Central Market Book Club
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Central Market Book Club candidates - Ballot for April 13, 2009
(Anyone attending will each have 6 votes to choose from this list. They can apply all votes on one candidate or split their votes up however they would like as long as it is no more than a total of 6 votes per each member)
Suggested by Mary
- REGENERATION by Pat Barker (publ 1991) 232 pages
The novel was a Booker Prize nominee and was described by the New York Times Book Review as one of the four best novels of the year in its year of publication.
It is the first of three novels in the Regeneration Trilogy. The author has stated that "the trilogy is trying to tell something about the parts of war that don't get into the official accounts". Story is based on the real-life experiences of British army officers being treated for shell shock during World War I at an Edinburgh hospital.
- THE ROBBER BRIDE by Margaret Atwood (publ 1993 ) 528 pages
Atwood has won more than 55 awards in Canada and internationally.
Set in present-day Toronto, Ontario, the novel begins with three women who meet once a month in a restaurant to share a meal. Atwood takes you deep inside each woman's skin -- except, of course, Zenia, who must remain a mystery as the one who wrecked the lives of the others -- peeling away layers of their lives and examining in white-knuckled detail the events, experiences and tragedies that shaped them.
Suggested by Jackie
- THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford (publ 1915) 256 pages
Set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedies of the lives of two seemingly perfect couples. Captain Edward Ashburnham appears to be the ideal “good soldier” and the embodiment of English upper-class virtues but he also represents the corruption at society’s core. Beneath Ashburnham’s charming, polished exterior lurks a soul well-versed in the arts of deception, hypocrisy, who has betrayed an equally privileged American, John Dowell.
Suggested by Esther
- TOPDOG/UNDERDOG by Suzan-Lori Parks (premier off-broadway 2001) 117 pages
Winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
A darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity; tells the story of Lincoln and Booth, two black brothers whose names were given to them as a joke, foretelling a lifetime of sibling rivalry and resentment. Abandoned by their parents, they have had to depend upon each other for survival since they were teenagers. Now in their 30s, the brothers struggle to make a new life, but haunted by the past, the brothers are forced to confront the shattering reality of their future.
- THE AWAKENING by Kate Chopin (publ 1899) 102 pages
Set in a time period and culture which regards women as the property of their spouses. A famous tale of Edna Pontellier, who leaves her family, commits adultery, and begins to rediscover her true self--as an artist. Such an awakening is not easy, nor is it socially acceptable (particularly at the time when the book was published and banned).
Suggested by Alice
- BELOVED by Toni Morrison - (publ 1987) 352 pages
Winner of Nobel Prize in literature in 1993. Pulitzer Prize winner in 1988 for BELOVED which was also selected as single best work of American fiction in past 25 years as determined by a New York Times poll of 200 prominent writers, critics and editors.
Book examines both the mental and physical trauma caused by brutal effects of slavery. Sethe struggles to survive in the aftermath of slavery, haunted by her dead daughter. The author has said “Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” .
- HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene (publ 1948) 288 pages
Greene combined serious literary acclaim with wide popularity and was nominated for the Nobel Prize, but felt he lost as a result of his liberal politics --included in TIME's 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
Story of a good man enmeshed in love, intrigue, and evil in a West African coastal town. Scobie, flawed yet heroic is bound by strict integrity to his job and by severe responsibility to his wife for whom he cares with a fatal pity. As Scobie's world crumbles, his personal crisis makes for a novel that is suspenseful, fascinating, and, finally, tragic. Possible discussion questions HERE
Suggested by Mia
- ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac (first publ 1957) 307 pages
Often considered the defining work of the postwar Beat Generation that was so affected by jazz, poetry, and drug experiences-- hundreds of references have real-world counterparts--thinly fictionalized autobiography, filled with a cast made of Kerouac's real life friends, lovers, and fellow travelers. the soul of the Beat movement and literature.
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- THE JUNGLE by- Upton Sinclair (publ 1906) 475 pages
Classic novel about corruption of the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century - depicts in harsh tones the poverty, absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness prevalent among the "have-nots". Most of the main characters are part of an immigrant Lithuanian family which as the novel progresses, the jobs and means the family uses to stay alive lead to their moral decay.
Suggested by Connie
- THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington (publ 1918) 176 pages
Pulitzer Prize winner in 1919. Second novel in a trilogy that traces the growth of the US through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in a fictional Mid-Western town, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America.
Suggested by Scott
- CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller (publ 1961) 464 pages
The novel, set during the later stages of World War II from 1943 onwards, is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the Twentieth century.
Classic novel of wartime madness. Story is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning, among other things. Joseph Heller's brilliance lies in his ability to exaggerate an issue, idea or element of society so perfectly that we see it for just how foolish it is.
- ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST by Ken Kesey (publ 1962) 320 pages
Included the list of TIME's 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
Set in an Oregon asylum, and serves as a study of the institutional process and the human mind. Narrated by the gigantic but docile half-Indian "Chief" Bromden, who has pretended to be a deaf-mute for several years, this story focuses on the antics of the rebellious McMurphy, a happy-go-lucky transferee from a prison work farm to a mental hospital.
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