Autumn finds local book clubs turning sober, reflective

The crisp air of autumn brings on the urge to visit the library and comb the shelves for the best, most intriguing reads. The following selections have kept quite a few book clubs turning the pages and their discussions. Enjoy!

The Postmistress - A Novel (2010)
Sarah Blake

This historical novel, the second for author Sarah Blake, is set during the summer of 1941, mostly in a small town at the tip of Cape Cod, where you just might want to scan the Atlantic for German U-boats.  The lives of four people at the land's end are transformed by a voice reporting from war-torn Europe: Frankie Bard, a radio war correspondent whose compassionate voice reaches out from London as it is ripped apart by bombs every night. The stories Frankie reports are the first to reach Americans who feel distant from the war. The postmistress and the radio gal have one thing in common: their compassion directs what information they share and also which letters and stories they keep to themselves.

 

Trumpet - A Novel (1998)
Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay is a Scottish born poet and novelist whose work reflects her experience of being adopted. Her biological parents are a white Scottih mother and a Nigerian father. She is  adopted by a white Scottish couple and Trumpet mixes together some of these elements, along with some provocative slants on music, gender, love, and  identity. Not a bad job for a first novel. Kay's poetic voice steals the jazzy show. (This story borrows a few details from the true story of Billy Tipton, an American jazz pianist who bound her breasts in bandages and put on a suit in the 1930s to enter the male-dominated world of music.)

Walks With Men (2010)
Ann Beattie

This novella, only a bit over 100 pages, returns Beattie to the realm that made her famous and dear to all of us: the early 1980s world of new college grads settling into their first slightly ratty, exotic browstones. This time Beattie sets her story in Chelsea with Jane Jay Costner, a recent Harvard valedictorian who (like Beattie herself in the real-world early '80s) has just made a literary splash as avatar of her cynical generation. Neil, a writer who is twenty years her senior, interviews her for a newspaper profile, and the rest is history. This is fun to read, as we get to know several iconic Manhattan characters, but is more a satire of Beattie's writing itself, than a piece of work to be taken seriously.

The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009)
Stieg Larssen

Second in the Swedish mystery series that has been as popular as Harry Potter, Larssen continues to keep us enthralled. His main character, Lisbeth Salander, is a poster girl for the underdog, a computer hacker and quite a snappy dresser -- complete with leather, body piercings and tattoos, which she sometimes gives freely to bad guys. Let me be the first to say,  I do not believe this series was written by a man. I'm willing to wager big coin that Larssen's girlfriend is the real writer. The action in the second novel revolves around the death of criminologist and scholar Mia Johansson and her boyfriend, a crusading investigative journalist. This is another roller-coaster ride for those who enjoyed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Salander is a grown up Pippi Longstocking, able to hoist policeman by their gun belts and throw them off her front porch as if they were cotton candy.

(mari27454 / iStockphoto.com)

Cutting For Stone (2009)
Abraham Verghese

Set across three decades and two continents, Cutting for Stone is about a family of doctors, nurses and other medical types. It begins with the two separate journeys, an English doctor and an Indian nun/nurse who both end up at a hospital named Missing In Ethopia during the late 1950s. The hospital is missing quite a bit but it more than makes up for its deficits with its talented staff. Sister Mary Joseph Praise and Dr. Stone make a fine team but their late night rendez-vous earn them more than they can handle and they set in motion many of the novel's conflicts. It all curls around to the 1970s Bronx with the next generation, conjoined twins Marion and Shiva Stone. Birth separates them from their original connection and it takes half a lifetime for them to be physically and spirittually joined. Verghese, who is himself a doctor, skillfully tells of the twins' journey, especially Marion who finds himself a doctor in the Bronx. A worthwhile read.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010)
David Mitchell

Most of the novel takes place from around 1801, when a handful of Europeans are forced to live on a small island in Nagasaki Harbor, because the Edo Japanese do not want their world to be corrupted by the religions and cultures of the West. The island has become a microcosm for corruption and self interest when Jacob de Zoet, an incorruptible Dutch clerk, comes sailing in to make his fortune. The catch is five years of his life on this claustrophobic port infested with lice, rats abd even worst, human vermin. This laregly historical novel takes many liberties but does give a glimpse at a dying era, the rule of the Dutch. While other nations try to horn on on the Dutch East Indies Company's monopoly, the fortunes and misfortunes rain on this small island of Japanese and European characters. Mitchell introduces us in the best of his poetic writing. The plot has many twists and turns and the writing is spectacular; a truly panoramic novel of East and West.