BuzzingAboutBooks

WorldWithoutEnd            ConfessionsJoanTheTall


AUTHORS IN THIS ISSUE

Joshua Henkin

Joan Cusack Handler


LINKS


Subscribe to
Buzzing About Books


Tell Us About
Your Book Club


Find us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
November 1, 2012

Greetings:

We have two terrific titles for your book club's fall reading: 

-Joshua Henkin explores three days in the life of a family who gather to mourn a family member killed in Iraq in his new novel, The World Without End 

-Joan Cusack Handler's memoir recalls a year in the life of a twelve-year-old Irish Catholic girl in 1954 in the Bronx.

Enjoy!

Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp
[email protected]
bookclubcookbook.com 

FirstBlock
The World Without You The World Without You
by Joshua Henkin

Fiction / 321 pages / Hardcover

Pantheon / June, 2012

  

Dear Reader,

I had a cousin who died of Hodgkin's disease when he was in his late twenties, and thirty years later, at a family reunion, his mother talked about him as if he were still alive.  My cousin's wife, by contrast, moved on and remarried and had a family, and it got me thinking about the gap between what it's like to lose a spouse and what it's like to lose a child.  A spouse usually moves on, but a parent never moves on.

That tension is at the heart of The World Without You, which takes place over a single July 4th holiday at the Frankel family's country house in the Berkshires where four generations of Henkinthe family have gathered for the memorial for Leo Frankel, a young journalist killed in Iraq.  It's a novel about parents and sisters, about sibling  rivalries and infertility and religion and career choices.  It's a book about grief, but it's also a book about hope, how a family puts itself back together after a tragedy.  I hope you and your book club enjoy reading it.

Joshua Henkin

 

JOSHUA HENKIN IS GIVING AWAY 5 COPIES OF THE WORLD WITHOUT YOU.  ENTER TO WIN A COPY.
 
About The World Without You: 
 
It's July 4th, 2005, and the Frankel family is descending upon their beloved summer home in the Berkshires.  But this is no ordinary holiday.  Leo, the youngest of the four Frankel siblings and an intrepid journalist, was killed a year ago on assignment in Iraq, and his family has gathered to memorialize him:  his parents, whose marriage is falling apart; his three sisters; his grandmother; and his widow, who has arrived from California bearing her own secret.  Over the course of three days, the Frankels will contend with sibling rivalries and marital feuds, with volatile women and silent men, and, ultimately, with the true meaning of family.

Reviews of The World Without You:  
 

"Insightful ... poignant and ... pointed. Henkin move[s] elegantly from one perspective to another.... Although the cast is large you get to know them deeply, like real people.... The World Without You shows how loss forces people to reconceive of themselves, a painful but necessary transformation." 

-The New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice  

 

"[Henkin] has created an empathetic cast of characters that the reader will love spending time with, even as they behave like fools and hurt one another. An intelligently written novel that works as a summer read and for any other time of the year."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review) 

 

"[A] moving novel about the volatility of fresh grief and old antagonisms."

To learn more, visit Joshua Henkin's website, and follow him on Facebook,  Twitter, and Goodreads.

 

Joshua Henkin is available to speak to your book club by phone or in person. Contact Joshua to arrange a discussion.





SecondBlock

ConfessionsJoanTheTall Confessions of Joan the Tall
by Joan Cusack Handler
 

Memoir / 246 pages / Paperback 

CavanKerry Press / November, 2012  

 

Dear Reader,

A friend had been talking about a play she was writing in which her mother was the speaker and central character. I was intrigued at the idea of speaking in the voice of a person I knew rather than one I created.   Who would I write about? Whose voice would I hear? Then one day, out of nowhere, I sat down at my computer, and Joan at twelve started to speak. And could she talk!  She didn't stop for another two months. She had a very distinctive tone, very colloquial speech, didn't care about punctuation or grammar, but was otherwise extremely obsessive.   

She talked and talked and talked and I typed and typed and typed. I was possessed. And she was in charge.  And I was happy. Very very happy to hear her.

The experience of listening and getting to know the young Joan JoanCusackHandler
has been an exhilarating one. I refer to her in the third person rather than the first because she is a new character for me, a new friend. To have locked away so much of what she knew and felt about the people, events and circumstances of her life, left her and me with just biographical data -- a lot of information about the who and what of her/our life, but next to nothing about the internal emotional turmoil. Amazingly, with the writing of Confessions, the fissure that separated Joan the girl from Joan the woman, has been mended.

Joan Cusack Handler

 

JOAN CUSACK HANDLER IS GIVING AWAY 5 COPIES OF CONFESSIONS OF JOAN THE TALL.  ENTER TO WIN A COPY.

  

About Confessions of Joan the Tall:

A coming of age memoir written in the voice of a twelve-year-old Irish Catholic girl living in the Bronx in 1954, Confessions recounts one year in the life of Joan, a very tall, religious, funny, self-conscious, obsessive, resilient, guilt ridden, emotionally imprisoned, lovable girl whose journey takes her from innocence, isolation, and inhibition to the beginnings of freedom and awakening. Fiercely committed to seeing only the good, be it in her family or the world, the Joan who greets us is flush with the beauty and pleasure of family and the Lord.

  

Reviews of Confessions of Joan the Tall:  

"Confessions of Joan the Tall is a splendid book, and Joan the Tall is a splendid girl: brave, effervescent and vulnerable.  She flubs the rules of the Catholic church, she flubs the rules of family life, and amidst the quandaries, sins, punishments, and totally divine greedy moments in this story of her Irish-American family, she grows into what tallness can mean:  the ability to see from a mountaintop.  From her devout father to her feisty mother, from her well-groomed sister to her brothers  -- both bullies and allies -- and from her big shoes to her fabulous white bathing suit, Joan grows, showing us (and herself) what it means to be larger than life."
-Molly Peacock, author of Paradise Piece by Piece

"Confessions of Joan the Tall
is a remarkable book.  It's impossible not to like Joan, impossible not to feel for her in the depths of her coming of age struggles, and impossible for anyone raised in a devout Catholic family to keep from smiling and nodding at the author's insights into the Roman Catholic mindset.  It's a book that can be enjoyed by anyone between the ages of ten and a hundred --  Catholics and non-Catholics alike -- a real literary achievement that I both enjoyed and admired.  I wanted it to go on and on.˜
-Roland Merullo, author of Breakfast with Buddha and The Talk-Funny

To learn more, visit Joan Cusack Handler's website and blog, and follow her on Facebook. 

 

Joan Cusack Handler is available to speak to your book club by phone. Contact her through her website to arrange a discussion. 



 
Copyright � 2012 Book Club Cookbook. All rights reserved.