Home is where one starts from.” T.S. Eliot
16 Bookers descended on the home of Debbie Yarger for a little less COVID-19 restricted meeting based on many of our members receiving their vaccines and the mandatory mask mandate being lifted by Governor Abbott. We encourage anyone who is uncomfortable meeting in an indoor environment to please wear a mask. Many thanks to Melanie Prebis for reviewing and leading the discussion of this month’s selection. Well done!
Bookers welcomed new member, Lisa Dick, to the group and it was good to see Marcie Allen, Linda Hoff, Joylene Miller, and Fran Farmer back with us after an absence.
Many thanks to all who participated in A Cheery Drive By Goodbye for Cherry Fugitt, to Jean Alexander for offering the setting, and to Patricia Mosley for chauffeuring the guest of honor to her throne and back home. Although the intended drive by resulted in more of a gathering, it was wonderful to see a mix of Bookers and PWC members including Melba and Layton Holt, Aulsine and Ed DeLoach, and Rosemary Farmer. I’ve known Cherry since 2003 and in those eighteen years I’ve never seen her cry. By her own admission, that streak was broken after the parade and reading all the cards you so generously provided. She was moved by all the outpouring of love and asked me to convey to you all how special she felt and how much she is going to miss her Pinnacle family. Their new address is 4650 Long Prairie Rd. #1431, Flower Mound, Texas, 75028. Should we warn the residents to expect a flurry when Cherry and Ray arrive…HA!
More on Daryl Daniels…Barry moved into their apartment in Houston on March 15th hoping for Daryl’s release to outpatient status. On March 18th, he moved into her hospital room. She’s still being treated for a yeast infection and since her white blood counts are low, she’s receiving “boosts” to increase them. All the cards, text messages, and emails have helped her maintain a positive attitude through this difficult time and she wishes she could respond to each one but unfortunately, she just doesn’t have enough energy. Please know that each any every one of you “make a difference.” They are grateful to Bonnie Magee for organizing the blood drive and to all who were able to contribute…“30 more units will make an impact. If I (Barry) had a clue when she will be released, I would share that. They have removed all the crystal balls from her transplant floor.” Although she’s still an inpatient, Barry asks that anyone wanting to send well wishes, please address them to Daryl Daniels, 7205 Almeda Rd. #300004, Houston, Tx. 77230.
Ann Ireland is home recovering from major foot surgery…as many surgeries that she’s had in the last few years it seems like she’s on the weekly rotation at the hospital – here comes Ann…what can we operate on this week…HA! I’m sure she would appreciate a card or email to let her know we care and hope her recovery is speedy and successful. 201 Colonial Dr. Mabank, Tx. 75156.
Debbie Yarger shared a five-week study beginning Wednesday, 24th 7:00 p.m. being held at Bookish in Malakoff featuring her daughter discussing The Road Back To You, an Enneagram journey to self-discovery. Books are available for purchase at the event.
Melanie offered an overview of this novel in which the Dutch house as a major character drove the narrative as the storyteller allowing families to live there watching the dynamics change over the years and holding secrets about each of its inhabitants. The novel featured the relationship between an older sister and her brother, a mother who abandoned her children to pursue a higher calling, a distant father who was hard-working, unloving but not uncaring, servants who became surrogate parents, and an evil stepmother. All the makings of a modern Hansel and Gretel fairy tale grappling with the realities of life, kindness and cruelty, love and hate. The New York Times says, “It takes guts to write a fairy tale these days. At a moment when everything in the world feels on the verge of falling apart, there seems to be a widespread cultural expectation (in the West, anyway) that serious art — the kind worthy of respect, in books, television, film or theater — is going to make you sweat, that it should make you sweat. Ann Patchett doesn’t want to make you sweat. She wants to make you care.” She wants us to care about the characters no matter who they are and what their circumstances are. The heroes and heroines in fairy tales face mighty challenges, but they almost always make it through in the end. In The Dutch House, all’s well that ends well. Maeve and Danny’s childhood has a fairytale-esque quality. They grow up in a wealthy household but lose everything, their mother is presumed to be dead, Andrea plays the role of the evil stepmother, and their stepsisters Nora and Bright are brought in and given preferential treatment. Like Hansel and Gretel, Maeve and Danny are forced to lean on each other and, as adults, are trying to pick up the pieces of their childhood and find a way back home. And like their fairy-tale counterparts they leave pebbles or scraps of themselves behind connecting them back to their childhoods, but what they didn’t know was these were steppingstones back to their mother.
Ann Patchett says she’s been writing the same book her whole life. You’re in one family and all of a sudden, you’re in another family, and it’s not your choice and you can’t get out. She’s the author of Bel Canto, The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician’s Assistant, Run, State of Wonder, Commonwealth, and her latest The Dutch House published in 2019 and was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for fiction (Colson Whitehead won for The Nickel Boys, his second after The Underground Railroad in 2017.) From our members, Bel Canto and The Magician’s Assistant rated high. Her writing style is understated, engrossing and subtle. As in all her novels, Ms. Patchett gives you time to sit with each character and hear their stories…in the car with Danny and Maeve, on the train from New York City; in the magical window in Maeve’s room.
The Dutch House provides a sober reflection on how stories we tell ourselves are shaped and whether the roles we cast people in should be considered or reconsidered later – with more maturity and perhaps more empathy. We talked about living in the past and whether any of our childhood memories are altered by the passage of time or by what we’ve learned. A poignant quote in the book from Danny summarized dwelling on misfortunes when he said, “We had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it.” We discussed Danny following the path set forth by his sister’s insistence to become a doctor when his real passion was real estate like his father. Love dominated the brother-sister relationship as Maeve the heroine fought every foe, sacrificing everything to assure Danny’s happiness. Personally, at times I thought their relationship was a touch too good to be true…no arguments, jealousy, no suffocation. Hate keeps people from moving forward attested by their loath for Andrea insuring they were going to live out their lives in a parked car on Van Hoebeek Street. To them their father was simply the provider of things as they knew nothing of him personally. To Danny, his mother, Elna didn’t exist, and he didn’t care to know her when she returned. Maeve was thrilled when she entered her life again and only after Maeve’s death did he accept that “the rage…healed and died. There was no place for it anymore…it was never love, “maybe familiarity.” Forgiveness is a one-way-street. It’s within your ability to forgive another person thoroughly and completely within your own heart and soul without the other person participating. Learn the lesson from the experience. The ending fostered some discussion…was it too tied up in a neat bundle…was it believable that after forty years a mother returns after aiding the poor, is found by a former nanny, and is welcomed back unconditionally. Then she returns to the same house she hated to care for her late husband’s second wife…the same one who emotionally abused the children she abandoned, then tossed them out with the garbage after their father died…hmmmm.
And, from those who listened to the audio version of the book…Tom Hanks narrated as if he were speaking to each listener individually.
On the business side:
WHITE: LIGHT READ
PINK: MODERATELY CHALLENGING
RED: CHALLENGING
April 13: The Book of Lost Friends, Lisa Wingate
Historical novel set in the tumultuous era of Reconstruction, 1875, Louisiana. Three young women search for family amid the destruction of the post-Civil War South and a modern-day teacher learns of their story and its vital connection to her students’ lives. Based on actual “Lost Friends” advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War as newly freed slaves searched for loved ones who had been sold away.
PINK
Discussion Leader: Beverly Dossett
Home of Bonnie Magee
May 11: People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks
PINK
An Australia rare-book expert is offered a job of a lifetime – analysis and conservation of a priceless book, one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images. As she begins to unlock the book’s mysteries, the reader is ushered into an exquisitely detailed and atmospheric past tracing the book’s journey from its salvation back to its creation.
Discussion Leader?
Home of?
June 8(bonus month)The Second Mother, Jenny Milchman (BookTrib book)
A young woman loses her baby and after months of mourning her child and drowning her pain in alcohol, her husband wants to separate and go their own ways. She decides to start anew and takes a teaching position in a small school on a remote island in Maine.
Discussion Leader?
Home of Pat Faherty
Summer Read: Clementine, The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill, Sonia Purnell
PINK
A long overdue tribute to the extraordinary woman who was Winston Churchill’s closest confidante, fiercest critic, and shrewdest advisor. Later in life he claimed that victory in World War II would have been impossible without the woman who stood by his side for fifty-seven turbulent years.
Discussion Leader: Patty Evans
Home of Beverly Dossett
Home…it’s where we grow up wanting to leave and grow old wanting to get back to…the ache for home lives in all of us. “It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes…everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed is you.” F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Happy Reading,
JoDee
