The Buzz...About Books

December Read

Great House by Nicole Krauss

The four novellas in Great House are linked through a desk.  Among the narrators is a reclusive novelist who inherited the desk from a Chilean poet who disappeared during Pinochet’s reign.  Her life is shattered when a poet’s relative retrieves the desk.  In London, another story is told by a man who makes a devastating discovery among his dying wife’s possession.  An antiques dealer in Jerusalem encounters the desk as he tries to reassemble the study belonging to his father–a room that had been plundered by the Nazis in 1944 Budapest.  As the narrators make their confessions, the desk takes on more and more meaning, and comes finally to stand for all that has been taken from them, and all that binds them to what has disappeared.

Great House won'the 2011 Anisfield-Wolf Award.  This award is given to books that increase readers’ understanding of cultural diversity.  The novel was also a finalist for both the Orange Prize and the National Book Award.

Also available in:

• Large Print
• eAudiobook

Upcoming Discussions

January 2012
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

• Large Print
• eBook
• Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)

February 2012
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
    Alternative Title: The Other Hand

• Large Print
• eAudiobook

March 2012
Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

• eBook