Reading My Father: A Memoir by Alexandra Styron

Our next book is Reading My Father: A Memoir by Alexandra Styron, (2011, 285 pages; 4.2 out of 5 stars on Amazon.com.)

We will meet on Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 6:30 p.m. - 8: 00 p.m. at Martha Merrell's/Cuddles. Ed Vojtik will lead the discussion. Thanks, Ed!

Book Description:

Release date: April 19, 2011

PART MEMOIR AND PART ELEGY, READING MY FATHER IS THE STORY OF A DAUGHTER COMING TO KNOW HER FATHER AT LAST— A GIANT AMONG TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN NOVELISTS AND A MAN WHOSE DEVASTATING DEPRESSION DARKENED THE FAMILY LANDSCAPE. In Reading My Father, William Styron’s youngest child explores the life of a fascinating and difficult man whose own memoir, Darkness Visible, so searingly chronicled his battle with major depression. Alexandra Styron’s parents—the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind.
A drinker, a carouser, and above all “a high priest at the altar of fiction,” Styron helped define the concept of The Big Male Writer that gave so much of twentieth-century American fiction a muscular, glamorous aura. In constant pursuit of The Great Novel, he and his work were the dominant force in his family’s life, his turbulent moods the weather in their ecosystem.
From Styron’s Tidewater, Virginia, youth and precocious literary debut to the triumphs of his best-known books and on through his spiral into depression, Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life, offering a ringside seat on a great literary generation’s friendships and their dramas. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written, with humor, compassion, and grace.  

Alexandra Styron's website is at:  http://www.alexandrastyron.com/

For discussion questions and an author interview, please see:  http://books.simonandschuster.com/Reading-My-Father/Alexandra-Styron/9781416591795/reading_group_guide

There is a 2.51 minute You Tube video featuring Alexandra Styron at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbE-4MRkpes

If you want to plan ahead, our future books are:

Wednesday, April 10, 2013, 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m., at Martha Merrell's/Cuddles: The Island: A Novel by Elin Hilderbrand. Chris Unger and Ann Sawyer will lead the discussion.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013, 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m., at Martha Merrell's/Cuddles:
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk: A Novel by Ben Fountain. Charlene Sivyer will lead the discussion.

Thanks to Karen Vaklyes for editing this blog!

Looking forward!