NF Book Club - An American Requiem by James Carroll - Thursday, March 1st @ 6:30pm

What a refreshing thing it is to discuss a book with a diverse group of attentive and considerate adults. Reading is such a solitary, intimate and sometime arduous experience that to be able to share one's gained insights with a larger group of people who partook of the same solitary, intimate and sometimes arduous experience is a rare and wonderful thing. We're lucky this book group meets every month. What I mean to say is thank you once again to the Pollard's Non-Fiction Book Group, for this past Thursday's heartfelt discussion of The Emperor of All Maladies.

And to announce to Greater Lowell book lovers, it is time to set your sights on the next Non-Ficiton monograph. The selection for next month's discussion should be very interesting indeed. On Thursday, March 1st @ 6:30pm we will be discussing An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us by James Carroll.


Carroll is a former priest and Boston Globe columnist and this memoir won him the National Book Award in 1996. Here is a short synopsis from the jacket:

In this dramatic, intimate, and tragic memoir, James Carroll recovers a time that one of us will ever forget - a time when parents could no longer understand their sons and daughters and when you people could no longer recognize the country they had been raised to love. The wounds inflicted in that time have never fully healed, but healing is something that Carroll accomplishes in telling his family's remarkable story. The Carroll Family stood at the center of all the conflicts whirling around the Vietnam War. ... An American Requiem is a benediction on his father's life, his family's struggles, and the legacies of an entire generation.

Mr. Carroll will be reading from American Requiem at Suffolk University's Modern Theatre on February 15th. Unfortunately, it appears this show, which was free and open to the public, has been SOLD OUT.