Gabo's mother, there is cause for alarm. As Gabo intensifies his prayers and penance, Regina, a teacher's aide unaware of her allure, asks Miguel, a chivalrous activist history teacher, for help, and he, in turn, enlists his covertly resourceful grandfather, Milton. At once shatteringly realistic and dramatically mystical, Castillo's incandescent novel of suffering and love traces life's movement toward the light even in the bleakest of places. Donna Seaman”

Please provide a link to Amazon.com where each book can be researched and purchased.

Chris
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I have been talking to Penelope over in the Oscar Wilde forum and came up with a few more fiction ideas.

I have read these books and have to say they all made really strong impressions on me. They might be fun to read here because they are all from non-mainstream points of view.

Note: All blurbs are taken from the Amazon.ca site.

Garden in the Dunes by Leslie Marmon Silko
http://www.amazon.ca/Gardens-Dunes-Lesl ... 988&sr=8-1

Silko (Almanac of the Dead, etc.) is widely considered a master of Native American literature, but in this third novel, as always, the poet, short-story writer and essayist soars beyond the simpler categorizations that might circumscribe her virtuosic and visionary work. Indigo is one of the last Sand Lizard people, who for centuries have cultivated the desert dunes beyond the river. Young Indigo's story opens like a folk tale, outside place and time, but gradually circumstances become plain. It's the turn of the century, Arizona is on the verge of statehood and an aqueduct is being constructed to feed water from the Colorado River to Los Angeles. Displaced peoples strip the desert gardens, and Grandma Fleet takes Indigo and Sister Salt to Needles. There the girls' mother has joined the encampment of women dancing to summon the Messiah, who, to Indigo's wonderment, appears with his Holy Mother and his 11 children. Soldiers raid the celebration; soon Indigo and Sister Salt are captured and separated, and Indigo is sent to school in Riverside. She escapes and is found hiding in a garden by intellectual iconoclast Hattie, who adopts the child and takes her first to New York, then to Europe. The novel, expanding far beyond its initial setting and historical themes, is structured around intricate patterns of color and styles of gardening: the desert dunes are pale yellow and orange; in Italy, a black garden is formed from thousands of hybrid black gladioli. Significantly, there's also a parrot named RainbowAalong with a monkey named Linnaeus and a dog circus. Silko's integration of glorious details into her many vivid settings and intense characters is a triumph of the storyteller's art, which this gifted and magical novelist has never demonstrated more satisfyingly than she does here.

Winter in the Blood by James Welch
http://www.amazon.ca/Penguuin-Classics- ... 032&sr=1-1

During his life, James Welch came to be regarded as a master of American prose, and his first novel, Winter in the Blood, is one of his most enduring works. The narrator of this beautiful, often disquieting novel is a young Native American man living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. Sensitive and self-destructive, he searches for something that will bind him to the lands of his ancestors but is haunted by personal tragedy, the dissolution of his once proud heritage, and Montana's vast emptiness. Winter in the Blood is an evocative and unforgettable work of literature that will continue to move and inspire anyone who encounters it.

Myths From Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others by Stephanie Dalley
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0192835 ... sib_rdr_dp

(This isn't the one I read as a kid. Mine was a handmade book that one of my relations put together and gave me but these are the stories.)

The stories include: Atrahasis, 2 versions of Gilgamesh, the descent of Ishtar (my favourite), Nergel and Ereshkigal (another favourite), Adapa, Etana, 2 versions of Anzu, the creation story, Dunnu and Erra and Ishum.
I've always found it rather exciting to remember that there is a difference between what we experience and what we think it means.
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I'm very interested in all the titles that Mary Lupin just posted above this. I am feeling not-so-entitled to suggest books right now, nor maybe even to vote because I was so enthusiastic about Milton and then I disappeared during that whole discussion. I had some other very wearing things going on which I had not forseen; nevertheless, I am determined to be in acceptance of whatever everyone else decides until such time as I have paid my participation dues over again by being engaged for an extended period.
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I like Mary Lupin's suggestions, especially the Mesopotamia Myths one.

What ever is chosen to read, I'll join you.

However, next, I am going to read:

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim first published in 1922 and set in an Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean. (Ladies on holiday.)

Just to tempt you, it begins with an advertisement in The Times:-
To Those who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine. Small medieval Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be Let Furnished for the month of April. Necessary servants remain.
Because it's April and I can pretend can't I?

I am also about to read - The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden...
published in 1958 and is also about being on holiday, in France. A group of childrens' experiences.......
The idyllic setting of the grand old hotel where the children spend their holiday hides all kinds of murky secrets and illicit relationships, and the two older girls, in particular, not only experience the joy and excitement of discovering the passions and pleasures of adult life, but also glimpse the ugliness and deceit and cruelty that so often hover just beneath the surface.
I will be so delighted if some of you will join me.
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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I though of another one!

How about Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko. It was the first one of hers that I read and it was what hooked me. Discussing it would be a bit like arm-chair Anthropology.

http://www.amazon.ca/Ceremony-Leslie-Si ... 475&sr=8-1

"A young Native American fights to defeat the demons that have followed him since his return from WWII. They intensify the estrangement he feels over his mixed parentage and his people's alienation. Adam Henderson tackles this novel with the slight singsong rhythm often adopted by traditional storytellers. He vividly personifies this young man, whose pain is almost overwhelming, but who strives to resist succumbing to the oblivion of alcohol, the refuge of many of his contemporaries. Henderson expresses the strength and hope of this young man, as well as his pain, and brings this compelling character to life. J.E.M. "
I've always found it rather exciting to remember that there is a difference between what we experience and what we think it means.
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Penelope wrote:However, next, I am going to read:

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim first published in 1922 and set in an Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean. (Ladies on holiday.)
It looks interesting. I have ordered it from my library. It shouldn't take too long. With any luck it will be an updated Mrs. Radcliffe.
I've always found it rather exciting to remember that there is a difference between what we experience and what we think it means.
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