Sunday, September 8th, 10:00 a.m.
The Braun Library Book Club
Our September selection is The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Dovekeepers and The Museum of Extraordinary Things: a forbidden love story set on the tropical island of St. Thomas about the extraordinary woman who gave birth to painter Camille Pissarro—the Father of Impressionism.
Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel’s mother, a pillar of their small refugee community of Jews who escaped the Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for being a difficult girl who refuses to live by the rules. Growing up, Rachel’s salvation is their maid Adelle’s belief in her strengths, and her deep, life-long friendship with Jestine, Adelle’s daughter. But Rachel’s life is not her own. She is married off to a widower with three children to save her father’s business. When her husband dies suddenly and his handsome, much younger nephew, Frédérick, arrives from France to settle the estate, Rachel seizes her own life story, beginning a defiant, passionate love affair that sparks a scandal that affects all of her family, including her favorite son, who will become one of the greatest artists of France.
Building on the triumphs of The Dovekeepers and The Museum of Extraordinary Things, set in a world of almost unimaginable beauty, The Marriage of Opposites showcases the beloved, bestselling Alice Hoffman at the height of her considerable powers.
We’d love to see some new faces. Please join us!
What We’ve Read in the Past
A Pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev
A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
The River Midnight by Lilian Nattel
I am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits
Mr. Mani by Abraham B. Yehoshua,
Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman
Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
The Chosen by Chaim Potok, paired with a Braun Library film series showing of the movie based on the book
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska
Einstein and the Rabbi by Naomi Levy
The Best Place on Earth, a collection of short stories by Ayelet Tsabari
The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
Afterword
The September 3rd, 2018 issue of the New York Times magazine included an interview with David Peplow, a senior lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University in England who has done multiyear ethnographies of book groups.
The article reports that when he asked people why they joined a book club, many said — unsurprisingly — that they wanted to talk about books. But, the article continued, “when he read through transcripts from dozens of hours of recorded group meetings, it became clear that they were grappling to understand themselves more deeply. “Reading and talking about fiction gives people a way of processing things that happened in their lives in a relatively safe space.” Peplow says.
Click here for the full article.
For more information, send an email to bookclub@tiferethisrael.com.