Suggestions: November Book of the Month

[mehastings]

Last day guys. Anyone else got a suggestion??

 

[ions]

Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards. Right now the hardcover can be found pretty cheaply and I've heard a few good things.

From the Jacket

Believing he may have accidentally killed a friend, Sydney Henderson makes a pact with God. If God will spare the boy’s life, Sydney will never again harm another human being.

In the years that follow, the self-educated, brilliant and now almost pathologically gentle Sydney holds true to his promise. Yet others in the small rural community in New Brunswick view Sydney’s pacifism as an opportunity to exploit and torment the defenseless Hendersons. Tragedy strikes when a small boy dies as a result of an act of sabotage and revenge gone horribly wrong. It is a death for which Sydney is blamed. Guilty only of being different, Sydney refuses to defend himself and his family. Raised on the books his father has long collected, Sydney’s son Lyle shares a deep respect for the power of words. But when he is forced to watch his family ridiculed and attacked, Lyle turns his back on God and literature, and adopts an aggressive strategy for protecting his mother, sister and brother. In the end it is Lyle who must decide what legacy his family’s tragedy will hold. Amid the squalor of their lives, Sydney and Lyle demonstrate how humanity faces inhumanity, how lies and disappointments cannot and will never destroy truth or human greatness.

Written with the characteristic control, intelligence and compassion for which Richards has been widely acclaimed, Mercy Among the Children is a story set in a particular time and place, yet its message is universal.

Link to Chapters

 

[sirmyk]

Last day guys. Anyone else got a suggestion??

In the Night Room, by Peter Straub and / or Lost boy lost girl.

Happy?

 

[Appolonia]

Bizarre. The bookstore I order from told me that edition was "out of print" and that the new US edition wouldn't be out till March.

I heard it was originally supposed to be released in the US in March 2006, but when the book won the Man Booker Prize, the publisher made the decision to release it in November. Makes sense, since now a lot of people are curious to read it.

 

[Erica]

I would quite like to read 'The Way The Crow Flies' by Ann Marie MacDonald
Or the other one mentioned 'Fall on your Knees' Ann Marie MacDonald
Was Not sure which one was put forward ?

 

[mehastings]

November Suggestions Thread Is Closed!!!!