Showing posts with label Eggers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eggers. Show all posts

Saturday, September 30, 2017

Fiction book of the month, Heroes Of The Frontier

We are at the end of the month, September, 2017, when our UUAWOL fiction book of the month has been Dave Eggers, Heroes Of The Frontier. To close out the month, the quote that might be best is on page 152 when Samantha, Josie's foster sister asks her, "Do you feel like you're doing what you're supposed to be doing? That you're using your time here properly?" Josie laughed, to undercut what she'd just said, but she knew, even in her stupor, that this was the central thought that had occupied her mind for the better part of twenty years."

And it is the central thought that has occupied most thoughtful people for years. And the question for all of us is "are we using our time here properly?"


The UUAWOL fiction book of the month for October 2017 will be "My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrick Backman.


Saturday, September 9, 2017

Existential crisis of midlife when life falls apart.

The UUAW)L fiction book of the month is Dave Eggers' book Heroes Of The Frontier, a story about a 40 year old woman who takes her two children, Paul 8, and Ana 5 and flees to Alaska to avoid her ex-husband, Carl, and find herself after losing her dental practice in a law suit.

Heroes Of The Frontier is low on plot and high on character and scene development. It's over all theme concerns a woman having an existential mid-life crisis going on a quest to the last of the American frontier.

"Now, at forty, Josie was tired. She was tired of her journey through a day, the limitless moods contained in any stretch of hours. There was the horror of morning, underslept, feeling she was on the precipice of something that felt like mono, the day already galloping away from her, her chasing on foot, carrying her boots. Then the brief upward respite after a second cup of coffee, when all seemed possible, when she wanted to call her father, her mother, reconcile, visit them with the kids, when, while driving the kids to school—jail the people who abandoned the manifest right to school buses—she instigated an all-car sing-along to the Muppets soundtrack, “Life’s a Happy Song.” Then, after the kids were gone, an eleven-minute mood freefall, then more coffee, and more euphoria until the moment, arriving at her practice, when the coffee had worn off and she grew, for an hour or so, more or less numb, doing her work in a state of underwater detachment."

Eggers, Dave. Heroes of the Frontier (pp. 24-25). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Josie is acting out the dream of running away that many people have when are feeling suffocated by a life they are trapped in. Have you ever felt that way? Has your UU faith helped in any way with these existential quandaries?



Saturday, September 2, 2017

UUAWOL fiction book of the month, September, 2017 - Heroes Of The Frontier by Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers latest novel, Heroes Of The Frontier, is the UUAWOL fiction book of the month for September, 2017.

The main hero of Eggers' novel is Josie, a dentist, who loses her practice through a malpractice claim against her when she failed to diagnose an oral cancer in an older woman she was treating.  Josie, divorced, takes her two kids, a son aged 8 and a daughter aged 5 and decides to go to Alaska to visit a foster sister. The story is about this adventure.

The morals of the story are many and in the mind of the reader. Share your thoughts through out the month.


Monday, August 28, 2017

UU A Way Of Life monthly book discussion.

The UU A Way Of Life will begin a book club this fall beginning on September 1, 2017. We will read one fiction and one non fiction book per month. UU A Way Of Life blog readers are welcomed to read along and post comments on the blog articles which discuss these books. Guest articles are encouraged and should be sent to davidgmarkham@gmail.com.

The books for September, 2017 are:

Fiction - Heroes Of The New Frontier by Dave Eggers.
Non fiction - Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup.

We look forward to your comments throughout the month of September. Suggestions for upcoming books are welcome in the comments and to me by email at davidgmarkham@gmail.com.


 


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