Fairfield Evening Book Club Reviews

My Garden (Book) by Jamaica Kincaid
One of our finest writers on one of her greatest loves. Jamaica Kincaid's first garden in Vermont was a plot in the middle of her front lawn. There, to the consternation of more experienced friends, she planted only seeds of the flowers she liked best. In My Garden (Book): she gathers all she loves about gardening and plants, and examines it generously, passionately, and with sharp, idiosyncratic discrimination. Kincaid's affections are matched in intensity only by her dislikes. She loves spring and summer but cannot bring herself to love winter, for it hides the garden. She adores the rhododron Jane Grant, and appreciates ordinary Blue Lake string beans, but abhors the Asiatic lily. The sources of her inspiration -- seed catalogues, the gardener Gertrude Jekyll, gardens like Monet's at Giverny -- are subjected to intense scrutiny. She also examines the idea of the garden on Antigua, where she grew up. My Garden (Book): is an intimate, playful, and penetrating book on gardens, the plants that fill them, and the persons who tend them.

The Rules of Engagement by Anita Brookner
Elizabeth and Betsy had been school friends in 1950s London. Elizabeth, prudent and introspective, values social propriety. Betsy, raised by a spinster aunt, is open, trusting, and desperate for affection. After growing up and going their separate ways, the two women reconnect later in life. Elizabeth has married kind but tedious Digby, while Betsy is still searching for love and belonging. In this deeply perceptive story, Anita Brookner brilliantly charts the resilience of a friendship tested by alienation and by jealousy over a man who seems to offer the promise of escape.

The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer
Packer's first novel is a sensitive exploration of the line between selfishness and self-preservation. Carrie Bell is 23 and has lived in Madison, Wisconsin, all her life. She is engaged to her high-school sweetheart, Mike, and all seems well--to everyone but Carrie, who is falling out of love with Mike, with Madison, with everything. On Memorial Day she numbly watches Mike dive off of Clausen's Pier and break his neck in the too-shallow water, leaving him a quadriplegic. She is stricken with grief, guilt, indecision, and fear--she wants to be supportive and faithful, but she cannot make herself love him again. After a painful summer of hospital vigils, she flees to New York City and tries on a new life, a new relationship. She cannot escape what she's left behind, though, and must eventually face those who feel she has betrayed them. There are no easy answers for Carrie, but her struggle to do what's right and her revelations about the life she wants for herself will keep readers turning page after eloquently written page

Can You Keep a Secret by Sophie Kinsella
The author of the Shopaholic trilogy offers up a delightful new novel, filled with her trademark wit and humor. When her plane en route from Glasgow to London experiences horrible turbulence, Emma Corrigan is convinced she is going to die. She babbles all of her most intimate thoughts and secrets to the handsome American man sitting next to her. But the plane lands safely, and Emma bids him an awkward good-bye. When she enters the office on Monday and learns the CEO of the company, Jack Harper, is in for a visit, Emma is horrified to learn Jack is actually the man in whom she confided on the flight. He knows everything, including that she hates her job and that she is not quite sure she loves her boyfriend. But Jack does not fire her on the spot; instead, he quietly replaces the office coffeemaker she hates and gives her advice about her personal life, which she finds infuriating. So why can't she stop thinking about him? Kinsella has another irresistible hit on her hands.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith’s widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to “help people with problems in their lives.” Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors.

Devil in the Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, a young, tough black veteran living in 1948 Los Angeles, only wants respect and enough money to pay his mortgage. When fired from his factory job, however, he undertakes some paid errands for a shady white mobster who wishes to locate a light-haired, blue-eyed beauty. As Easy plumbs his usual hangouts for clues, he relays information to the mobster, runs afoul of the police, meets the mysterious woman, discovers a murder, then investigates in self-defense. An unusually refreshing protagonist, slated for further adventure, talented prose, and evocative, realistic descriptions of speech, manners, and social life make this an exceptional and welcome addition. This is the first title in the Easy Rawlins mystery series. Other titles worth checking out : Little Yellow Dog and A Read Death.

The Ruby Ring by Diane Haeger
The Ruby Ring is an unforgettable story of love, loss, and immortal genius . . . Rome, 1520. The Eternal City is in mourning. Raphael Sanzio, beloved painter and national hero, has died suddenly at the height of his fame. His body lies in state at the splendid marble Pantheon. At the nearby convent of Sant'Apollonia, a young woman comes to the Mother Superior, seeking refuge. She is Margherita Luti, a baker's daughter from a humble neighborhood on the Tiber, now an outcast from Roman society, persecuted by powerful enemies within the Vatican. Margherita was Raphael's beloved and appeared as the Madonna in many of his paintings. Theirs was a love for the ages. But now that Raphael is gone, the convent is her only hope of finding an honest and peaceful life. The Mother Superior agrees to admit Margherita to their order. But first, she must give up the ruby ring she wears on her left hand, the ring she had worn in Raphael's scandalous nude "engagement portrait." The ring has a storied past, and it must be returned to the Church or Margherita will be cast out into the streets. Behind the quiet walls of the convent, Margherita makes her decision . . . and remembers her life with Raphael—and the love and torment—embodied in that one precious jewel.

Renoir My Father by Jean Renoir
Film director Jean Renoir was the son of the great impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. In this delightful memoir, he tells the story of his famous father, capturing the artist's unpretentious and engaging personality. The author describes his father's early years as a painter of fans and porcelain, evolving thoughts about the effect of light on paintings, and relationships with such luminaries as Monet and Cezanne. Affectionately rendered through the eyes of a loving son, this work is a charming double portrait of both artists.

Chronicles. Volume 1 by Bob Dylan
Acolytes and scholars have long argued over the meaning of Dylan's often cryptic songs. Now they have a new source of unparalleled authority to guide their interpretations in the first installment of his long-awaited memoirs, which jumps around chronologically, much as Dylan has veered stylistically over the years. It lurches from youth in Minnesota to arrival in New York City in 1961 to creative slump a decade later to the stirrings of creative revival in the 1980s. Most evocative is Dylan's depiction of early '60s Greenwich Village, which paints the burgeoning folk scene so vividly that it seems to have happened last week. Among the surprising revelations is Dylan's confession that his mundane output in the early '70s was the result of withdrawal into domestic life and a conscious attempt to reject the pressure he had felt as the "voice of a generation." Dylan here is honest, and bordering on confessional.

Early Bird by Rodney Rothman
Everyone says they would like to retire early, but Rodney Rothman actually did it -- forty years early. Burnt out, he decides at the age of twenty-eight to get an early start on his golden years. He travels to Boca Raton, Florida, where he moves in with an elderly piano teacher at Century Village, a retirement village that is home to thousands of senior citizens.

Early Bird is an irreverent, hilarious, and ultimately warmhearted account of Rodney's journey deep into the heart of retirement. Rodney struggles for acceptance from the senior citizens he shares a swimming pool with, and battles with cranky octogenarians who want him off their turf. The day-to-day dealings begin to wear on him. Before long he observes, "I don't think Tuesdays with Morrie would have been quite so uplifting if that guy had to spend more than one day a week with Morrie."