African Fiction

Meeting summary April 27/07

Desertion by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Barb)
Dead before Dying by Deon Meyer (Kerry)
Praying Mantis by Andre Brink (Linda)
Crossways by Sheila Kohler (Kathryn)
Many Stones by Carolyn Coman (Frances)
Beasts of no Nation by Uzodinma Iweala (Frances)
Little Soldier by Bernard Ashley (Frances)

We decided to try the comment link to add our book reviews rather than putting up separate posts. So just click on comment.

10th Anniversary

FVRL Genrestudy

1996-2006

Granville Island

Vancouver, B.C.

Point to Point Navigation by Gore Vidal

The focus of this memoir is his Gore Vidal's life with companion Howard Auster and his death in 2004. There are still lots of family memories and stories about celebrities and comments that make him sound like a snob ... but having said that I love reading him because I think he is the most influential liberal intellectual the US has produced in a very long time. He has spent most of his adult life observing the US from a villa in Rome but has now moved back. The end is quite sad and you come to realize that since he is now in his eighties we may not have too many more years to appreciate his writing. The loss of Howard Auster had a profound affect on him and this book is unusual in that it shows such a vulnerable side of Vidal.