The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom - April 2012

From the Touchstone/Simon and Schuster 369 pg. paperback edition:

"When a white servant girl violates the order of Plantation Society, she unleashes a tradgedy that exposes the worst and the best in the people she has come to call her family.

Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven -year-old-Lavinia, with no memory of her past, arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin.

Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself periolously straddling two very different worlds. When she is forced to make a choice, loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare, and lives are put at risk."

For a biography of author Kathleen Grissom, in her own words, please click here to go to her site.

We will meet at the Library at its' new and permanent home back at the newly renovated Borough Hall on Tuesday, April 24, 2012, at 7pm to discuss The Kitchen House as the Grand Re-Opening of the Library falls on our normal meeting day in April. (Email reminders for April will include information on the Grand Re-Opening Celebration!)

Lastly, the Library will be closed in Both locations from April 9th through the 22nd during its' move. Books can still be dropped off at the book drop on Avenue C from the 9th until the 22nd.

The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle - March 2012

From Penguin.com (usa): "Paula Spencer is the narrator and unlikely heroine of Roddy Doyle's fifth novel, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. The mother of four children, she lives in a working-class suburb of Dublin. She is also a battered wife and an alcoholic. Paula's husband, Charlo, has been killed while escaping the scene of a crime he committed. Though Paula threw him out a couple of years ago, she recalls their early times together, filled with joy and lust. She remembers her rebellious adolescence, boys she dated and fantasized about, family outings, and summers at the sea, and she reflects on the events in her life that brought her to where she is today.

Doyle's portrait of a working-class woman in contemporary Ireland illuminates many of the problems facing that country's working poor, yet Paula is a wonderfully unique character—honest about her feelings, fearless in her efforts to protect her family, subject to fits of anger and depression that threaten to undo all that she has accomplished. Doyle takes his time revealing Paula to us. This account of her life is not chronological but spiraling, driven by memory and recurring images that spark these memories. Roddy Doyle's lean prose and his uncanny ear for dialogue brilliantly offset the drama that unfolds as Paula tells her story. It is this restraint that makes his writing so compelling, that allows us to accept, understand, and champion Paula in her struggle to reclaim her dignity.

Roddy Doyle jokingly acknowledges that he might have titled the novel Paula Spencer Boo Hoo Hoo. However, there is no doubt that he has reached a new level of mastery in this deceptively complex portrait of a woman and a family in trouble."

We'll meet to discuss this novel at the Library on Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 7pm.

To visit the author's website for more information on him and his works, click here.