Book Club Suggestions
2002 & 2003 Award-Winning Books

FICTION

Atonement by Ian McEwan.
This masterful metafictional novel deftly explores a lifelong act of contrition by one Briony Tallis whose rash behavior as a child irreparably harms three individuals.
Fiction McEwan

The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster.
This many-layered, mesmerizing novel is a meditation on loss, art, and how chance affects us all.
Fiction Auster

By the Lake by John McGahern.
Simple and eloquent storytelling evokes and celebrates the timelessness of rural Ireland.
Fiction McGahern

Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros.
In this vibrant Mexican American saga, intergenerational family secrets and hopes are revealed through the eyes of adolescent Lala.
Fiction Cisneros

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.
All the foibles of three grown children and their aging parents are exposed in this highly readable postmodern family saga.
Fiction Franzen

Empire Falls by Richard Russo.
Like so many dying New England towns, Empire Falls is a mill town without a mill and middle-class townspeople with little work to do who are stuck.
Fiction Russo

Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry.
A fraying contemporary Bombay is the setting in which the members of an extended Parsi family overcome their individual regrets amid spiritual ambiguity and achieve quiet resolution.
Fiction Mistry

Life of Pi by Yann Martel.
Possessing encyclopedia-like intelligence, the unusual zoo keeper's son, Pi Patel sets sail for America. When the ship sinks, he escapes on a life boat and is lost at sea with a dwindling number of animals until only he and a hungry Bengal tiger remain.
Fiction Martel

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt.
Growing up in a small Mississippi town in a family haunted by the murder of her brother, Robin, Harriet Cleve Dusfresnes lives in a world of her imagination, until, at the age of twelve, she decides to find Robin's murderer and exact her revenge.
Fiction Tartt

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.
Calliope's friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is a hermaphrodite, a situation with roots in her grandparent's desperate struggle for survival in the 1920s.
Fiction Eugenides

The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer.
A liberal white South African woman and her lover, a Muslim illegal immigrant, confront their different backgrounds, circumstances, and dreams.
Fiction Gordimer

Three Junes by Julia Glass.
Reveals the interconnected lives, loves, and relationships of different generations of the McLeod family over the course of three crucial summers.
Fiction Glass

True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey.
In an utterly convincing voice, Carey fictionalizes the life of Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, who was part Robin Hood and part Jesse James.
Fiction Carey

NON-FICTION

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser.
Schlosser's scathing investigation reveals the insidious influences of the fast-food industry on America's agricultural industry, business world, popular culture, and diet.
394.1097 Schlosser 2001

John Adams by David McCullough.
Narrative history at its finest, this is a fascinating and readable biography of the often disregarded second president.
Bio Adams

Master of the Senate by Robert Caro.
In orchestrating the passage through the Senate of the first civil rights legislation in 82 years, Lyndon Johnson demonstrated his mastery of persuasion and his obsessive pursuit of power.
Bio Johnson

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand.
Well paced and rich with period details, this absorbing account follows the rise of an unimpressive colt who became the 1938 Horse of the Year.
798.4 Hillenbrand 2001

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris.
The abundant energy, charm, accomplishments, and foibles of America's youngest president are chronicled in this engrossing account of Theodore Roosevelt's White House years.
Bio Roosevelt

War in a Time of Peace by David Halberstam.
Clear, cogent, and engaging, Halberstam's masterful account of the making of U.S. foreign policy in the 1990s provides a context for understanding today's contemporary events.
327.73 Halberstam 2001

Descriptions provided by Notable Books Council of ALA and by Novelist.

July, 2003