book clubs

The Doctor and the Diva

by Adrienne Mcdonnell

Resigned to childlessness, Erika von Kessler--a talented opera singer and the wife of a prominent Bostonian--secretly plans to move to Italy to pursue her musical career. When the charismatic Doctor Ravell takes Erika on as a patient, he is mesmerized by her. Impetuously, he takes a shocking risk that could ruin them both.

We Bought a Zoo

by Benjamin Mee

The remarkable true story of a family who move into a rundown zoo– already a BBC documentary miniseries and excerpted in The Guardian.

In the market for a house and an adventure, Benjamin Mee moved his family to an unlikely new home: a dilapidated zoo in the English countryside. Mee had a dream to refurbish the zoo and run it as a family business. His friends and colleagues thought he was crazy. 

But in 2006, Mee and his wife with their two children, his brother, and his 76-year-old mother moved into the Dartmoor Wildlife Park. Their extended family now included: Solomon, an African lion and scourge of the local golf course; Zak, the rickety Alpha wolf, a broadly benevolent dictator clinging to power; Ronnie, a Brazilian tapir, easily capable of killing a man, but hopelessly soppy; and Sovereign, a jaguar and would-be ninja, who has devised a long term escape plan and implemented it.

Nothing was easy, given the family’s lack of experience as zookeepers, and what follows is a magical exploration of the mysteries of the animal kingdom, the power of family, and the triumph of hope over tragedy. We Bought a Zoo is a profoundly moving portrait of an unforgettable family living in the most extraordinary circumstances.

Annabel

by Kathleen Winter

A universal concern – the importance of self-determination – takes a highly specific form in Kathleen Winter’s first novel, the story of an intersex child born in a remote coastal Labrador village in 1968. Intersex births are considerably more common in real life than in fiction, and Montreal-based Winter has followed up her Metcalf-Rooke Award–winning short story collection BoYs with a thoughtful treatment of this rarely discussed topic. Despite a few plot and pacing stumbles, Annabel is a dramatic, thematically rich novel. (From Quill and Quire)

Nice Recovery

by Susan Juby

"There are families that through a combination of genetics, culture, and inclination produce a startling number of professional athletes, such as tennis players or hockey stars. Then there are families like the Baldwins, which produce a high percentage of actors. My family seems to specialize in people who enjoy drinking. And taking drugs. In such families, there is usually one person who stands out as particularly gifted in the field. When I was a teenager, that person was me. I was the star, the Alec Baldwin, if you will. I started drinking seriously when I was 13, smoking pot with a vengeance at 14, and getting into cocaine at 16. By the time I was 20 I was done. Nice Recovery is the story of how I slipped so far off course, how I got back on track, and, most important, what it's like to come of age as a sober young person."