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.