Book Discussion SPRING 2012: Contemporary Fiction by Award Winning Authors

This lively group meets to discuss three books of note each Spring and Fall. Books are chosen from among many titles that have won awards or are the recent work of award-winning authors. A trained leader, using the shared inquiry method, will guide each discussion.

Sunset Park by Paul Auster - March 21

(Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, 2006) -- Miles is a fugitive. Poisoned by guilt over his stepbrother's death, he hasn't communicated with his loving father, a heroic independent publisher; his kind English professor stepmother; or his flamboyant actor mother for seven years...Miles returns to New York after things turn dicey over his love affair with a wise-beyond-her-years Cuban American teenager. As always with the entrancing and ambushing Auster, every element is saturated with implication as each wounded, questing character's story illuminates our tragic flaws and profound need for connection, coherence, and beauty. [Picador, 2011 PB 320 pp. ISBN 978-0312610678]

The Watery Part of the World by Michael Parker - April 18

(North Carolina Award for Literature) -- In his latest novel, award winner Parker takes readers deep into two time periods in the same pocket universe of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Theodosia Burr Alston is traveling by ship to reunite with her father, disgraced Founder Aaron Burr. In this reimagining of the real woman’s mysterious disappearance in 1813, Theodosia’s ship is attacked by pirates. Her apparent insanity spares her life. Theodosia finds herself stranded on a dismal island with no one but an old hermit with whom to share her history. A parallel story set in 1970 focuses on her 20th-century descendants, the last two white women alive on the island, and Woodrow, the black man who feels compelled to care for the women despite their complicated history...Against this backdrop, Parker delves into the human heart and distills for his readers the truths found there. [Algonquin, 2011 HC 261 pp ISBN 9781565126824]

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht - May 16

(Orange Prize for Fiction, 2011) -- The sometimes crushing power of myth, story, and memory is explored in this brilliant debut...Natalia Stefanovi, a doctor living...in an unnamed country that's a ringer for Obreht's native Croatia, crosses the border in search of answers about the death of her beloved grandfather, who raised her on tales from the village he grew up in, and where, following German bombardment in 1941, a tiger escaped from the zoo in a nearby city and befriended a mysterious deaf-mute woman. [Random House, 2011, PB 353 pp. ISBN 9780385343848]

Registration is required, online or fill out a form at the library. Questions– Call Melinda Greenblatt, Library Director, (914) 941-7072 ext. 6 or write to mgreenblatt@wlsmail.org.