Hey Gals,
It's voting time again! This time, we took books that were given out at our Holiday Brunch and Book Exchange and put them on the list. We are voting on the book to read for February's book group.
Thanks everyone who came to brunch, it was a delight!
The Punch A Novel by Noah Hawley
In his third novel, Hawley (Other People's Weddings) traces the path of Scott and David Henry as they prepare for their father's memorial service. Younger brother Scott—stuck in a dead-end job, failing in love and a frequenter of San Francisco strip clubs—is saddled with his alcoholic, self-destructing mother, Doris, on their trip to New York. Scott's successful sales executive and closeted bigamist brother, David, shares Doris duty while navigating memorial service preparations and secretly juggling marriages on both coasts. Along the way, a family secret is revealed, two hotels are nearly blown up and the trio explores what it means to be a family. Unfortunately, Hawley's asides on physics, religion and the nature of time distract from the plot without adding to it, and the occasional dud sentence pops up (Now they circle their wagons and eye each other warily from the high towers of their castles). However, the characters—especially Doris—and humorously handled uncomfortable situations (as when David's two wives meet) somewhat mitigate these shortcomings, and the memorial service at the legendary White Horse Tavern provides a rollicking climax.
Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
In Midwives, Chris Bohjalian chronicles the events leading up to the trial of Sibyl Danforth, a respected midwife in the small Vermont town of Reddington, on charges of manslaughter. It quickly becomes evident, however, that Sibyl is not the only one on trial--the prosecuting attorney and the state's medical community are all anxious to use this tragedy as ammunition against midwifery in general; this particular midwife, after all, an ex-hippie who still evokes the best of the flower-power generation, is something of an anachronism in 1981. Through it all, Sibyl, her husband, Rand, and their teenage daughter, Connie, attempt to keep their family intact, but the stress of the trial--and Sibyl's growing closeness to her lawyer--puts pressure on both marriage and family. Bohjalian takes readers through the intricacies of childbirth and the law, and by the end of Sibyl Danforth's trial, it's difficult to decide which was more harrowing--the tragic delivery or its legal aftermath.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
As any reader of The Mosquito Coast knows, men who drag their families to far-off climes in pursuit of an Idea seldom come to any good, while those familiar with At Play in the Fields of the Lord or Kalimantaan understand that the minute a missionary sets foot on the fictional stage, all hell is about to break loose. So when Barbara Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they're not likely to find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher, has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement: "We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle," says Leah, one of Nathan's daughters. But of course it isn't long before they discover that the tremendous humidity has rendered the mixes unusable, their clothes are unsuitable, and they've arrived in the middle of political upheaval as the Congolese seek to wrest independence from Belgium. In addition to poisonous snakes, dangerous animals, and the hostility of the villagers to Nathan's fiery take-no-prisoners brand of Christianity, there are also rebels in the jungle and the threat of war in the air. Could things get any worse?
