The Last Tuesday of the Month Book Group will not be meeting at the end of December—we had our joint November-December meeting on 12/9 where we discussed the book We Solve Murders by Richard Osman.
For our next meeting on January 27th, we have selected this book: The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett.
If you would like to join us, and are not on our mailing list, contact chrismonroe@comcast.net to be added so you will be sent updates and the Zoom link.
Literary awards: Orange Prize Nominee for Fiction Shortlist (1998)
Sabine– twenty years a magician’s assistant to her handsome, charming husband– is suddenly a widow. In the wake of his death, she finds he has left a final trick; a false identity and a family allegedly lost in a tragic accident but now revealed as very much alive and well. Named as heirs in his will, they enter Sabine’s life and set her on an adventure of unraveling his secrets, from sunny Los Angeles to the windswept plains of Nebraska, that will work its own sort of magic on her.
357 pages, Paperback; also available Kindle, Audible, and Hardcover
We have also selected a book to read for February 24th. It is non-fiction, “an extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships – and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom.”
The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story
Hyeonseo Lee, David John (Primary Contributor)
As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal totalitarian regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and to realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told “the best on the planet”?
Aged seventeen, she decided to escape North Korea. She could not have imagined that it would be twelve years before she was reunited with her family.
She could not return, since rumours of her escape were spreading, and she and her family could incur the punishments of the government authorities – involving imprisonment, torture, and possible public execution. Hyeonseo instead remained in China and rapidly learned Chinese in an effort to adapt and survive. Twelve years and two lifetimes later, she would return to the North Korean border in a daring mission to spirit her mother and brother to South Korea, on one of the most arduous, costly and dangerous journeys imaginable.
This is the unique story not only of Hyeonseo’s escape from the darkness into the light, but also of her coming of age, education and the resolve she found to rebuild her life – not once, but twice – first in China, then in South Korea. Strong, brave and eloquent, this memoir is a triumph of her remarkable spirit.
304 pages, Hardcover; also Kindle, paperback, and Audible
First published October 14, 2014