Central Market Book Club candidates - Ballot for August 1, 2005
==Suggestions by Alice
THE DEVIL by Tolstoy, publ 1926 (50 pages depending on version)
"may be the most personally revealing - Tolstoy thought it so scandalous, he hid the manuscript in the upholstery of a chair in his office so his wife wouldn't find it, and he would never allow it to be published in his lifetime. Perhaps because the gripping tale of an aristocratic landowner slowly overcome with unrelenting sexual desire for one of the peasants on his estate was strikingly similar to an affair Tolstoy himself had.
Availability: retail, library, downloadable from web.
THE MYSTIC MASSEUR by V.S. Naipaul, publ 1959 (224 pages)
2001 Nobel Prize winner, British writer,
from NYTimes review: "..describes the progress of a likeable chameleon who un-selfconsciously metamorphoses from a... turbanned faith-healer to a ... sack-suited diplomat" "uncovers a rich vein of ethnic humor in the world of the Caribbean Hindu"
Availability: retail, library
==Suggestions by Connie
WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson (204 pages) - 1919
from a review: One of the first books to convincingly employ Freudian psychology to revealing the inner workings of ordinary characters, this collection used a small-town setting as a means of examining the neuroses and obsessions of American life in a manner that has only been rivaled by Flannery O’Conner for sheer intensity and insight
Availability: Library, retail book stores, downloadable from web.
ETHAN FROME by Edith Wharton - (181 pages) - publ 1911
A tragic love story set in a remote New England background that has become one of the classics of 20th century American literature. Wharton tells a compelling story about the human need for passion and affection in a situation where only abject coldness exists.
Availability: retail, library, downloadable from web.
==Suggestions by Mary
ATTONEMENT by Ian McEwan (351 pp) - publ 2001
Selection was nominated for a Booker prize. Author has won Booker prize for other works. This selection won the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as numerous other awards
From Amazon:..interwar, upper-middle-class setting..at heart, Atonement is about the pleasures, pains, and dangers of writing, and perhaps even more, about the challenge of controlling what readers make of your writing.
Random House Reading Guide available on line.
GOING TO MEET THE MAN:STORIES by James Baldwin
Two short stories from this collection will be discussed.
From: Amazon: 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.
