Networking/Careers · Membership· Schools· Service· Social· Book Club·Sports· Technology· Alumni

June Book Club

Monday, June 18, 2007
7:00 PM

Location: Silver Diner
3200 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22201
Metro: Clarendon (Orange Line)
Phone: (703) 812-8600
Silver Diner Website

Our selection is: "A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards: A Novel" by Ann Bauer

Read a review or buy the book online here

From Publishers Weekly
Bauer's nuanced debut chronicles a mother's struggle with her child's mysterious, undiagnosed illness and the once-passionate marriage that doesn't survive the decades of extraordinary stress. Love, marriage and babies follow quickly from Rachel and Jack's first electric meeting, when Rachel is a 20-year-old student at a small Minnesota college and Jack an itinerant worker. But when Edward, the eldest of their three children, turns four, he suddenly transforms from a bright, animated boy to a zombie who goes weeks without sleeping, stares endlessly at his hand and howls to fill a silent room. Settled in Minneapolis, Rachel and Jack try various doctors, codeine and even marijuana tea for their son, who is often mistaken for an autistic, but he stays locked in what he calls, during moments of lucidity, "the nowhere place." Bauer follows the family through Edward's adolescence: Jack struggles with alcoholism and holding down a job while Rachel, a journalist, binds the family together with fierce mother-love. Throughout, Rachel attempts to unravel the mystery of her long-deceased Uncle Mickey, a strange, troubled man whose plight might hold a clue to Edward's disease. Bauer's prose often pierces with authentic, unsentimental power, but blow-by-blow chronological plotting diminishes the novel's grace.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

For more information about the book club click here or email bookclub@dchoos.org.