Women's Book Club, Wine, and Snacks

Our November book is Stoner by John Williams.

-------------------------

Summary:
William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life. As the years pass Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal.

John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.

My Sources:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/166997.Stoner
----------------------------------------

Announcement: Book Recommendations requested
----------------------------------------

NOTE: The log-in link is typically located in the right-hand corner of your screen on this meetup event page.

Our November book is Stoner by John Williams. I happened to read this a few years ago, someone else nominated it for our group, but I'm excited to have some people to discuss it with now. From memory, Stoner was published in 1965. It describes the life of a man named Stoner who grows up on a farm in Missouri and spends his career teaching classic literature. I believe most of it takes place in the early 20th century. I don't want to give too much else away. Let's discover it together.

----------------------------------------

Announcement: Book Recommendations requested

----------------------------------------

Our December book is
Whistler
by Ann Patchett.**

When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.

Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/242693052-whistler
----------------------------------------

Our December book is "Whistler" by Anne Patchett
----------------------------------------
See my three sources below at the end of the section titled: Summary
----------------------------------------
Summary:

IS THIS A BOOK ABOUT HORSES?
This is not a book about horses. In the interview with Seth Meyers (see details and link below) Anne Patchett speaks of a ride she received from a driver in Australia while on a book tour, and of finding out that the driver's full-time job was raising and caring for horses. Here she was able to ask questions and learn about horses from another's lived experience, as Patchett is not much for the internet, Google searches, or other virtual resources. In fact, she does not even own a cell phone. Then there is the setting of New York City, where the book begins, and we find the horse that inspired the cover. Those first few paragraphs are about all the horse we get from this novel. There is an interpretation of the horse that, in those brief moments, we could see it as a representation of how art of any kind can bring up memories, touch our hearts, and connect us to those most important to us.

THE COVER ART:
From the interviews, I get the feeling that Anne Patchett likes to keep us curious with the covers. In her previous work, she draws us in by having the little girl on the cover of “The Dutch House,” painted by the same artist as Whistler, face the reader. Patchett makes the same request with the horse on Whistler's cover. This is very intentional. The artist is a friend of Anne’s, and she describes making breakfast for him as one reason he doesn’t mind her requests for specificity in the paintings. She recognizes these breakfasts at her home as a nice retreat to give him some adult time, since he is usually around his three kids, who take up much of his time and energy. The artist Noah Saterstrom

MAIN THEMES:
Anne Patchett’s novels seem to have a particular theme. One of the audience members captured Patchett’s novels quite well when she said they are about “intense complicated familial relationships.”

This particular novel, Whistler, is best summed up by Anne’s quote, “The reckoning of a story.” This is very much a story about what happens as we talk about our past and contemplate how these stories shape us. Patchett considers the stories we hold as memories to be less about the original memory than about the last time we told it. Then, once told to those who may have shared the exact same experience at the same time and place, the story is challenged by the other's recollection. Two stories at the same place and time with the same persons push us to shuffle and negotiate our own memory. This reckoning with what we have considered our past for so long is now in question, and, with it, calls into question so much of who we are and what has shaped us.

WHY THIS NOVEL IS SPECIAL:
There is a reason this novel, in particular, holds special significance for Patchett's readers. Anne Patchett spoke of never having captured herself or her life in her stories until Whistler. In Whistler, she captures pieces and voices from her own life, placed in the mouths and lives of the fictional places and characters in this book. The phrases and characters may not match her life exactly, but so much of her own memory accounts for the essence of this book.

INTERESTING FUN FACT:
One funny piece to keep an eye out for is something Patchett remembers hearing somewhere, but cannot pinpoint where she heard about this scientific discovery, but had made a promise to herself that it would be used in her writing one day. The fact is this: The happiest childhood memories share three common factors among the majority of those interviewed. The three components present in the happiest childhood memories are: danger, the presence of the father, and fried food.

LET’S DO THIS!
Now, off we go to read and find all these interesting pieces drawn from the life and experiences of Anne Patchett through fictional characters and events.

MY SOURCES: