Category Archives: Book Club

Book Club: Colm Toibin’s “Nora Webster” Thu., Mar. 12th at 8 P.M.

From one of contemporary literature’s bestselling, critically acclaimed and beloved authors, the magnificent, instant New York Times bestselling novel set in Ireland, about a fiercely compelling young widow and mother of four, navigating grief and fear, struggling for hope.

Set in Wexford, Ireland, Colm Tóibín’s superb seventh novel introduces the formidable, memorable and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at forty, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world to which she was born. And now she fears she may be drawn back into it. Wounded, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons, who have lost their father. Yet she has moments of stunning empathy and kindness, and when she begins to sing again, after decades, she finds solace, engagement, a haven—herself.

Nora Webster is a masterpiece in character study by a writer at the zenith of his career, “beautiful and daring” (The New York Times Book Review) and able to “sneak up on readers and capture their imaginations” (USA TODAY). In Nora Webster, Tóibín has created a character as iconic, engaging and memorable as Madame Bovary or Hedda Gabler.

http://www.amazon.com/Nora-Webster-Novel-Colm-Toibin/dp/1439138338

Read the New York Times review.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/books/nora-webster-by-colm-toibin.html?_r=0

 

Book Club: Hesh Kestin’s “The Lie” Thurs., Jan. 22nd at 8 P.M.

The Lie is a gripping, morally complex thriller about a woman torn between idealism and maternal devotion in present-day Israel.  Dahlia Barr, an attorney infamous for defending accused Palestinians in Israeli court, is jolted when her son Ari is kidnapped by Hezbollah, and she must decide whether to alter her principles in order to save her son.

Stephen King says The Lie is “a page-turner that will engage your mind and emotions in a way few novels do. The narrative is headlong, the issues have never been more current, and the characters come alive from the page.  The Lie is what great fiction is all about.”