Book Club

Sun., Feb. 14, 1999

Name: Gertrude’s Stein

City: Spokane

Group history: Here’s a rarity: A men’s reading group. Been together since May of ‘98 and meets monthly on first Tuesday at various restaurants that feature “back corners” to better facilitate discussion. Books chosen by consensus, blending fiction and nonfiction, sometimes three months in advance. Members try to come prepared with author/book information to help facilitate the discussion.

Book reviewed: “A Bend in the River (Vintage Books, $13 paper, ISBN 0-6797-220-25) by V.S. Naipaul.

Group representative: Tom Schaaf.

The review: Club name comes from the fact that some of the members, eight in all, are home-brewers. “The premise is sort of discussing good books over a good beer,” member Tom Schaaf explains. “We loved it,” Schaaf said of the 1979 Naipaul book, which is a study of an East Indian man trying to make a new life in a newly independent African nation. Ultimately, referring to the novel’s protagonist, Schaaf said, “We felt like we had a good picture of this alien in a strange land trying to figure out what his role is and what the country he’s in is all about. You get the feeling that he comes away never really understanding, though, failing at his quest because the country is falling down all around him.”

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