Next Title: Artful

NPR Review

First Date: October 21, 2015...

First Book:

"Days of Abandonment" by Elena Farrente

New Yorker Review

New York Times Review

Summer Reading Recommendations

All the Light We Cannot See

Two in the Far North

I am Pilgrim

Flight Behavior

Museum of Innocence

Small Mercies

Epitaph of a Small Winner: A Novel

Stoner

LuLu Goes to College

The Boys in the Boat

The Buried Giant

Mislaid

Room for MORE.  Send your recommendations.

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance

Four intrepid travelers ventured into Manhattan for a book group discussion that started with a huge, loud vituperative argument between L.C. and this blogger over the choice of title.  Why does the hare and not the tiger  carry the title?  L.C. was certain that the amber eye is a symbol of...

Okay. Okay.  The screaming fight is pure fiction.  But the actual discussion was a good one.  (Just realized that the discussion of why the hare might have been a good addition.  Don't know why we didn't mention it.  In looking for ideas,  dug up the  fact that the original title was:  "Anna's Pocket" after the maid who rescued the netsuke from the Germans by putting them in her apron pocket.  )

The actual evening started with our viewing a talk by Edmund De Waal.  Here is link from R.K.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8wqJINrGj0

We continued the talk over delicious thin crust pizza and salad and wine served by R.K. And an amazing chocolate mousse for dessert.

• 
  
• 
  

De Waal Vases

Discussion themes included:

Interesting that the Ephrussi family went from merchants to art collectors to potter/artist/writers. Coincidence?  Or in the DNA?  Does longing for artistic ability start with collecting and evolve over generations into becoming an artist? Is artistic expression the ultimate goal of human evolution and intelligence?

That inheritance is more than the objects you inherit but the stories that go with them--it is these family stories that make you what you are.

That we missed R.M. Wish she was here to shed light on a potter's work and life.



That the book was well written and gripping tale filled with surprisingly sophisticated affairs and love stories and connections with famous writers and artists.

That having  money and possessions proves futile and meaningless.  In the end it did not protect the Ephrussi family from destruction.  But their art and the netsuke remain.

 Summer read recommendations will be posted.

June 17th Next Meeting: The Hare with Amber Eyes A Hidden Inheritance. By Edmund de Waal

 Times Review

Book Group Member Novel is Published

Purchase a copy

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki: Book Group Discussion

Missed the meeting. Thanks BB for the great post. 

Tsukuru Tazaki has never formed a lasting relationship since the breakup 16 years previously of his teenage group of five friends: three guys and two girls. The others all had last name that were colors but not he, thus "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki." He feels colorless in other ways as well, an "empty vessel." A new girlfriend, Sara, insists that for their relationship to go forward he must confront his former friends and get to the bottom of why they cruelly cut him off. And so begins his pilgrimage.

Most of us liked the book and found the story pulled us right along in spite of it's being more episodic than plotted. There are dreams and stories within the story, not all of which we grasped the importance of. Characters, too, as in a real pilgrimage, were sometimes picked up and dropped without our being sure of their significance. Sara seems more of a guide or even a therapist than a fleshed-out character. The simplicity of the language adds to the mythic feeling of the story.

One member commented that the book is spiritual. The rational is challenged by the intuitive, the dreamlike, the fanciful. The line is blurred  between what really happens and what is imagined. Another member's assertion that the novel has Catholic themes was met with general merriment. (Stoutly, she cited passages about the redemptive value of suffering, the social necessity for a victim, death of an old way of life leading to eventual resurrection, the existence of evil, and the life-sustaining value of hope.)

Tsukuru, whose name means "to build" or "to create," is an engineer who designs railroad stations. One member suggested that Tsukuru is a stand-in for the writer, his pilgrimage a depiction of the writing process. Several members felt a lack of resolution at story's end. What is the significance of vestigial fingers? Do Tsukuru's dreams include events that really happened? Has he committed an act of violence? What will become of Tsukuru and Sara?

Together, we puzzled out the book's cover--each of four colors like a finger in a hand, the thumb a railroad map incorporating all four colors--and found it so apt and clever we wondered if the author himself had had a "hand" in the design.

At meeting's end, BB held up a copy of the novel which she has just published through CreateSpace. "Lulu Goes to College" by Barbara McGillicuddy Bolton is available through Amazon.