Sunday, April 22, 2018

YOUNG JANE YOUNG by Gabrielle Zevin

Finished Sa 4/21/17

A hardcover edition that I got on Amazon. This is the April, 218 selection for the Contemporary Book Club.

The story is that a college aged woman working for a congressional candidate has a sexual affair with the congressman. It becomes public and the woman bears the brunt of the affair- with the Internet, You Can Run, But You Can't Hide.

Told in Five Sections-

1. Aviva's grandmother- Rachel Shapiro Grossman  (heart surgeon husband, Mike Grossman) and her friend, Roz Horowitz

2. Aviva's tale when she changes her name to Jane Young and relocates with her daughter, Ruby to Maine. She becomes a wedding planner (using her background in political science and Spanish).

3. Ruby's emails to her penpal in Indonesia about her life in Maine.

4. Embeth Levin, Congressman Aaron Levin's wife, Embeth. She has cancer (and an imaginary parrot- might be the drugs). Ruby comes to see her in Miami on a quest to meet her father.

5. Aviva's blog about what happened to her.


Sections 3 and 5 are in 'epistolary novel' form- emails and blog entries.
"An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used."

The Hook-

Ruby's real father is Jorge, the head campaign worker, and it really was a one night stand.

Question-

Rachel's mother tells her to contact the congressman's wife and alert her to the affair. She thinks that Embeth would have the power to have her husband end the affair. I don't think that this was good advice- to say the least!!

Ask the group what would be a more workable solution, or is it better to do nothing.

About the author from wikipedia-

"Gabrielle Zevin (born October 24, 1977, New York City) is an American author and screenwriter.

Zevin graduated from Harvard University in 2000 with a degree in English & American Literature and lives in Los Angeles.

Zevin's father is a Russian-Jewish American, and her mother is Korean.



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