Book Club List - October 2013
Love Story - Erich Segal
This is the wonderful, tumultuous, heartfelt story of Oliver Barrett IV and Jenny Cavilleri--the story of a rich Harvard jock and a wisecracking Radcliffe music major who have nothing in common but love . . . and everything else to share but time. Funny and flip, sad and poignant, Erich Segal's magnificent novel will grab you, hold you, and stay with you forever. You, like more than twenty million others, will fall in love with Love Story.
Harvard Yard - William Martin
Martin, who introduced antiquarian Peter Fallon in his debut novel Back Bay (1979), brings him back for a second quest in this sprawling bibliomystery, which traces the tightly interlaced histories of the fictional Wedge family and Harvard University. Fallon, a proud Harvard grad, assists in the university's annual fund-raising appeals. One call, to Ridley Wedge Royce, lands him not a donation but a tip. The intriguing possibility that the Wedge family once owned a rare and unknown Shakespeare manuscript-a text purportedly linking Will Shakespeare and Harvard's founder-is enough to hook Fallon. But others are on the same scent and willing to go to any lengths to root out the manuscript if it still exists. How it came into the possession of the Wedges, and what happened to it next is gradually revealed as Martin spins through 300 years of American history-from the Salem witch trials and the Boston Tea Party to the Civil War and up to the radical late 1960s-telling a tale of Harvard the institution growing from a tiny establishment under beastly first master Nathaniel Eaton to become America's premier university. Fallon's search takes a back seat to the historical material, but the novel provides good entertainment and copious Crimson lore.
The Late George Apley - John Marquand
A modern classic restored to print -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that charts the diminishing fortunes of a distinguished Boston family in the early years of the 20th century. Sweeping us into the inner sanctum of Boston society, into the Beacon Hill town houses and exclusive private clubs where only the city's wealthiest and most powerful congregate, the novel gives us -- through the story of one family and its patriarch, the recently deceased George Apley -- the portrait of an entire society in transition. Gently satirical and rich with drama, the novel moves from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression as it projects George Apley's world -- and subtly reveals a life in which success and accomplishment mask disappointment and regret, a life of extreme and enviable privilege that is nonetheless an imperfect life.
A Tenured Professor - John Kenneth Galbraith
Can a tenured professor of economics at Harvard, creator of a stock forecasting model, put his vast yields toward liberal causes without upsetting the prevailing political-economic system? Montgomery Marvin develops the Index of Irrational Expectations (IRAT) after studying the euphoria which accompanies investment, and with his activist wife Marjie he puts IRAT earnings to such uses as labeling products based on their makers' number of women executives; establishing chairs in peace studies at the military academies; and setting up PRCs (Political Rectitude Committees). In his first novel in 22 years, Galbraith shows that as a novelist, he is a fine economist. His language tends to be pretentious and his tone pedantic, with hints of condescension amid occasional wit and convoluted sentences which slow the pace. But he fits his scenario deftly into the present scene, providing a modern fable of some interest.
The Student Body - Jane Harvard
Harvard University is the scene of a prostitution ring, corporate espionage, kinky sexual relationships, and all manner of skulduggery in this thriller written pseudonymously by four graduates of that lofty institution. Toni Isaac, an ambitious African American reporter with the Harvard Crimson, gets a tip about a prostitution ring involving Harvard students. But her simple idea of a story about students selling themselves to make tuition payments soon escalates to the highest levels of the university and a corporation. A multiracial cast of bright characters, alternately celebrating and castigating their status as Ivy League students or faculty, assist or hinder Toni's search for leads. In the course of her investigation, Toni stumbles into a new romance, copes with the death of a close friend, nearly falls in disgrace, and struggles with her own motives as she wheedles information and breaks laws to get her story. The novel is the result of a six-year collaboration by four Harvard graduates. Despite its many authors, it is a seamless, fast-paced work, filled with the topography and culture of Harvard. Readers who enjoyed Pamela Thomas-Graham's Darker Shade of Crimson, also set at Harvard, will enjoy this thriller as well.
