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SUMMARY:Intergenerational: Willy Vlautin & Valeria Luiselli
DESCRIPTION:Authors Willy Vlautin (The Left and the Lucky) and Valeria Luiselli (Beginning Middle End) sit down to discuss their new novels and the intergenerational relationships at the center of their stories. Each story presents adult characters struggling through uncertain circumstances\, but who find purpose\, levity\, and perspective in the children that rely on them. Moderated by Matthew Trueherz. \nAbout The Left and the Lucky:\nThe acclaimed Willy Vlautin returns with a heartbreaking and tender novel about two young brothers\, the vicissitudes of fate\, and unexpected connection—a beautiful and bittersweet portrait that illuminates the power of friendship and how it can save lives in multiple ways. \nEddie Wilkens is a workaholic house painter in his early forties. His wife has left him to her regret\, and his main employee\, Houston\, is a loafer and scoundrel who barely shows up for work. Unassuming and self-reliant\, Eddie is thoughtful man who rarely gets angry\, despite life’s frequent provocations\, but he is ruled by a guilt that he has carried for nearly twenty years. \nNext door\, a woman and her two sons move in with her frail and aging mother. The youngest boy\, Russell\, eight-years-old\, is quiet and small for his age and lives in constant terror of his increasingly lost and troubled fifteen-year-old brother\, Curtis. As their mother struggles to keep the family together and the grandmother’s health begins to faulter they find themselves unable to protect Russell and themselves from Curtis’s cruelty\, which threatens to explode in frenetic violence. \nThough neither knows it\, Russell and Eddie will become each other’s saving grace. \nWhile Russell’s home life disintegrates he begins waiting in Eddie’s backyard for him to get off work. Eddie offers the boy small acts of kindness: he feeds him\, gives him jobs to do\, listens to his dreams of escape\, and offers Russell a glimpse into a world of hope and humor. A world of misfit painters\, a derelict muscle car\, an old dog\, and the comradery and companionship of Eddie and his crew. In return\, Russell gives Eddie a reason to carry on and helps him lay to rest the guilt that has plagued him for half of his life. \nTogether\, this makeshift father and son begin to build better life\, daring to trade the bleakness and cynicism around them for hope and friendship. \nFrom a writer revered for his thoughtful and compassionate portrayal of realistic American life\, The Left and the Lucky is a heartbreakingly honest examination of how circumstance shapes our lives\, and how the luck of finding someone who needs us can transcend bitter loneliness and prevent us from giving up on dreaming of a better life. \n  \n\n\n\n\nAbout Beginning Middle End:\nFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD \nFrom the beloved\, award-winning author of the culture-changing hits Lost Children Archive and Tell Me How It Ends comes her most powerful and page-turning novel yet: the tale of a mother and daughter traveling together after the collapse of a marriage and the dissolution of their traditional family structure. \nValeria Luiselli’s novel opens the morning a mother and her teenage daughter arrive in Sicily\, during a summer of rapidly-changing winds\, volcanic rumbles\, and sudden tempests. They’ve landed near the ancient ruins where the narrator’s grandmother worked long ago on an archaeological dig. How do you begin again\, the mother wonders\, pondering her family line\, and what if the new beginning you’re imagining is actually the end? \nWhile the mother tries to figure out how to reconstruct their lives together—cooking meals side by side\, reading out loud to each other\, playing chess\, bickering and making-up—her deeply intelligent\, inquisitive daughter begins to take the reins of the story. She becomes increasingly curious about her great-grandmother’s past as a digger in archaeological sites and ancient tombs\, and urges her mother to leave their enclosed day-to-day in search for answers about their family’s past and future. \nBeginning Middle End evolves into a road novel of exquisite tenderness. In their drive through Sicily\, mother and daughter cross paths with the island’s migrants\, storekeepers\, and elders\, but also its volcanoes\, its winds and its waters. As their trip progresses\, it becomes a journey to origins—not just to the familial past across continents\, languages\, and generations\, but also further back to a mythical and geological past. With her own mother showing signs of dementia\, the narrator confronts the primary questions of life: Where is home? Where do we dwell and seek safety? How are a family’s memories made and what happens when they disappear? \nWarm\, funny\, and poetic\, this novel is an ode to imagination and possibility in dark times.
URL:https://pdxbookfest.org/event/intergenerational/
LOCATION:First Congregational United Church of Christ\, 1126 SW Park Ave\, Portland\, OR\, 97205
CATEGORIES:Fiction Events,Ticketed Events
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