Central Market Book Club
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Central Market Book Club candidates - Ballot for April 14 2008
(Anyone attending will each have 6 votes to choose from this list.)
Suggested by Alice.
- NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND by Fyodor Dostoevsky (publ 1864 ) 136 pages
Considered by many to be the world's first existentialist novel.
It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man) who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. Considered to be possible inspiration for Wright's THE MAN WHO LIVED UNDERGROUND.
- MRS. DALLOWAY by Virginia Woolf - (192 pages) published 1925
Story of Clarissa Dalloway's preparations for a party of which she is to be hostess. Story is preoccupied with a number of issues including madness and feminism. With the interior perspective of the novel, the story travels forwards and back in time, and in and out of the characters' minds, to construct a complete image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure.
Suggested by Mary
- DELTA WEDDING by Eudora Welty (326 pages) publ 1946
Welty won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER.
DELTA WEDDING is a portrait of a large Southern family living on their plantation in the Mississippi delta land in 1923. "A perfect ear for dialect is matched by deep spiritual concerns, and the limits of family and sexuality are explored." says one reviewer.
- GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin (272 pages) publ 1953
Baldwin was an American novelist, writer, playwright, poet, essayist, and civil rights activist.
This novel which is autobiographical examines the role of the Christian Church in the lives of African-Americans, both as a source of repression and moral hypocrisy and as a source of inspiration and community - also, more subtly, examines racism in the United States.
Suggested by Jackie
- THE GOOD EARTH by Pearl S. Buck (publ 1931) 368 pages
1932 Pulitzer Prize winner
The novel potrays ordinary lives in an extraordinary manner. It describes a non-Caucasian culture in detail and helped prepare Americans of the 1930s to consider Chinese as allies in the coming war with Japan. "...a well-crafted, complex tale of a man's rise from poverty and subsistence to wealth, and the metamorphosis this transition brings about in his personality and interpersonal relationships."
- THE SEA by John Banville (publ 2005) 208 pages
2005 Man Booker Prize winner
Despite the actual present day setting of the novel, the single aspect which ties the novel together, are the childhood memories of Max, a self-aware, retired art historian attempting to reconcile himself to the deaths of those whom he loved as a child and as an adult, told as an unreliable, unorganised and ommitted iteration of events. The novel is written as a reflective journal; the setting always in flux, wholly dependant upon the topic or theme Max feels to write about. According to one reviewer: "The stunning feature of the book is Banville's writing. It is intensely poetic."
Suggested by Esther
- THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene (publ 1948) 288 pages
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 role as assistant police commissioner and by severe responsibility to his wife for whom he cares with a fatal pity. When Scobie falls in love with a young widow, he finds vital passion again yielding to pity, integrity giving way to deceit and dishonor—a vortex leading directly to murder. As Scobie's world crumbles, his personal crisis makes for a novel that is suspenseful, fascinating, and, finally, tragic. Possible discussion questions HERE
- THE MAN WHO LIVED UNDERGROUND by Richard Wright (publ 1945) 65 pages
Written seven years before Ellison's novel INVISIBLE MAN , Wright's story is considered by many to be an unacknowledged source of Ellison's work; however, both writers rely heavily on Dostoevsky. Wright's story is also thought to present a better portrayal of the black man's plight in American society during that time period.
An African American falsely accused of killing a white woman, attempts to make a new life in the sewers.. he examines his assumptions about guilt and innocence and comes to believe that people are inherently guilty and isolated from one another.
Availability somewhat limited. We can work on that if we know ahead of time. EIGHT MEN: SHORT STORIES at Powel's
Suggested by Ellie
- THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neal Hurston (publ 1937) 194 pages
From the 1930s through the 1950s, Zora Neale Hurston was the most prolific and accomplished black woman writer in America. The book was not universally praised by Hurston's peers, with particular criticism leveled at her use of black southern dialect to show that complex relationships and metaphoric language are possible in something considered "substandard" to English.
Setting of novel is central and southern Florida in the early 20th century. The main character, an African American woman in her early forties, tells via an extended flashback, the story of her life which has three major periods corresponding to her marriages to three very different men.
Suggested by Connie
- SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser (publ 1900) Dover Thrift edition-368 pages
According to H.L. Mencken, "American writing, before and after Dreiser's time, differed almost as much as biology before and after Darwin."
About a young country girl who moves to the big city where she starts realizing her own American Dream by first becoming a mistress to powerful men and later as a famous actress. Author had difficulty finding publisher "due to the blurred division line between good and bad in the plot."
- UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry (publ 1947) 448 pages
Rated as number 11 on the list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century compiled by the Modern Library.
Semi-autobiographical -- tells the story of an alcoholic British consul in a small Mexican town on the Day of the Dead in 1938 when his wife arrives and is determined to rescue their failing marriage. The events of this one significant day unfold against an unforgettable backdrop of a Mexico at once magical and diabolical.
Suggested by....
- Title you suggest could be here!
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