{"id":72000,"date":"2023-02-02T00:27:20","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T05:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=72000"},"modified":"2023-02-02T00:47:44","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T05:47:44","slug":"reading-selection-feb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2023\/02\/02\/reading-selection-feb\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading selection for February: Property"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Our reading group selection and discussion for February is Property<\/a><\/strong> by Valerie Martin. Copies are in stock at Book Beat now and are discounted 15%. This Zoom meeting will be held on Tuesday, February 28th at 7 pm<\/strong>. If you’d like to attend and are not receiving a link to our meetings, please RSVP with your name, phone number and email and we’ll add you to our reading group list. Reminders and login links are sent on the morning or day of the meeting. Please try and login 5-10 minutes early so we can begin on time.<\/p>\n

Valerie Martin\u2019s Property<\/strong> delivers an eerily mesmerizing inquiry into slavery\u2019s venomous effects on the owner and the owned. The year is 1828, the setting a Louisiana sugar plantation where Manon Gaudet, pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the dominion of her boorish husband. In particular his relationship with her slave Sarah, who is both his victim and his mistress. Exploring the permutations of Manon\u2019s own obsession with Sarah against the backdrop of an impending slave rebellion, Property unfolds with the speed and menace of heat lightning, casting a startling light from the past upon the assumptions we still make about the powerful and powerful.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis fresh, unsentimental look at what slave-owning does to (and for) one’s interior life must be a first. The writing\u2014so prised and clean limbed\u2014is a marvel.\u201d \u2014Toni Morrison<\/p>\n

\u201cChilling\u2026disturbing\u2026intriguing. A compelling contest of wills between two women\u2026against a chaotic backdrop of black night and leaping torchlight.\u201d \u2014The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n

“A nimble, enlightening and horrific story about the morally corrosive effects of slavery and one childish soul, locked in a cycle of permanent bitterness.” –Kirkus<\/div>\n

\u201cQuietly devastating\u2026. Shows a dimension of American slavery that nonfiction could not get across\u2026. A work of sustained irony\u2026. As chilly and arresting a picture of slavery as you’ll find anywhere.\u201d \u2014The Boston Globe<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is possible that we have never heard a voice like this before\u2026 a timeless, chilling voice, eerily like the voice of the German people after the Holocaust\u2026 [With it] Valerie Martin opens a window on that evil of human nature that makes one group of people less than another.\u201d \u2014Winston-Salem Journal<\/p>\n

\u201cSo riveting that once you start reading this slender novel, it’s unlikely you’ll put it down. A bitter, mesmerizing account of the caustic costs of slavery.\u201d \u2014Detroit Free Press<\/p>\n