baci's book club | January + February 2012 - Silver Sparrow + The Hunger Games

Hello there!  It's been two whole months since I've posted about baci's book club and I apologize - our January meeting to discuss Tayari Jones' Silver Sparrow was cancelled due to yicky weather so I didn't post last month, but I forgot to tell you all we were reading Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins for February.  So sorry :o(  To be fair I won't dish about Hunger Games today other than to tell you to run, not walk, to find a copy to read!  We've decided to read Catching Fire for March and Mockingjay for April so I'll wait to post about the entire Trilogy after our April meeting :o)

{Source}

And now for a little bit about Silver Sparrow from the author's site, "With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, 'My father, James Witherspoon is a bigamist,' Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man’s deception, a family’s complicity and the teenage girls caught in the middle.


Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980's, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon’s families– the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters."


As you can imagine, we were pretty interested to get started and as I mentioned, I read the book really fast because I liked it so much :o)  Not everyone felt that way though. . .

WARNING, the following discussions may act as a SPOILER!

The first half of the book is told by Dana, the secret second family daughter - it's informational and you really get to know her character and her mother, Gwen, as well as the father, James, and his "brother", Raleigh.  Dana and Gwen are aware of James' public family and are constantly upset why the two of them seem to be less fortunate.  Throughout Dana's portion of the book you begin to see how little self-esteem she has and what her view on men really is.

In the second half, Bunny Chaurisse, James' "public" daughter suddenly takes the narrative. . . that's where a lot of the ladies in book club felt the book took a turn, not necessarily for the worse but more or less for the confusing.  Bunny is also James' mother's name and you're kind of thrown into Chaurisse's part of the book, left wondering, "Who's talking now?".  The ladies also got upset the more they learned about Raleigh - no one could understand why he acted so obediently for so many years when he obviously loved Gwen.

What's wonderful about the book is that even though one family knows about James' bigamy and the other doesn't, they still overlap perfectly - you learn so much about all of the characters in both portions of the book, no matter who is narrating.  The closer and closer Chaurisse and Dana come to actually meeting one another, the better the book gets.  And once they do meet and become friends, I honestly couldn't put it down because I just had to know what would happen next!  It's definitely a book worth reading :o)

{Source}

As another reminder, we're reading the Hunger Game Trilogy over the next two months - if you haven't read them, you must. . . it really isn't an option, lol!  The hubby and I read them at the same time - it actually became a race to see who could finish first because they really are that good.  Coming from me that's a huge thing because they aren't in the least bit my type of typical read.  Enjoy - we'll be meeting again on March 15th!  See you then :o)

Oh and you know we'll all be watching the movie!!