True stories, we know, can sometimes be just as crazy as fiction.
Many of them are tales of abuse, drug addiction, genocide, psychosis,
or oppression, and, while necessary, aren't always what we want
to discuss on a Sunday afternoon at the library. Here are some
uplifting, lighter memoirs your book club will love.
The
Wishing Year by Noelle Oxenhandler - Noelle, down
on her luck, overcomes her aversion to mixing the spiritual
and the earthly by discovering "the art of wishing brazenly."
What
I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
- Master of the surreal makes his foray into the memoir world
with his mesmerizing meditations on running, and how it has
affected his life and his writing.
Planetwalker
by John Francis - The story of Dr. John Francis' struggle
to save oil-soaked birds, his 17-year vow of silence, and his
22 years without using motorized transportation. (Chosen as
the Common Read for the University of South Carolina Upstate
english department.)
Petite
Anglaise by Catherine Sanderson - A young, stressed-out
Englishwoman in Paris discovers escape, excitement, and, possibly,
true love when she reinvents herself with a click of the mouse
as… Petite Anglaise.
This month's newest and most promising titles
for book groups!
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Christina
Schwarz
So
Long at the Fair
978-0385-51029-5 | $24.95 | Doubleday | HC | July
Set in small-town Wisconsin, a plot for revenge
during the summer of 1963 ends in a near drowning and resonates
a generation later on one single July day. This is a novel about
the lure of new attraction and the pull of long-established love,
and about the lengths to which people will go to satisfy their
desires.
Steven
T. Wax
Kafka Comes to America
978-1-59051-295-1 | $25.95 |
Other Press | HC
| June
“Our government can make you disappear.”
Those were words public defender Steven Wax never thought he’d
hear himself say. Here, he tells the stories of two of his team’s
clients to whom he had to give that warning – men whose
civil liberties, under the Bush administration, had been all
but eroded.
Elizabeth Maguire
The Open Door
978-1-59051-283-8 | $23.95 |
Other Press | TR | June
A luminous and profoundly moving novel inspired by the life
of Constance Fenimore Woolson, one of the most widely-read and
respected American authors of the nineteenth century. Exploring
themes of passion, life, death, friendship, and art, the novel
is a vivid evocation of the complex forces behind literary creation
as Woolson, with a letter of introduction to Henry James in
hand, sets sail to Europe to seek him out.
Barbara
Gowdy
Mister Sandman
978-1-58195-226-1 | $14.95 | Zoland Books |
TR | June
This outrageous, hilarious, disturbing, and
compassionate novel is about the Canary family, their eccentricities,
and their secret lives and histories. The deepest secret of
all is harbored in the silence of the youngest daughter, Joan,
who doesn’t grow, who doesn’t speak, but who can
play the piano like Mozart though she’s never had a lesson.
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Cheryl
Jarvis
The Necklace
978-0-345-50071-7 | $24.00 | Bantam | HC | Sept.
Together, in 2004, twelve women purchased a diamond
necklace valued at $37,000. What started as a simple agreement
to share a piece of jewelry turned into a study of friendship
and sharing, an exploration of the power of consumer culture as
well as the desire for family legacy and adventure.
978-0-385-34120-2 | $12.00 | Bantam Discovery
| TR | Sept.
At eleven, Lucy McGowan already knows she’ll
be a psychologist when she grows up. Her family, a “profoundly
gifted” twin brother, commitment-phobic mother, and New
Age grandmother, provide plenty of opportunity for her to practice
her calling. Lucy delves into the family’s history and discovers
lessons about the paradoxes of love and the grace of forgiveness.
Linn
Ullmann; Translated by Sarah Death
A Blessed Child
978-0-307-26547-0 | $24.95 | Knopf | HC | August
Every summer, Isak Lövenstad gathers his
three daughters by different wives to the windswept Baltic island
of Hammarsö. Here Erika, Laura, and Molly know, if only for
the season, what it is to be a family, and each undergoes the
rites of growing up. When twenty five years pass and the three
women return to the island to visit their father, they finally
face the specter of one awful summer, the mark of which each has
since carried.
Maude
Hutchins
Victorine
978-1-59017-270-4 | $14.95 |
New York Review Books | TR | July
A coming-of-age tale, Victorine concerns the
eponymous hero, poised on the threshold of puberty, who finds
herself completely overwhelmed by her own physical nature in all
its polymorphous and perverse insistence. Meanwhile, her older
brother must come to terms with their chilly, domineering father.
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