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January
2006

HYPOCRITE IN A POUFFY WHITE DRESS
By Susan Jane Gilman

Gilman's memoir of growing up on Manhattan's upper upper West Side in the 1970s is an acerbic and often side-splitting tale that chronicles her bohemian youth and the first years of her adult life. The humor and wry social commentary do not detract from a serious and moving look at one family's efforts to keep itself intact through divorce and other life challenges.

Her experiences include being the only Jewish girl attending a private Presbyterian school, her mother's enthusiasm for transcendental meditation, and her own infatuation with Mick Jagger. She also shares the adult experiences of career choices, the effects of her parents' divorce after she and her brother were grown, and a work-related trip to the Polish concentration camps.

Hilarious, assured, and moving, these are wildly entertaining stories that readers will want to share instantly with friends.

February
2006

PLAINSONG
By Kent Haruf

From simple elements, Haruf achieves a novel of wisdom and grace as he interweaves the stories of a pregnant high school girl, a pair of boys abandoned by their mother, and a couple of crusty old bachelor farmers.  All of them are struggling, but it is their caring, kindness, and forgiving spirits that help them support one another.  This is a compelling story of grief, bereavement, loneliness and anger, but also of kindness, benevolence, and love.  Lyrical and well-crafted, this lovely novel about how families can be made between folks who are not necessarily blood relatives makes for enjoyable reading.

March
2006

BEL CANTO
By Ann Patchett

A lavish birthday party is held for a Japanese CEO in an unnamed Spanish-speaking country.  As world-renowned lyric soprano Roxanne Cross finishes an aria, terrorists burst in and take everyone hostage.  So begins a four-month siege as captors and their prisoners settle into a strange domesticity.  The life-threatening scenario evolves as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends and lovers.

The author flits in and out of the hearts and psyches of the diverse characters and reveals a profound, shared humanity.  In a fractious world, Bel Canto is a gentle reminder of the transcendence of beauty and love.

April
2006

DISGRACE
By J. M. Coetzee

After years of teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Capetown, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student.  When he is found out, he resigns and retreats to Salem where his daughter, Lucy, manages a dog kennel and works her small farm.  David hopes for a refuge here, but in post-apartheid South Africa complexities abound and he must adjust his attitudes about race, society’s balance of power, and his relationship with his daughter.  One afternoon, he and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack that changes both of them in ways they could never have foreseen.

Disgrace is chilling, uncompromising and unforgettable and Coetzee has a brilliant writer’s mastery of tension and elegance.

May
2006

THE RELUCTANT TUSCAN
By Phil Doran

The author is a Hollywood writer-producer who lists among his hits the TV series Who's the Boss and The Wonder Years.  When he started coming home every night angry, burned-out and exhausted, his wife decided to surprise her husband by purchasing a broken-down three hundred year old farmhouse in Italy for them to restore.  After he was dragged kicking and screaming out of his high stress life, Doran gradually succumbed to the laid-back Tuscan lifestyle.

Doran's brutally funny accounts of tangles with the mayor, the police, an inefficient landlord and, of course, his long-suffering wife are related with an eye for the telling personal detail.  And this creator of sitcoms knows how to set up a scene for maximum comic impact.

June
2006

HOUSE ON MANGO STREET
By Sandra Cisneros

Here is a year in the life of Esperanza, a twelve-year-old Mexican-American girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago.  A series of vignettes introduce us to a neighborhood of harsh beauty and harsher realities.  Esperanza imagines a life for herself, which is worlds away from her own experience.  Her writing helps her to escape from poverty, the onslaught of puberty, and the low expectations the world has for her.

Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, the novel shows us a young girl coming into her power and inventing for herself what she will become.

July/August
2006

CLOUDSTREET
By Tim Winton

The Pickles family inherits a ramshackle house but lack the funds to keep it, so they take in the Lamb family as boarders.  The Pickles are an irreligious, indolent clan while the Lambs are pious and hard-working.  In this novel of post World War II western Australia, we follow these quirky individuals as they forge bonds and undergo many travails.  Their experiences over twenty years run the gamut from drunkenness, adultery and death to resurrection, marriage and birth.  A world war, Australian politics, the Cuban missile crisis and JFK’s assassination take a back seat to their trials and final joy.

This satiric, affectionate family saga is tragic and hilarious – and often both at once.  Cloudstreet is one of those rare novels that warm the heart as well as spark the imagination.

September
2006

WICKED
By Gregory Maguire

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum’s classic tale, we only heard her part of the story.  But how did the Wicked Witch get that way?

Born bright green, Elphaba repulses and embarrasses her mother.  At college, she is rejected by her roommate, Glinda, a silly girl interested only in clothes, money and popularity.  Elphaba becomes politically active in a society where the Wizard’s secret police are everywhere and animals with voices, minds, and souls are threatened with exile.

Wicked is a captivating, funny and perceptive look at destiny, personal responsibility and the nature of good and evil.  The author has taken the largely unknown world of Oz and filled in the gaps with the power of his imagination.

October
2006

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
By Al Gore

Former Vice President and presidential candidate Al Gore presents the case for addressing our climate crisis before it’s too late.  Chock full of charts, graphs, and stunning photographs of natural wonders in peril (and of Al and Tipper in younger days) the book contains enough information to acquaint the reader with the issues but is careful not to overwhelm the non-scientist.

Points are made dramatically, as with a series of photos of Mount Kilimanjaro which reveal its shrinking glaciers.  A scientist predicts that within ten years there will be no more “Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

November
2006

THE HISTORY OF LOVE
By Nicole Krauss

Leo Gursky is a retired locksmith who immigrates to New York after escaping SS officers in his native Poland.  He is now terrified that no one will notice when he dies.  Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is struggling to lift her mother’s depression and save her brother from his delusions.  Their stories are interwoven with the fate of a lost, stolen, destroyed, found, translated and retranslated book called The History of Love.  Nicole Krauss has written a hauntingly beautiful novel full of tenderness for her eccentric characters.  In the final pages, the fractured stories come together in a heartbreakingly satisfying way.

December
2006

A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT
By Sebastien Japrisot

In January of 1917, five French soldiers are marched to the front lines and left, hands bound, for the Germans to shoot.  All five had been caught trying to wound themselves in a vain attempt to leave the war.

In August of 1919, Mathilde Donnay, a spunky, determined, independent though wheelchair-bound young woman, speaks to a dying soldier who knew her fiance in the war. From him she hears the story of her betrothed’s execution.  And so begins her investigation into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths of the five condemned prisoners – one of whom, at least, might still be alive.

Part mystery and part love story, this beautifully crafted World War One novel evokes the lingering pain of mourning and the burdens of survival.