Last night the Fab 5 Book Club met in the new home of one of our members. It is a beautiful home, especially since they have painted almost every surface already in the 2 months they've owned it. Of course, we all had to take a moment to bemoan the state of our homes and their respective needs for repainting, refinishing, etc. Nancy mentioned that her basement is looking more finished now that they have hung the 8 or so hunting trophies on the wall. I have to note here, this is true love talking. When I met Nancy, she was single, and I could never have imagined a day would come when she would say "the basement looks more finished now that we have hung up all the deer heads."
This was a lighthearted beginning, but the discussion for the night was anything but lighthearted. This month we read Night by Elie Wiesel. I suspect that many of you had to read it in college. I know many of my classmates did, but it was never required for any of my classes. What a book. It is not very long, and it reads quickly. It also leaves no room for relief.
Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, went to Auschwitz at the age of 15. His narrative of this experience is horrifying and painful to read. He wrote this account 10 years after his liberation, as a young man, and he said "Never shall I forget those moments, which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust." And in reading the story, you have to wonder how he can even find the words to express it, how anyone can survive.
Yet Wiesel has been given the gift of grace. The version I read was a new translation from his original Yiddish text, and it included not only the original introduction, but also a preface written 45 years after the original publication, and the acceptance speech he made to the Nobel committee the year he won the prize for this book. He has somehow managed, not just to survive, but to find equilibrium with his God and to advocate for the oppressed everywhere.
We wonder what it means for modern generations to grow up knowing that people can do such things. We learn about the Nazi atrocities before we reach puberty. Though this in itself seems like an awful thing, it also helps young people understand the atrocities that continue in our world. Maybe if they can read such a narrative as teenagers they can have more empathy for those who suffer in far away countries, in a day when it is possible to turn the story off with one touch of a remote control.
Some of us in the group are cryers--it doesn't take much to set us off. So you can imagine what a book like this does to us. Barbara informed us that crying at night leads to red, puffy eyes in the morning (ditto for me), so she tries to get all her crying done on Friday nights. I can relate. My youngest child has begged me not to read in public places, because she is absolutely mortified if I cry there. She'll have to deal with it. I'm not likely to get control of the waterworks anytime soon, and I'm not giving up reading on airplanes or waiting rooms.
This book brings us to the end of our six months of planned reading. We have covered Little Bee by Chris Cleave, Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, The Hunger Games and Night. All but one of these deal with oppression in one way or another. We are getting to be very deep people, we think. When we don't get distracted by, well, anything.
Next month is our favorite time--book picking time. Normally we would have done this tonight, but we've decided to try giving ourselves a month to read whatever we want and report back. We'll also come with stacks of books to plan out the next six months, so if you have suggestions, we're takin' them. Nancy may be bringing back "The Alchemist," which is sort of the Susan Lucci of our book club. It's been up for election many times, but never quite makes it to the list. Anyone out there who thinks we should read it?
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