Heschel Book Group - Tuesday, March 27th

Prior to the Civil War, some free black people owned slaves. Author Edward P. Jones picked up on that little-known fact and has written a vivid novel, The Known World. It looks at slavery through a different lens and examines the social and moral boundaries that were woven into the fabric of those living in Virginia at the time of slavery.

Edward P. Jones, the New York Times bestselling author, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the National Book Critics Circle award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Lannan Literary Award for The Known World.  

From The New Yorker:

On a small plantation in Manchester County, Virginia, in the eighteen-fifties, a freed black man named Henry Townsend lives with his wife and the thirty-three slaves he has bought, some with the help of his former owner. This kaleidoscopic first novel depicts daily life for Henry and his friends ("members of a free Negro class that, while not having the power of some whites, had been brought up to believe that they were rulers waiting in the wings"); for the plantation's slaves, one of whom believes that he, too, will be transformed into an owner after Henry's death; and for the county's white inhabitants, who coexist uneasily with their slaves and their emancipated black neighbors. Jones has written a book of tremendous moral intricacy: no relationship here is left unaltered by the bonds of ownership, and liberty eludes most of Manchester County's residents, not just its slaves.

Please join us Tuesday evening, March 27^th Lainer Library at 7:00. Come and share your insights or just listen to the discussion. This group is open to faculty and staff, parents, alumni, and friends of Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School.

Welcome Back to the Abraham Joshua Heschel Book Club

Welcome back to the Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School Book Group Blog. Here you will be able to get information about upcoming books or post questions or comments. 

Our first meeting will be hosted by Alyce de Toledo on November 16. We will meet at her home at 7:00.

Our first selection of this school year will be Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad.  Come and share your insights or just listen to the discussion. This group is open to faculty and staff, parents, alumni, or friends of Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School.

If you plan on attending, please contact me at debra.schaffer@heschel.com  and I will give you Alyce's address.

Please feel free to post comments or inquiries to this blog. I look forward to seeing you.

A Special Evening - May 17th

The next book we will discuss is Nobel Prize Winner Mario Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. This multilayered, comic novel, published in 1977, is set in Lima, Peru. Marito, a student who works in the news department of a local radio station, finds his young life disrupted by two arrivals. “The first is his aunt Julia, recently divorced and thirteen years older, with whom he begins a secret affair. The second is a manic radio scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho, whose racy soap operas are holding the city's listeners in thrall.” Named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Llosa’s work mixes paradox and satire “to explore the creative process of writing and its relation to the daily lives of writers.”


This book group will be slightly different. We will meet at the home of Debbie Shkurovich for dinner. As the book was translated from Spanish, she will facilitate the discussion and perhaps illuminate us to the differences between the original and the translation. This should be an enlightening and enjoyable evening. Please, if you plan on attending, you will need to RSVP by May 6th.  Upon  RSVP, you will recieve the address and additional information.

Tuesday - March 22

At our next book group, we will discuss Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips.

From The New Yorker:



This poetic novel alternates between the last hours of Robert Leavitt, a corporal in the U.S. Army, pinned down in a tunnel in South Korea, in 1950, and the story of his disabled son, Termite, who, nine years later, is living with his half-sister, Lark, and their aunt in West Virginia. Lark knows little of her mother and even less of her father, and pours herself into nurturing Termite, whose stunted body and lack of language has Social Services perpetually threatening to take him away. The appearance of a sympathetic social worker marks the beginning of a great fracture in their lives, which culminates in a flood that reveals the past and makes way for a new future. Phillips gives each scene an evocative, often lyrical description, but the mystical elements of the story and the improbable ending undermine an otherwise moving exploration of familial love.


From The New York Times:


Jayne Anne Phillips renders what is realistically impossible with such authority that the reader never questions its truth. This is the alchemy of great fiction: the fantastic dream that’s created in “Lark and Termite” is one the reader enters without ever looking back.


This group is open to faculty and staff, parents, grandparents, alumni, and friends of the Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School. Come and share your insights or just listen to the discussion. It is an informal group, and we encourage you to come. You do not need to make each meeting, nor do you even have to finish the book in time for the group.
 
We will meet in Lainer Library at Heschel from 7:00 - 9:00 pm.


Please contact Debra Schaffer at debra_schaffer@ajhds.com to get more information or to reserve a spot. Feel free to comment on this site with insights, suggestions, or questions.

Thursday - February 24

Please note the date change: we will be meeting on Thursday the 24th of February at 7:00pm.

Abraham Verghese is both a doctor and a writer, and Cutting for Stone illustrates how organically he can combine his passions. This sweeping novel follows twins Marion and Shiva Stone. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.

From The Washington Post: "Masterful ... Verghese’s gripping narrative moves over decades and generations from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York, describing the cultural and spiritual pull of these places. . . . Even with its many stories and layers, Cutting for Stone remains clear and concise."


From the Los Angeles Times: "Verghese creates this story so lovingly that it is actually possible to live within it for the brief time one spends with this book. You may never leave the chair."

If you would like to see an actual hospital in Ethiopia please watch A Walk to Beautiful. "The award winning feature-length documentary A Walk to Beautiful tells the stories of five Ethiopian women who suffer from devastating childbirth injuries and embark on a journey to reclaim their lost dignity. Rejected by their husbands and ostracized by their communities, these women are left to spend the rest of their lives in loneliness and shame. They make the choice to take the long and arduous journey to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in search of a cure and a new life." This film is not for the squeamish, but it is a beautiful documentary that will move you.

Join Us on November 16th

It is hard to believe that this is the third year of the Heschel Book Group. Last night, we kicked off the year with a stimulating discussion of Ernest Gaines’s novel, A Lesson before Dying. We also selected the next three books that the group will tackle.

On November 16, we will discuss, question, and analyze Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. This is an exquisite epic novel that traces the evolution of a marriage, a family, and the building of the American West. It is truly a masterpiece. This is quite a long novel, so start reading and join us.

On January 11, 2011 we will discuss another epic novel, Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone. Abraham Verghese is both a doctor and a writer, and Cutting for Stone illustrates how organically he can combine his passions. This sweeping novel moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations.

On February 22 we will discuss The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Tme. Mark Haddon's bitterly funny debut novel is a murder mystery of sorts. Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is mathematically gifted and socially challenged. He is raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with his quirks. He takes everything that he sees at face value and he is unable to make sense of the behaviors of his peers and elders.

This group is open to faculty and staff, parents, grandparents, alumni, and friends of the Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School. Come and share your insights or just listen to the discussion. It is an informal group, and we encourage you to come. You do not need to make each meeting, nor do you even have to finish the book in time for the group.

We will meet in Lainer Library at Heschel from 7:00 - 9:00 pm.



Please contact Debra Schaffer at debra_schaffer@ajhds.com to get more information or to reserve a spot. Feel free to comment on this site with insights, suggestions, or questions.

The Book Club is Back - Join Us on October 5th

The Heschel Book Club is returning! The first four reserved dates are October 5, November 16, January 11, and February 22. We will meet in in the Lainer Library at Heschel from 7 in the evening until 9. All parents, students, alumni, staff, and friends of Heschel are invited. Please join us to enjoy snacks and delve into literature. You may come to question, contribute, or just listen.

On October 5 we will talk about A Lesson before Dying by Ernest Gaines.
Some of the novels I am considering for the year are:

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
"Conjoined twins, Shiva and Marion Stone are separated by the doctor whose Caesarean fails to save their mother. Raised near the Ethiopian hospital where they were born, the brothers lock into a struggle that mirrors the country’s political tension: Their family is touched by murder, a coup, betrayal. Verghese plays straight to the heart in his first novel, which will keep you in its thrall.”

White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
In this darkly comic début novel set in India, Balram, a chauffeur, murders his employer, justifying his crime as the act of a "social entrepreneur."

The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night by Mark Haddon
"When a teen discovers his neighbor's dog savagely stabbed to death, he decides to use the deductive reasoning of his favorite detective to solve the crime. Employing Holmesian logic is not an easy task for even the cleverest amateur sleuth and, in Christopher's case, it is particularly daunting. He suffers from a disability that causes, among other things, compulsive behavior; the inability to read others' emotions; and intolerance for noise, human touch, and unexpected events."

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
"One of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illuminated with images, the Sarajevo Haggadah survived centuries of purges and wars thanks to people of all faiths who risked their lives to safeguard it. Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, has turned the intriguing but sparely detailed history of this precious volume into an emotionally rich, thrilling fictionalization that retraces its turbulent journey. In the hands of Hanna Heath, an impassioned rare-book expert restoring the manuscript in 1996 Sarajevo, it yields clues to its guardians and whereabouts: an insect wing, a wine stain, salt crystals, and a white hair. While readers experience crucial moments in the book's history through a series of fascinating, fleshed-out short stories, Hanna pursues its secrets scientifically, and finds that some interests will still risk everything in the name of protecting this treasure."

Angel of Repose by Wallace Stegner
"This long, thoughtful novel about a retired historian who researches and writes about his pioneer grandparents garnered Stegner a Pulitzer Prize. A masterpiece."

History of Love by Nicole Krauss
The History of Love is a hauntingly beautiful novel about two characters whose lives are woven together in such complex ways that even after the last page is turned, the reader is left to wonder what really happened. In the hands of a less gifted writer, unraveling this tangled web could easily give way to complete chaos. However, under Krauss's watchful eye, these twists and turns only strengthen the impact of this enchanting book.

When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin Yalom
"This talky first novel by psychotherapist Yalom is set in 1882, when Joseph Breuer, an eminent physician and mentor of Sigmund Freud, strives to apply his recently discovered talking cure to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche."

Little Bee by Chris Cleave
"Little Bee, smart and stoic, knows two people in England, Andrew and Sarah, journalists she chanced upon on a Nigerian beach after fleeing a massacre in her village, one grisly outbreak in an off-the-radar oil war. After sneaking into England and escaping a rural “immigration removal” center, she arrives at Andrew and Sarah’s London suburb home only to find that the violence that haunts her has also poisoned them. In an unnerving blend of dread, wit, and beauty, Cleave slowly and arrestingly excavates the full extent of the horror that binds Little Bee and Sarah together."

Although I have only read a few of the previous selections, these all come highly recommended. Also, let me know if you are interested in looking at classic literature like The Great Gatsby or Ethan Frome. 
Come discuss the options on October 5th, and please, bring suggestions as well.
If you are interested in joining us, please email me at debra_schaffer@ajhds.com

I look forward to seeing you in October.