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We've just set the list for the 2021-22 season of the Atwater Book Club. Here it is, if you want t get a head start!
2021
September 1
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (Nobel Prize for literature 2017)
Klara and the Sun, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with
outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store,
watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of
those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a
customer will soon choose her. The book offers a look at our changing
world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that
explores the fundamental question: What does it mean to love?
October 13
Who DoYou Think You Are? Alice Munro (Nobel Prize for literature 2013)
Rose and her stepmother Flo live in Hanratty -- across the bridge from
the "good" part of town. Rose, alternately fascinated and appalled by
the rude energy of the people around her, grows up nursing her hope of
outgrowing her humble beginnings and plotting to escape to university.
Rose makes her escape and thinks herself free. But Hanratty's question
-- Who do you think you are? -- rings in Rose's ears during her days in
Vancouver, mocks her attempts to make her marriage successful, and
haunts her new career back East as an actress and interviewer.
November 10
The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
Off the easternmost corner of India, in the Bay of Bengal, lies the
immense labyrinth of tiny islands known as the Sundarbans, where
settlers live in fear of drowning tides and man-eating tigers. Piya Roy,
a young American marine biologist of Indian descent, arrives in this
lush, treacherous landscape in search of a rare species of river dolphin
and enlists the aid of a local fisherman and a translator. Together the
three of them launch into the elaborate backwaters, drawn unawares into
the powerful political undercurrents of this isolated corner of the
world that exact a personal toll as fierce as the tides.
December
March by Geraldine Brooks
From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks
has animated the character of the absent father, March. Brooks follows
March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil
War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his
most ardently held beliefs. Pulitzer Prize 2006
2022
February 9
The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri
Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life,
rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of
Aleppo--until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is
destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is
so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous
journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in
Britain. On the way, Nuri is sustained by the knowledge that waiting for
them is Mustafa, his cousin and business partner, who has started an
apiary and is teaching fellow refugees in Yorkshire to keep bees.
March 9
The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
As an Armenian American living in San Francisco, Armanoush feels like
part of her identity is missing and that she must make a journey back to
the past, to Turkey, in order to start living her life. Asya is a
nineteen-year-old woman living in an extended all-female household in
Istanbul who loves Jonny Cash and the French existentialists. The
Bastard of Istanbul tells the story of their two families--and a secret
connection linking them to a violent event in the history of their homeland.
April 13
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
This story within a story follows Charlie Marlow, whose job was to
transport ivory downriver, and who develops an interest in i an ivory
procurement agent, Kurtz, who is employed by the government. Preceded by
his reputation as a brilliant emissary of progress, Kurtz has now
established himself as a god among the natives in “one of the darkest
places on earth.” Marlow suspects something else of Kurtz: he has gone mad.
A reflection on corruptive European colonialism and a journey into the
nightmare psyche of one of the corrupted, Heart of Darkness is
considered one of the most influential works ever written.
May 11
Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
Inspired by a handful of old postcards sent by Uncle Leroy nearly a
hundred years earlier, Bird and Mimi attempt to trace Mimi’s long-lost
uncle and the family medicine bundle he took with him to Europe. By
turns witty, sly and poignant, this is the unforgettable tale of one
couple’s holiday trip to Europe, where their wanderings through its
famous capitals reveal a complicated history, both personal and political.
June 8
Emancipation Day by Wayne Grady
With his curly black hair and his wicked grin, everyone swoons and
thinks of Frank Sinatra when Navy musician Jackson Lewis takes the
stage. It's World War II, and while stationed in St. John's,
Newfoundland, Jack meets the well-heeled, romantic Vivian Clift, a local
girl who has never stepped off the Rock and is desperate to see the
world. They marry against Vivian's family's wishes--hard to say what it
is, but there's something about Jack that they just don't like--and as
the war draws to a close, the new couple travels to Windsor to meet
Jack's family...
The painting, BTW, is Lübecker Waisenhaus by Gotthardt Kuehl
