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NORWAY — Norway Memorial Library announces is hosting a book discussion series, “An Ocean of Possibilities for Book Discussion: Stories at Sea,” which features novels with themes of survival and the psychological struggles of the individual in the hostile environment of the sea.
All discussions are on the fourth Thursday of the month, 3 to 4:30 p.m. Participants may attend in-person at the library, 258 Main St., or via Zoom. Visit norwaymemoriallibrary.org for each month’s zoom link to attend remotely.
Request copies of the books through the library’s Minerva online catalogue on the website or by stopping by the library’s information desk. Email norlib@norwaymemoriallibrary.org or call 743-5309 ext. 1 with questions.
Books up for discussion are:
July 28: “Sea Wife,” by Amity Gaige. Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled-out dissertation on confessional poetry when her husband, Michael, tells her he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat. With their two kids, ages 7 and 2, Juliet and Michael set off for Panama, where their 44–foot sailboat awaits them. Despite the stresses of being novice sailors, the family learns to crew the boat together on the ever-changing sea and are tested by the unforeseen.
Aug. 25: “What Strange Paradise,” by Omar El Akkad
As overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ships sink under the weight of too many passengers – Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese and Palestinians – all desperate to escape untenable in their homelands, bodies wash up on a small island. But miraculously, someone has survived the latest sinking 9-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who is soon rescued by Vänna, a teenage girl.
Sept. 22: “The Lifeboat,” by Charlotte Rogan. Grace Winter, 22, is both a newlywed and a widow on trial for her life. In the summer of 1914, the elegant ocean liner carrying she and her husband Henry across the Atlantic explodes. Henry secures Grace a place in a lifeboat, which the survivors quickly realize is over capacity. For any to live, some must die. As the castaways battle the elements and each other, Grace recollects the unorthodox way she and Henry met, and the new life of privilege she thought she’d found. Will she pay any price to keep it?
Oct. 27: “The Ghost of the Mary Celeste,” by Valerie Martin. In 1872, the American merchant vessel Mary Celeste is discovered adrift off the coast of Spain. Her cargo is intact and there is no sign of struggle, but her crew has disappeared, never to be found. As news of the derelict ghost ship spreads, the Mary Celeste captures imaginations around the world — from a Philadelphia spiritualist medium to an unknown young writer who will soon become famous. In a haunted, death-obsessed age, the Mary Celeste is by turn a provocative mystery, an inspiration to creativity, and the tragic story of a family doomed by the sea. Based on actual events, spanning seas and continents, life and death.
