Book Group — August 4 at 3:30 pm

Posted on July 12, 2015 by tq

Join us at Manhattan Club Grand Cafe to discuss Picaflor by Jessica Talbot. Even if you haven’t managed to read the book, we welcome you to join us for coffee and more. Date: August 4, 2015 Time: 3:30 pm Location: Manhattan Club Grand Café, Ave Cabildo 1792 (corner with La Pampa) RSVP: jendan@gmail.com The author, Jessica Talbot, may be able to join us for the meeting. Picaflor can be purchased directly and locally from Jessica for $AR 80 or $AR 120. Contact her at jessicatalbot@yahoo.com and is also available in electronic form from Amazon. Picaflor: Finding Home in South America by Jessica Talbot In Picaflor, a true story, Jessica Talbot invites the reader to travel beside her as she searches for love and meaning, while traversing the fascinating countries of South America. Along the way she lets go of grief, grasps hold of the present and finds herself occupying her own weather beaten shoes. When unexpected signs appear on her path she asks, ‘Is this serendipity or fate?’ As the journey unfolds she realizes that you don’t need to know, it can be magical either way. The story starts with Jessica getting a tattoo of a hummingbird, a reminder of new beginnings. Then a kiss at sunrise in the snow-dusted Andes of Peru sends her on a restless, risky journey that ends in Argentina. As she travels through unknown terrain, new friends give her important insights into the meaning of friendship, and old ties strengthen as she frees herself from the past. It’s in the exhilarating but complicated city of Buenos Aires that she finally understands what it means to feel ‘home’. September Book: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness….. After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released (suffering from psychosis?) and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. Through these characters, among others, the story shows the plight of the peasantry leading up to the French Revolution and then the subsequent brutality of the revolutionaries in the early years of the revolution. The story also tries to highlight the parallels between French and British society. Please forward any suggestions you have for future reads to jendan@gmail.com.

July Book Group — Tuesday, July 7 at 3:30 pm

Posted on June 21, 2015 by tq

Join us at Manhattan Club Grand Cafe to discuss The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. Even if you haven’t managed to read the book, we welcome you to join us for coffee and more.

You might want to buy a copy of Picaflor (August book) at the July meeting — AR$80 or AR$120.

Date: July 7

Time: 3:30 pm

Location: Manhattan Club Grand Cafe, Ave Cabildo 1792 (corner with La Pampa)

RSVP: tonilin@aol.com

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In The Sixth Extinction , two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino. Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind’s most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

Future Book Choices

Please note that we are working with the author of Picaflor to see if she will attend our book club. She is offering the book for AR$80 or 120. If you would like to buy a copy, please contact tonilin@aol.com and we will arrange.

Next Meetings:

Tuesday, August 4

Picaflor: Finding Home in South America by Jessica Talbot

In Picaflor, a true story, Jessica Talbot invites the reader to travel beside her as she searches for love and meaning, while traversing the fascinating countries of South America. Along the way she lets go of grief, grasps hold of the present and finds herself occupying her own weather beaten shoes.

When unexpected signs appear on her path she asks, ‘Is this serendipity or fate?’ As the journey unfolds she realises that you don’t need to know, it can be magical either way.

The story starts with Jessica getting a tattoo of a hummingbird, a reminder of new beginnings. Then a kiss at sunrise in the snow-dusted Andes of Peru sends her on a restless, risky journey that ends in Argentina. As she travels through unknown terrain, new friends give her important insights into the meaning of friendship, and old ties strengthen as she frees herself from the past. It’s in the exhilarating but complicated city of Buenos Aires that she finally understands what it means to feel ‘home’.

September

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…..

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released (suffering from psychosis?) and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. Through these characters, among others, the story shows the plight of the peasantry leading up to the French Revolution and then the subsequent brutality of the revolutionaries in the early years of the revolution. The story also tries to highlight the parellels between French and British society.

Please forward any suggestions you have for future reads to jendan@gmail.com.

Book Group — Tuesday, June 2

Posted on May 10, 2015 by tq

Join us at Manhattan Club Grand Cafe to discuss Wreckage by Emily Bleeker

Time: 3:30 pm

Location: Manhattan Club Grand Cafe

Ave Cabildo 1792 (corner with La Pampa)

RSVP: jendan@gmail.com

Wreckage by Emily Bleeker

Lillian Linden is a liar. On the surface, she looks like a brave survivor of a plane crash. But she’s been lying to her family, her friends, and the whole world since rescue helicopters scooped her and her fellow survivor, Dave Hall, off a deserted island in the South Pacific. Missing for almost two years, the castaways are thrust into the spotlight after their rescue, becoming media darlings overnight. But they can’t tell the real story—so they lie.

The public is fascinated by the castaways’ saga, but Lillian and Dave must return to their lives and their spouses. Genevieve Randall—a hard-nosed journalist and host of a news program—isn’t buying it. She suspects Lillian’s and Dave’s explanations about the other crash survivors aren’t true. And now, Genevieve’s determined to get the real story, no matter how many lives it destroys.

In this intriguing tale of survival, secrets, and redemption, two everyday people thrown together by tragedy must finally face the truth … even if it tears them apart.

Future Book Schedule

We have decided on the books for the following two months. For anyone who may be traveling to the US or Europe and would be willing to bring back a few books, please let me know as we have some members that prefer to read offline.

Book club will meet on the first Tuesday of every month. Locations may vary.

Tuesday, July 7

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Tuesday, August 4

Picaflor: Finding Home in South America by Jessica Talbot

When unexpected signs appear on her path she asks, ‘Is this serendipity or fate?’ As the journey unfolds she realises that you don’t need to know, it can be magical either way.

Book Discussion Group — May 5

Posted on April 13, 2015 by tq

Join us at Manhattan Club Grand Cafe to discuss Light in August, by William Faulkner.

Time: 3:30 pm

Location: Manhattan Club Grand Cafe

Ave Cabildo 1792 (corner with La Pampa)

RSVP: jendan@gmail.com

Light in August by William Faulkner, a novel about hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality, features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry.

Future Book Schedule

We have decided on the books for the coming four months. For anyone who may be traveling to the US or Europe and would be willing to bring back a few books, please let me know as we have some members that prefer to read offline.

Book club will meet on the first Tuesday of every month. Locations may vary.

Tuesday, June 2

Wreckage by Emily Bleeker

In this intriguing tale of survival, secrets, and redemption, two everyday people thrown together by tragedy must finally face the truth…even if it tears them apart.

Tuesday, July 7

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Tuesday, August 4

Picaflor: Finding Home in South America by Jessica Talbot

When unexpected signs appear on her path she asks, ‘Is this serendipity or fate?’ As the journey unfolds she realises that you don’t need to know, it can be magical either way.

April Book Discussion — April 7

Posted on March 14, 2015 by tq

On, Tuesday, April 7 our BAIN book club will meet to discuss The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman. Please feel free to join us whether you have read the book or not.

Meeting Details:

Date: Tuesday, April 7

Time: 3:30pm

Place: Cafe In Bocca al Lupo

Address: Bonpland 1965

RSVP: jendan@gmail.com

We are taking suggestions for the next three to four months for book club. We are hoping to select a mix of genres for the next few months.

When making suggestions, please consider the following:

is this book available in Kindle or electronic version
number of pages (below 400 is best)
genre
any “classics” that you want to read (or re-read)?

Please send any suggestions to Jennifer at jendan@gmail.com. When sending a suggestion, please note full title, author name and brief description. At the end of the next meeting we will discuss our suggestions.

March Book Group — Tuesday, March 10 at 3:30 p.m.

Posted on March 1, 2015 by tq

We will be discussing The Underground Girls of Kabul (2014) by Jenny Nordberg

Meeting Details:
Book: The Underground Girls of Kabul
Date: Tuesday, March 10th
Time: 3:30pm
Location: Belgrano
RSVP: eugeniyahaas@gmail.com

Once you RSVP for the book club, the host will send you her detailed address.

Please note that we will be choosing the books for the next three to four months at this book club meeting. Please come with any suggestions that you may have along with a summary description. If you are unable to make book group and have suggestions for future books, please forward them to me along with a summary description at jendan@gmail.com.

Come enjoy your afternoon coffee with us, and particiapte in a lively discussion with other BAIN members (feel free to join us even if you don’t manage to read this month’s book). Please RSVP so we know how many to expect!

March 10: The Underground Girls of Kabul (2014) by Jenny Nordberg

In Afghanistan, a culture ruled almost entirely by men, the birth of a son is cause for celebration and the arrival of a daughter is often mourned as misfortune. A bacha posh (literally translated from Dari as “dressed up like a boy”) is a third kind of child – a girl temporarily raised as a boy and presented as such to the outside world. Jenny Nordberg, the reporter who broke the story of this phenomenon for the New York Times, constructs a powerful and moving account of those secretly living on the other side of a deeply segregated society where women have almost no rights and little freedom.

February Book Group — Tuesday, February 10

Posted on January 26, 2015 by tq

Meeting Details:
Book: Fury by Salman Rushdie

Date: Tuesday, February 10th
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Café In Boca al Lupo, Bonpland 1965 – Palermo (click here for map)
RSVP: jendan@gmail.com

Our Book Club will meet next on Tuesday, February 10th. Bring suggestions of future books you would recommend for discussion.

Come enjoy your afternoon coffee with us, and participate in a lively discussion with other BAIN members (feel free to join us even if you don’t manage to read this month’s book–it’s totally fine).

Please RSVP so we know how many to expect!

February 10: Fury (2001) by Salman Rushdie

“Life is fury. Fury-sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal- drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths. This is what we are, what we civilize ourselves to disguise-the terrifying human animal in us, the exalted, transcendent, self-destructive, untrammeled lord of creation. We raise each other to the heights of joy. We tear each other limb from bloody limb.”

Malik Solanka, historian of ideas and dollmaker extraordinaire, steps out of his life one day, abandons his family without a word of explanation, and flees London for New York. There’s a fury within him, and he fears he has become dangerous to those he loves. He arrives in New York at a time of unprecedented plenty, in the highest hour of America’s wealth and power, seeking to “erase” himself. Eat me, America, he prays, and give me peace.

But fury is all around him. Cabdrivers spout invective. A serial killer is murdering women with a lump of concrete. The petty spats and bone-deep resentments of the metropolis engulf him. His own thoughts, emotions, and desires, meanwhile, are also running wild. A tall, green-eyed young blonde in a D’Angelo Voodoo baseball cap is in store for him. As is another woman, with whom he will fall in love and be drawn toward a different fury, whose roots lie on the far side of the world.

March 10: The Underground Girls of Kabul (2014) by Jenny Nordberg

In Afghanistan, a culture ruled almost entirely by men, the birth of a son is cause for celebration and the arrival of a daughter is often mourned as misfortune. A bacha posh (literally translated from Dari as “dressed up like a boy”) is a third kind of child – a girl temporarily raised as a boy and presented as such to the outside world. Jenny Nordberg, the reporter who broke the story of this phenomenon for the New York Times, constructs a powerful and moving account of those secretly living on the other side of a deeply segregated society where women have almost no rights and little freedom.

**If anyone happens to have hard copies of any of the books, or is traveling and is willing to bring back copies for other members, please let us know either by email or at the next meeting**

If you have any questions about the titles or meetings of the Book Club, please contact me at jendan@gmail.com

See you in February!

Book Group — Tuesday, January 13

Posted on December 20, 2014 by tq

Meeting Details:
Book: The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Café In Boca al Lupo, Bonpland 1965 – Palermo (click here for map)
RSVP: tonilin@aol.com (Toni)

Our Book Club will meet next on Tuesday, January 13

Come enjoy your afternoon coffee with us, and participate in a lively discussion with other BAIN members (feel free to join us even if you don’t manage to read this month’s book–it’s totally fine).

Please RSVP so we know how many to expect!

Please feel free to join us even if you don’t manage to read the book.

January 13: The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares.

Jorges Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of the Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy’s novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.

February 10: Fury (2001) by Salman Rushdie

“Life is fury. Fury-sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal- drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths. This is what we are, what we civilize ourselves to disguise-the terrifying human animal in us, the exalted, transcendent, self-destructive, untrammeled lord of creation. We raise each other to the heights of joy. We tear each other limb from bloody limb.”

Malik Solanka, historian of ideas and dollmaker extraordinaire, steps out of his life one day, abandons his family without a word of explanation, and flees London for New York. There’s a fury within him, and he fears he has become dangerous to those he loves. He arrives in New York at a time of unprecedented plenty, in the highest hour of America’s wealth and power, seeking to “erase” himself. Eat me, America, he prays, and give me peace.

But fury is all around him. Cabdrivers spout invective. A serial killer is murdering women with a lump of concrete. The petty spats and bone-deep resentments of the metropolis engulf him. His own thoughts, emotions, and desires, meanwhile, are also running wild. A tall, green-eyed young blonde in a D’Angelo Voodoo baseball cap is in store for him. As is another woman, with whom he will fall in love and be drawn toward a different fury, whose roots lie on the far side of the world.

March 10: The Underground Girls of Kabul (2014) by Jenny Nordberg

In Afghanistan, a culture ruled almost entirely by men, the birth of a son is cause for celebration and the arrival of a daughter is often mourned as misfortune. A bacha posh (literally translated from Dari as “dressed up like a boy”) is a third kind of child – a girl temporarily raised as a boy and presented as such to the outside world. Jenny Nordberg, the reporter who broke the story of this phenomenon for the New York Times, constructs a powerful and moving account of those secretly living on the other side of a deeply segregated society where women have almost no rights and little freedom.

**If anyone happens to have hard copies of any of the books, or is traveling and is willing to bring back copies for other members, please let us know either by email or at the next meeting**

If you have any questions about the titles or meetings of the Book Club, please contact me at tonilin@aol.com

See you in January!

December Book Group — Tuesday, December 9

Posted on November 19, 2014 by tq

Meeting Details:
Book: The Human Stain (2000) by Philip Roth (read to the end of the message to see books selected for the first 3 months of 2015)

Date: Tuesday, December 9th
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Café In Boca al Lupo, Bonpland 1965 – Palermo (click here for map)
RSVP: loucrie@yahoo.com (Julia)

Our Book Club will meet next on Tuesday, December 9th.

Come enjoy your afternoon coffee with us, and participate in a lively discussion with other BAIN members (feel free to join us even if you don’t manage to read this month’s book–it’s totally fine).

Please RSVP so we know how many to expect!

**I will call ahead to reserve the seating area on the top floor for us (by the bathrooms) so we don’t have to sit outside in the heat or next to the noisy fan.**

Amazon description of The Human Stain (2000) by Philip Roth.

It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret. But it’s not the secret of his affair, at seventy-one, with Faunia Farley, a woman half his age with a savagely wrecked past–a part-time farmhand and a janitor at the college where, until recently, he was the powerful dean of faculty. And it’s not the secret of Coleman’s alleged racism, which provoked the college witch-hunt that cost him his job and, to his mind, killed his wife. Nor is it the secret of misogyny, despite the best efforts of his ambitious young colleague, Professor Delphine Roux, to expose him as a fiend. Coleman’s secret has been kept for fifty years: from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman, who sets out to understand how this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, had fabricated his identity and how that cannily controlled life came unraveled. Set in 1990s America, where conflicting moralities and ideological divisions are made manifest through public denunciation and rituals of purification, The Human Stain concludes Philip Roth’s eloquent trilogy of postwar American lives that are as tragically determined by the nation’s fate as by the “human stain” that so ineradicably marks human nature. This harrowing, deeply compassionate, and completely absorbing novel is a magnificent successor to his Vietnam-era novel, American Pastoral, and his McCarthy-era novel, I Married a Communist

The book, as always, is available electronically. (Click on title above for the kindle version on Amazon).

Please feel free to join us even if you don’t manage to read the book.

Upcoming books:

Thanks for your response to the online book survey! Here are our next books according to the voting:

January 13: The Invention of Morel () by Adolfo Bioy Casares.

Jorges Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of the Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy’s novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.

February 10: Fury (2001) by Salman Rushdie

“Life is fury. Fury-sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal- drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths. This is what we are, what we civilize ourselves to disguise-the terrifying human animal in us, the exalted, transcendent, self-destructive, untrammeled lord of creation. We raise each other to the heights of joy. We tear each other limb from bloody limb.”

Malik Solanka, historian of ideas and dollmaker extraordinaire, steps out of his life one day, abandons his family without a word of explanation, and flees London for New York. There’s a fury within him, and he fears he has become dangerous to those he loves. He arrives in New York at a time of unprecedented plenty, in the highest hour of America’s wealth and power, seeking to “erase” himself. Eat me, America, he prays, and give me peace.

But fury is all around him. Cabdrivers spout invective. A serial killer is murdering women with a lump of concrete. The petty spats and bone-deep resentments of the metropolis engulf him. His own thoughts, emotions, and desires, meanwhile, are also running wild. A tall, green-eyed young blonde in a D’Angelo Voodoo baseball cap is in store for him. As is another woman, with whom he will fall in love and be drawn toward a different fury, whose roots lie on the far side of the world.

March 10:The Underground Girls of Kabul (2014) by Jenny Nordberg

In Afghanistan, a culture ruled almost entirely by men, the birth of a son is cause for celebration and the arrival of a daughter is often mourned as misfortune. A bacha posh (literally translated from Dari as “dressed up like a boy”) is a third kind of child – a girl temporarily raised as a boy and presented as such to the outside world. Jenny Nordberg, the reporter who broke the story of this phenomenon for the New York Times, constructs a powerful and moving account of those secretly living on the other side of a deeply segregated society where women have almost no rights and little freedom.

**If anyone happens to have hard copies of any of the books, or is traveling and is willing to bring back copies for other members, please let us know either by email or at the next meeting**

If you have any questions about the titles or meetings of the Book Club, please contact me at loucrie@yahoo.com

See you in December!

Julia

Book Group — October 14, 2014

Posted on September 16, 2014 by tq

Dear Book Lovers,

BAIN’s next Book Club will be on Tuesday, October 14th.

Meeting Details:

Book: The Orientalist (2005) by Tom Reiss.

Time: 3:30 p.m.

NEW Location: Café In Boca al Lupo (fair warning: this place has excellent desserts so make sure to leave some room for postre!)

Address: Bonpland 1965 – Palermo (click here for map)

RSVP: loucrie@yahoo.com (Julia)

Come enjoy your afternoon coffee with us, and participate in a lively discussion with other BAIN members (feel free to join us even if you don’t manage to read this month’s book–it’s totally fine).

This month we will be reading The Orientalist (2005) by Tom Reiss, a non-fiction book.

Part history, part cultural biography, and part literary mystery, The Orientalist traces the life of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a best-selling author in Nazi Germany. Born in 1905 to a wealthy family in the oil-boom city of Baku, at the edge of the czarist empire, Lev escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan. He found refuge in Germany, where, writing under the names Essad Bey and Kurban Said, his remarkable books about Islam, desert adventures, and global revolution, became celebrated across fascist Europe. His enduring masterpiece, Ali and Nino–a story of love across ethnic and religious boundaries, published on the eve of the Holocaust–is still in print today.

Tom Reiss spent five years tracking down secret police records, love letters, diaries, and the deathbed notebooks. As he tracks down the pieces of Lev Nussimbaum’s deliberately obscured life, Reiss discovers a series of shadowy worlds–of European pan-Islamists, nihilist assassins, anti-Nazi book smugglers, Baku oil barons, Jewish Orientalists–that have also been forgotten. The result is a thoroughly unexpected picture of the twentieth century–of the origins of our ideas about race and religious self-definition, and of the roots of modern fanaticism and terrorism. Written with grace and infused with wonder, The Orientalist is an astonishing book.

The book, as always, is available electronically. (Click on title above for the kindle version on Amazon).

For those who like to prepare in advance, here’s how our reading schedule is looking for the upcoming months:

November 11th: The Tunnel (1948) by Ernesto Sabato

(*This novel by Argentine Ernesto Sabato is quite short (ca. 120 pages), so those who want to practice the Spanish might venture to read it in the original as well.)

An unforgettable psychological novel of obsessive love, The Tunnel was championed by Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, and Graham Greene upon its publication in 1948 and went on to become an international bestseller. At its center is an artist named Juan Pablo Castel, who recounts from his prison cell his murder of a woman named María Iribarne. Obsessed from the moment he sees her examining one of his paintings, Castel fantasizes for months about how they might meet again. When he happens upon her one day, a relationship develops that convinces him of their mutual love. But Castel’s growing paranoia leads him to destroy the one thing he truly cares about.

December 9th: The Human Stain (2000) by Philip Roth

It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret. But it’s not the secret of his affair, at seventy-one, with Faunia Farley, a woman half his age with a savagely wrecked past–a part-time farmhand and a janitor at the college where, until recently, he was the powerful dean of faculty. And it’s not the secret of Coleman’s alleged racism, which provoked the college witch-hunt that cost him his job and, to his mind, killed his wife. Nor is it the secret of misogyny, despite the best efforts of his ambitious young colleague, Professor Delphine Roux, to expose him as a fiend. Coleman’s secret has been kept for fifty years: from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman, who sets out to understand how this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, had fabricated his identity and how that cannily controlled life came unraveled. Set in 1990s America, where conflicting moralities and ideological divisions are made manifest through public denunciation and rituals of purification, The Human Stainconcludes Philip Roth’s eloquent trilogy of postwar American lives that are as tragically determined by the nation’s fate as by the “human stain” that so ineradicably marks human nature. This harrowing, deeply compassionate, and completely absorbing novel is a magnificent successor to his Vietnam-era novel, American Pastoral, and his McCarthy-era novel, I Married a Communist.

If you have any questions about the titles or meetings of the Book Club, please contact me at loucrie@yahoo.com

Hope to see you there!

Julia