Memoirs & Coffee Book Group to Discuss "Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs"

The next meeting of Bernardsville Public Library’s book discussion group, Memoirs and Coffee, will be held on Tuesday, January 26 at 10:30 am in the library’s Community Room. Manager Pat Kennedy-Grant will lead the discussion of “Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs” (2015) by acclaimed photographer Sally Mann. [The author will not be present.]

A National Book Award Finalist, the book is a revealing and beautifully written memoir and family history. In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann’s preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her.

Sorting through boxes of family papers and yellowed photographs she finds more than she bargained for: “deceit and scandal, alcohol, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land . . . racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder.” In lyrical prose and startlingly revealing photographs, she crafts a totally original form of personal history that has the page-turning drama of a great novel, but is firmly rooted in the fertile soil of her own life.

There is no charge and no registration is needed to join the discussion. Call the library at 766-0118 for more information.