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2006 - 2007
Intuition
by Allegra Goodman
Cliff, a gung-ho postdoctoral researcher at Boston's Philpott Institute, makes an important breakthrough with the R-7 virus he is working on. The tumors in some of his mice, who were first injected with breast cancer tissue and then treated with R-7, have disappeared. When lab director Sandy Glass rushes to publish the preliminary results, researchers at the lab are besieged by the media. Robin, Cliff's co-researcher and ex-girlfriend, has doubts about the validity of his research, and when she finds three pages of his lab notebook that call into question his results, she reports him to the scientific oversight authorities. Did Cliff falsify his data? The lab's future now in question, Sandy and co-director Marion Mendelssohn have to mount an aggressive defense of the Institute's work.
Questions
Related Websites
Allegra Goodman: Biography & Interview
Science Careers: A Novel Look at Postdocs
Writer's Laboratory: Questions for Allegra Goodman
Writer Depicts Scientists Risking Glory for Truth and Truth for Glory
In the Company of the Courtesan
by Sarah Dunant
The courtesan is the beautiful Fiammetta Bianchini, who, with the assistance of her pimp the dwarf Bucino, plies her trade in Rome. In 1527 when the city is sacked by invading Germans and Spaniards, Fiammetta and Bucino flee, taking with them only her jewels, which they have swallowed for safekeeping.
They reach Venice, where they are safe but without resources. Fiammetta’s beauty has been ruined by jealous women who cut off her luxuriant blonde hair, scarring her head in the process. With the help of the faithful Bucino and a blind healer called La Draga, Fiammetta’s looks and health are restored. She is back in the business of attracting wealthy lovers. Renaissance Venice is a colorful setting, a place of beauty, wealth and elegance and of political rivalries, corruption and superstition.
Questions
Related Websites
1527: The Sack of Rome
The Renaissance in Venice
Titian
Parmigianino
Pietro Aretino
An Interview with Sarah Dunant
Related Readings
Foreign Affairs
by Alison Lurie
Vinnie Miner looks forward to the six months she will spend in London researching her book on children’s playground rhymes and socializing with her English friends. Vinnie feels more at home in England than she does in Upstate New York, where she teaches children’s literature at Corinth College. She does not, however, seem to be able to rid herself of the attention of two pesky Americans. She feels obliged to invite Fred, a junior colleague at her University who is in London researching a book, to a party she gives. The other is a man she meets on the flight to England. Chuck Mumpson is a retired waste disposal engineer from Tulsa, whom Vinnie dismisses as a typical clueless American tourist. When Chuck contacts her in London, she discovers that her smug assumptions about people can be a hindrance to her happiness..
Questions
Related Websites
Alison Lurie
British Museum Reading Room
"Cupid as Link Boy" by Sir Joshua Reynolds
Victoria and Albert Museum Collections
The Beggar's Opera
The Contemplator's Short History of John Gay and the Beggar's Opera
The March
by E.L. Doctorow
General William T. Sherman believed that in order to preserve the Union it was first necessary to destroy. The army he led across Georgia and into the Carolinas in 1864 did just that, burning cities, homes and crops and destroying the railroads and factories that supplied the Confederate army. Doctorow describes the novel as “a study of how everything was turned upside down, so that the only security people could find was by attaching themselves to the Union army…” The vast cast of characters includes displaced civilians, soldiers, physicians, prisoners, slaves, and Sherman himself.
Questions
Related Websites
Sherman's March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea, 1864: A Southerner's Perspective
William Tecumseh Sherman
A Long Road to Death and Glory
Cry, The Beloved Country
by Alan Paton
A Dry White Season
by Andre Brink
In these two classics of South African literature, a murder leads the protagonists to examine their society and question the policy of apartheid which dictates the roles of blacks and whites. In Paton’s novel, a black reverend travels from the townships to Johannesburg to attend the trial of his son, accused of killing a white man. Ben Du Toit, the protagonist of Brink’s book, starts to question his government’s policies when he investigates the arrest and suicide of a black janitor from the school where he works. Both books explore the toll that apartheid took on the oppressors and the oppressed.
Questions
Related Websites
The Story of South Africa (BBC World Services)
Apartheid (About.com)
Apartheid Legislation in South Africa (About.com)
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report (South African Government Information)
A Country Study: South Africa
South Africa Marking Soweto Uprising (BBC News)
Field-Marshal Jan Christian Smuts
Related Readings
The Yacoubian Building
by Alaa Al Aswany
In the ’70’s, the well-to-do moved out of downtown Cairo to other areas of the city. The once fashionable Yacoubian Building, built in 1934 in the “high classical European style”, deserted by its wealthy tenants, is now shabby, and its humble rooftop apartments are home to the city’s poor, while tradesmen and aspiring politicians occupy offices downstairs. Among its inhabitants are Taha, the doorkeeper’s son, whose ambition is to enter the police academy, Zaki Bey, an aging womanizer and his one-legged servant Abaskharon, and the shop girl Busayna, whose mother urges her to tolerate the sexual advances of her boss so she will keep her job. Aswany’s depiction of the corruption and hypocrisy in Egyptian society and government created a storm of controversy when it was published.
Questions
Related Websites
Alaa El Aswany (Egypt Today)
Alaa Al Aswany: Voice of Reason (National Geographic)
'Yacoubian Building' Houses Uncomfortable Truths (NPR)
Egypt: Country Profile (BBC News)
The Good Wife
by Stewart O'Nan
Patty Dickerson is 27 and pregnant when her husband Tommy is convicted of breaking into an elderly woman’s house and murdering her. His buddy, who masterminded the crime, cuts a deal. By testifying against Tommy, he gets off with time served. Tommy is sentenced to 25 years to life. Patty is an ordinary blue collar woman who now must deal with the birth of her son, eviction, public scorn and the harshness of the courts and the prison system and must support herself and her child. Is her commitment to her marriage strong enough to get her through the lonely years? O’Nan creates a quiet, realistic portrait of how one woman survives some hard times.
Questions
Related Websites
The Works of Stewart O'Nan
New York State Department of Correctional Services
Little Chapel on the River
by Gwendolyn Bounds
Gwen Bounds’ apartment, along with most of Lower Manhattan, was uninhabitable after September 11, engulfed in dust from the collapse of the Twin Towers. One day a friend took Gwen to Guinan’s, a country store and bar up the Hudson in the village of Garrison. Intrigued by the place and looking for respite, Gwen rented a ramshackle house there.
As she settled into the life of the Garrison’s inhabitants, Gwen got to know the owners and communicants
of Guinan’s, the “chapel on the river”. As she chronicles the pub’s struggle to stay in business, Bounds sheds light
on the qualities that make a place a community.
Questions
Related Websites
Gwendolyn Bounds website
Saturday
by Ian McEwan
Henry Perowne wakes before dawn one Saturday and is startled by what he sees from his bedroom window: a jet plane with flames shooting out of one engine. Shaken from his pre-dawn reverie, Henry, a dedicated neurosurgeon at a London hospital, begins his day. Henry is a compassionate physician, dedicated to his art and to his family’s happiness. In the course of his day, he will visit his patients at the hospital and his mother at her nursing home, play squash with a colleague, buy fish, and watch his son’s band rehearse. He will also confront a threat to his family’s well-being. This particular Saturday in the life of Henry Perowne will expose the unpredictability of life in post-911 Western society.
Questions
Related Websites
Ian McEwan website
"Beyond Belief" The Guardian
Exclusive to Powell's Author Interviews: Ian McEwan
Blood from a Stone
by Donna Leon
Who would murder an inoffensive African immigrant street vendor trying to make a living selling knock-off designer bags in Campo Santo Stefano? When Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police finds diamonds hidden in the dead man’s apartment, his boss hands the case over to the jurisdiction of the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Brunetti, although officially off the case, is stubbornly determined to solve it. In the course of unraveling the threads of the murder, Brunetti has to deal with racist comments from his own daughter, the bureaucratic inefficiency of government agencies, and the obstructionist attitude of his boss.
Questions
Related Websites
"A Patron of the Arts of Opera and Murder" by Michael White
Donna Leon Interview on BBC Radio 4
Exclusive Interview with Donna Leon
Titles Selected by Suzanne Fisher, Librarian
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