Elizabeth Lord

3rd August 2007
Guest: Elizabeth Lord, published author of 19th books with the 20th on the way. Books
include STOLEN YEARS,THE ANGRY HEART, FOR ALL THE BRIGHT PROMISE (a wartime novel),TURNING TIDES,THE BOWMAKER GIRLS (set in Leigh on Sea),FROM BOW TO BOND STREET,MILE END GIRL, Trilogy: BUTTERFLY SUMMERS/AUTUMN SKIES,WINTER WINE (about an Oyster Restaurant),SHADOW OF THE PROTECTOR and FORTUNES,DAUGHTER (about Oliver Cromwell’s family),BRENDA’S PLACE (an East End wartime novel), COMPANY OF REBELS (about the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 starting in Fobbing, Essex ) and THE FLOWER GIRL to name a few!

Competition question: Name the titles of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy?
Prize: Paul Auster's ' Travels in the Scriptorium'
Correcy Answer: 'City of Glass' 'Ghosts' and 'Locked Room'
Winner: Rosie B, London

Books
 
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (Penguin Books)
With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man - also named Jonathan Safran Foer -
sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis.
Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis,
Junior, Junior, and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past. As their adventure unfolds, Jonathan imagines the history of his grandfather's village, conjuring a magical fable of startling symmetries that unite generations across time. Lit by passion, fear, guilt, memory, and hope, the characters in Everything Is Illuminated mine the black holes of history. As the search movesback in time, the fantastical history moves forward, until reality collides with fiction in
a heart-stopping scene of extraordinary power. An arresting blend of high comedy and great tragedy, this is a story about searching for people and places that no longer exist, for the hidden truths that haunt every family, and for the delicate but necessary tales that link past and future.

Duchess of Nothing- Heather McGowan (Faber and Faber)
After leaving her husband and their suffocating marriage for a new lover in Rome, the
narrator of Heather McGowan’s Duchess of Nothing has her freedom, but is still trapped by
the routine of life and haunted by her past. Even worse, her lover, Edmund, is just as
self-absorbed and remote as her former husband. Her one source of entertainment is Edmund’s
seven-year-old brother,a curious,precocious and defiant child who becomes her responsibility
during her lover’s long absences. Spending their days together, they wander the city,
simultaneously repelled by and drawn to each other as she teaches him important lessons he
would otherwise never learn in school, such as “marriage is a tomb” and being an expert
liar is key to getting ahead in the world. But when Edmund abandons them altogether, the
amusing relationship between the narrator and her charge suddenly becomes a necessity,
and she realizes how much she has come to depend on the boy.

Identity by Milan Kundera (Faber and Faber)
Jean-Marc arrives at the hotel; Chantal is out walking. Near misses and mistaken identities
characterize his frantic search for her, offering Kundera the opportunity to philosophize
on the unknowability of the "other". When they do reunite,Chantal blurts out the distressing
thought that's plagued her day: "Men don't turn to look at me anymore." This launches the
protagonists into sketchy flashbacks, stilted dialogues and interior monologues, all loosely
bound together by their embarkation on an erotic journey. Synosis courtesy of amazon.co.uk

Memory-Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards (Penguin)
It is 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, and a rare and sudden winter storm has blanketed the area
with snow. The roads are dangerous, yet Dr. David Henry is determined to get his wife, Norah,
to the hospital in time to deliver their first child. But despite David’s methodical and
careful driving, it soon becomes clear that the roads are too treacherous, and he decides
to stop at his medical clinic instead. There, with the help of his nurse, Caroline, he is
able safely to deliver their son, Paul. But unexpectedly, Norah delivers a second child, a
girl, Phoebe, in whom David immediately recognizes the signs of Down syndrome.

David is a decent but secretive man—he has shared his difficult past with no one, not even
his wife. It is a past that includes growing up in a poor, uneducated family and the death
of a beloved sister whose heart defect claimed her at the age of twelve. The painful
memories of the past and the difficult circumstances of the present intersect to create a
crisis, one in which his overriding concern is to spare his beloved Norah what he sees as
a life of grief. He hands the baby girl over to Caroline, along with the address of a home
to which he wants her taken, not imagining beyond the moment,or anticipating how his actions
will serve to destroy the very things he wishes to protect. Then he turns to Norah, telling
her, “Our little daughter died as she was born.”

From that moment forward, two families begin their new, and separate, lives. Caroline takes
Phoebe to the institution but cannot bear to leave her there. Thirty-one, unmarried, and
secretly in love with David, Caroline has been always been a dreamer, waiting for her real
life to begin. Now, when she makes her own split-second decision to keep and raise Phoebe
as her own, she feels as if it finally has.

Next week:

Guest  : Vicki Butler, recent MA gradute of East European Studies and a voracious reader.

Article by Muthamma Prasad, 7 Aug 2007
Posted in Book Club

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