Bea Maxwell was a protagonist that none of us could really pull for. Her job as a real estate agent seemed to underscore her own inability to change. Though she successfully negotiated the turnover of countless properties and even entire neighborhoods, she could not manage to move her own life forward. Bea even returned to live in her mother's home, conducting most of her activities from her bed.

We found the Keck Road resident Shelley much more interesting. Simpson's description of the scene where polio vaccines were being distributed was vivid to several of us. The chance occurrence that led to Shelley getting a bad vaccine was described briefly, but to deep effect. A description of one boy walking on his hands was disorienting, considering the result. However, living with her (slight) disability seemed to make Shelley unaffected by other people's judgments.

One scene stood out to most of us in its poignance. After the death of Bea's mother Hazel, the undertaker quietly manipulates matters to put Hazel's pearls in the hands of her grandchildren, rather than with Hazel in the coffin, as Bea knew she wanted. In this scene, Bea is confronted squarely with society's notion that a fulfilled life means "married with kids."

As usual, we found a scene in the book which yielded conflicting interpretations of the facts. I agree with Hal: Bea did finally consummate her desire of many years. If Simpson intended that scene to be ambiguous, she certainly nailed it.

To summarize: everybody bitched and moaned about the book, and we had a fine discussion.

Kerstin and Tony chose a food theme of "interesting food that other people eat." Several people demanded the recipe to Kerstin's black-bean chili. Mary and Martha brought small delicious desserts (perhaps petit-fours?) decorated with exquisite designs. Ellie's mouthwatering pork tenderloin was, unfortunately for me, food that other people have. Dave and Jenny replicated a scene from the book by supplying champagne and paper cups, but I think our crowd is more fun than Bea's office crew.

Our Next Book (by Kerstin) Our next book will be Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis. I can't take credit for finding this book, as it was a gift. I have been reluctant to recommend a book before reading it, though to be honest, I'm probably just hiding out. It seemed like a big responsibility to write about a book for this newsletter, and to capture the discussion during the meeting. However, my enthusiasm for reading this book has overcome my fear of writing for the club.

The loudest cry from the last meeting was "I don't want to waste time on shallow books." While I haven't read this book, I associate C. S. Lewis with writing books deep in meaning. I read the first few chapters just to get a feel and I can already tell I'm going to enjoy reading it. It grabbed me right away. It reminds me of Morality Play with its mythic tone and historical distance from our modern world. Those people took their gods seriously.

The question remains will this be a good book for discussion? Our club is fond of saying we have better discussions over books we don't like. Well, it is easier to throw out a few raucous remarks in this loud crowd, than to present a careful analysis of the literary merit of the blah blah blah. It's also a lot more fun. However, there are big themes to debate: faith vs. reason, male vs. female approaches to life, including how far beauty, gossip, politics, reason and faith can take you, and the gods or the God, among them. I look forward to boning up on my Greek (recipes, that is).

One Degree of Separation Update In our last newsletter, we told the story of a reader who had a chance meeting with a woman outside a San Francisco bookstore when both were visiting from out-of-state. They did not exchange contact information, to our reader's chagrin. However, since the woman had exhibited excellent taste by recommending our website, we decided to try to help by putting an appeal in the newsletter for her to contact us so we could put them in touch.

It only took a day or so to get a response, and it turns out that the mystery woman was one of our favorite correspondents. We promptly put them in touch. Who says that the Internet causes increased social distance?!