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HAVE YOU READ? TWO HISTORICAL NOVELS OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA
HAVE YOU READ? TWO HISTORICAL NOVELS OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA
These Summer Session book choices by Professor Hallissy are both on several “best novels” lists for 2022. The group meets once per month, which gives you plenty of time to enjoy each novel before attending classes where our professor brings them to life and enhances your understanding.
July 7: Geraldine Brooks, Horse ISBN 978-0399562969. Mentioned on several “best novels” lists as one of the most noteworthy of 2022, Horse is based on the true story of Lexington, “the greatest American racing stallion in American turf history.” His story begins, however, in the 20th century, when a Manhattan art gallery owner seeks the origin of a mysterious painting of a horse. The story continues into the 21st century, when an Australian scientist and an American Nigerian art historian both become engrossed with the horse depicted in the painting. This in turn leads them to discover the connection between racism and racing, as together they trace the history of enslaved African Americans in horse racing, and in particular the relationship between Lexington and his groom Jarret Lewis.
August 4: Karen Joy Fowler, Booth ISBN 978-05993331439. As Leo Tolstoy memorably observed in Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Fowler’s novel, also set in the nineteenth century, is based on the history of the Booth family, noteworthy for producing the worst villain in American political history, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth. This novel too won accolades for being among the best of 2022, and like Horse is relevant to contemporary life in that it investigates the origins of political hatred and violence. What sort of familial dysfunction produces an assassin, and what, if anything, could have been, or can be, done?
About the lecturer(s)
Margaret Hallissy
Lecture Details
Aug 04, 2023