10th_Summer Reading_2009 - Friends' Central School

16. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Ms. Ewen
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” This famous opening line of Virginia
Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is the thread that intertwines the lives of three women in Cunningham’s
Pulitzer-Prize winning novel—Virginia Woolf herself, Laura Brown, a housewife who turns the
pages of Woolf’s novel, and Clarissa Vaughn, a modern Manhattanite whom we meet as she sets
out to buy flowers for a party she’s giving. The novel traces a day in the life of these three
women who are separated by history but who are drawn to the fictional character of Mrs.
Dalloway and the parts of their own lives they see in hers.
17. Mona in the Promised Land by Gish Jen
Mr. MacFarlane
An admired former professor of mine at college includes Gish Jen in her list of the top ten
underappreciated American Women writers, "one of the funniest and most free-wheeling
novelists of the multicultural
90s." This first got me interested in reading her. When I saw the Amazon.com description of the
title character of this novel, I thought many students here might appreciate an introduction to the
author as
well. Mona, it tells us, is "a self-described 'self-made mouth' [who] goes to temple, loves pickles,
is boy-crazy, worries about getting into the right college and keeping up with her over-achieving
sister,
and wishes her parents were less strict. Her equally Jewish Westchester classmates hardly notice
what everyone else finds hard to forget: Mona may be Jewish by choice (and voice) and
American by nationality, but her surname is Chang and she is considered less an expert on seders
and schmaltz than China."
18. We Are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg
Ms. Haimm
From borders.com:
It is the summer of 1964. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the town of Elvis's birth, tensions are mounting
over civil-rights demonstrations occurring ever more frequently -- and violently – across the
state. But in Paige Dunn's small, ramshackle house, there are more immediate concerns.
Challenged by the effects of the polio she contracted during her last month of pregnancy, Paige
is nonetheless determined to live as normal a life as possible and to raise her daughter, Diana, in
the way she sees fit – with the support of her tough-talking black caregiver, Peacie. As the
summer unfolds, hate and adversity will visit this modest home. Despite the difficulties thrust
upon them, each of the women will find her own path to independence, understanding, and
peace. And Diana's mother, so mightily compromised, will end up giving her daughter an
extraordinary gift few parents could match.