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    		•  September paperback releases offer good choices for reading groups

    REVIEWS BY JULIE HALE

    Cover Hole in My Life
    Gantos is an award-winning children's author, but his compelling autobiography will appeal to readers of all ages. In the early 1970s, the future didn't look very bright for the 20-year-old Gantos, who was arrested for his involvement in a drug smuggling scheme and sent to a medium security federal prison. Frightened and lonely, Gantos spent a grim 15 months behind bars, his only salvation a copy of The Brothers Karamazov, which he used as a journal, filling in the spaces between lines with his own writing. Ironically, it was during his time in prison that Gantos developed the discipline required to become a writer. Hole in My Life is a gripping account of his incarceration, written with unsparing honesty. It's also a hopeful narrative of one man's ability to overcome early obstacles and achieve success despite the odds.

    Cover The Namesake
    In this best-selling follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri continues her insightful exploration of the immigrant experience. During the late 1960s, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli leave India and settle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he works as a professor of engineering and she gives birth to their son, Gogol. Named after the famous Russian writer, Gogol grows up to become a brilliant student, graduating from Yale and embarking on a career as an architect. Yet, despite his successes, he never quite fits in. Ill at ease with his heritage, he fails to connect with anyone until his mother sets him up on a date with a young Indian-American woman who—like Gogol—is ambivalent about her past. Writing with a keen eye for authentic detail, Lahiri has produced a provocative novel about tradition, cultural inheritance and the burden of history. A reading group guide is available online at www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com.

    Cover The Fortress of Solitude
    Spanning a turbulent 30 years, Lethem's expansive new novel examines issues of race and class in his native New York. When Rachel and Abraham Edbus move to Brooklyn in the early 1970s, they're one of the only white families in the neighborhood. This spells trouble for their son Dylan, who must attend predominately black public schools and defend himself against the local toughs. Fortunately, he finds a friend in Mingus, an African-American boy who is a talented artist. The pair share a love of comics books, graffiti and funk records. But a consuming drug habit makes Mingus an increasingly distant figure in Dylan's life, and he soon begins a tragic downward spiral. Dylan goes on to become a music journalist, and the novel itself has an extensive soundtrack, so to speak, as Lethem references the history of hip-hop, blues and pop music. This is a smart, ambitious novel from one of America's finest writers. A reading group guide is available in print and online at www.readinggroupcenter.com.

    Cover Old School
    After a 23-year career, during which he published numerous acclaimed short story collections and a pair of memoirs, Wolff now turns his hand to a novel about life at a New England prep school in the 1960s. The narrator, an unnamed boy, is one of many literature-lovers at the institution who is eager to prove himself in a string of upcoming writing competitions to be judged by a group of visiting authors. Struggling with a story that will be read by Ernest Hemingway, the boy—anxious to impress—appropriates an idea for his narrative's plotline and ends up disclosing a secret about his identity that he had painstakingly concealed from his fellow students. The consequences are devastating. This classic coming-of-age novel offers unique perspectives on the demands of the writing process. A reading group guide is available at www.readinggroupcenter.com.


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