The Current Book Club Choice

We Were the Mulvaneys, by Joyce Carol Oates

This novel is set in upstate New York. "Everyone knows the Mulvaneys: Dad (Michael) the successful businessman, Mike the football star, Marianne the cheerleader, Patrick the brain, Judd the runt, and Mom (Corinne) dedicated to running the family. But after what sometime narrator Judd calls the events of Valentine's Day 1976, this ideal family falls apart and is not reunited until 1993. . . . [The] novel explores this disintegration with an eye to the nature of changing relationships and recovering from the fractures that occur."


The Recent Book Club Choices

Cristina Schwarz   Elizabeth Berg   Barbara Kingsolver   Sue Miller   Toni Morrison   Tawni O'Dell  

Drowning Ruth, by Cristina Schwarz

Drowning Ruth is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are exposed.


Open House, by Elizabeth Berg

Open House is a love story about what can blossom between a man and a woman, and within a woman herself. Samantha's husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany's, she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. In order to emerge from grief and the past, she has to learn how to make her own happiness. In order to really see people, she has to look within her heart. And in order to know who she is, she has to remember--and reclaim--the person she used to be, long before she became someone else in an effort to save her marriage.


The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver

In her most highly acclaimed book to date, Kingsolver presents a compelling exploration of religion, conscience, imperialist arrogance, and the many paths to redemption, telling the story of an American missionary and his family in the Congo in 1959.


While I Was Gone, by Sue Miller

Jo has everything she's ever wanted: a veterinary practice she loves, a devoted husband, three grown daughters, and a beautiful Massachusetts farmhouse. But when an old housemate settles in her small town, the fabric of Jo's life begins to unravel: seduced again by the enticing possibility of another self and another life, she begins a dangerous flirtation that returns her to the darkest moment of her past and imperils all she loves.


The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom, Pecola's life does change -- in painful, devastating ways. With its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment, The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novels -- and a significant work of American Fiction.


Back Roads, by Tawni O'Dell

Harley Altmyer is marooned in the Pennsylvania backwoods caring for his three beloved but unruly younger sisters. He has, at best, a shaky hold on the vicissitudes of day care, mac and cheese dinners, and visits to a once-devoted mother who seems not only resigned, but glad to hand over the reins of motherhood to her son. Frustrated, overwhelmed, and utterly endearing, he's a guy in an impossible situation: an orphan with the responsibilities of an adult and the fiery, aggressive libido of a teenager.


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