Book Group


Our book group normally meets on the fourth Tuesday of each month at 7:30 pm.

Lee Memorial Library's book group welcomes anyone who would like to join in our lively discussions.



November 19th Meeting: Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

A promising though ultimately overwrought portrayal of the small rebellions and crises of disillusionment that constitute a young narrator's coming-of-age unfolds against an ominous backdrop of war in Jones's latest. When the conflict between the natives and the invading redskin soldiers erupts on an unnamed tropical island in the early 1990s, 13-year-old Matilda Laimo and her mother, Dolores, are unified with the rest of their village in their efforts for survival. Amid the chaos, Mr. Watts, the only white local (he is married to a native), offers to fill in as the children's schoolteacher and teaches from Dickens's Great Expectations. The precocious Matilda, who forms a strong attachment to the novel's hero, Pip, uses the teachings as escapism, which rankles Dolores, who considers her daughter's fixation blasphemous. With a mixture of thrill and unease, Matilda discovers independent thought, and Jones captures the intricate, emotionally loaded evolution of the mother-daughter relationship. Jones (The Book of Fame; Biografi) presents a carefully laid groundwork in the tense interactions between Matilda, Dolores and Mr. Watts, but the extreme violence toward the end of the novel doesn't quite work. Jones's prose is faultless, however, and the story is innovative enough to overcome the misplayed tragedy. From Publishers Weekly


Recommended Websites........


Reviews of the Book
Web Site of the Book
Reading Group Guide for the Book


Previous Selections -- Last Twelve Months........

November	The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
January	Finding Neuf by Zoe Ferraris
February	Hidden Power by Kati Marton
March	The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper
April	The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent
May	The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
June	Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky
July	Crippen by John Boyne
August	City of Thieves by David Benioff
September	The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
October	People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Return to Library Home Page