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Meet the Authors!
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Ann Patchett
The Dutch House This internationally best selling author presents a richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go. In partnership with the CCA and NHPR. Tickets: $37-46, available from the CCA
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Archer Mayor
Bomber’s Moon The murder of a small-time drug dealer snowballs into the most complex case ever faced by Joe Gunther and his VBI team.
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TUESDAY, OCT. 8TH, 2019, 6 P.M.
Game On!
Preserving Old Barns, with John C Porter A new edition of this wonderful resource for barn owners to assess, care for, and celebrate their special structures.
THURSDAY, OCT. 17TH, 2019, 6 P.M.
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Haunted Hikes of New Hampshire
Marianne O’Connor
shares the new edition of the hiker’s guide to things that go BUMP in the woods and on the trails (now with seven new hikes)!
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POP CULTURE BOOKS
The Beekeeper of Aleppo: A Novel, by Christy Lefteri (Ballantine Books, 336 pages) In 2016 and 2017 author Christy Lefteri volunteered for UNICEF at a refugee center in Athens, Greece. There she treated droves of Syrians fleeing the brutal takeover of Aleppo. So many people had suffered through the bombing and shooting by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, nearby countries like Macedonia eventually had to close their borders to asylum seekers. Farther European destinations were a pipe dream to families without resources. With The Beekeeper of Aleppo, Lefteri compiles the collective horrors of war into a compelling narrative buoyed by hope but also laced with brutal realism. The novel tells the story of Nuri, a former beekeeper from Syria who has arrived in the United Kingdom with his wife, Afra. Back in Aleppo, Afra had been an artist, but the war took her eyesight and the couple’s child, Sami. The couple is overwhelmed with grief from the loss of their son and their home. Lefteri alternates between the relative calm of the U.K. — where Nuri and Afra are anxiously waiting for their asylum status to be approved — and flashbacks to their journey with lecherous smugglers, treacherous seas and uncertain flights. Throughout her storytelling, Lefteri uses the imagery of bees and gardens to help the reader process Nuri’s emotions. When Nuri finds scant internet access to check emails from his cousin Mustafa, Mustafa talks endlessly of the new bee colony they will establish together in Britain. While Nuri is battling bureaucracy to receive health care for his blind wife, he dutifully attends to a single bee outside that doesn’t have any wings. Even during the throes of escape, Mustafa tells Nuri, “Spend your money wisely—the smugglers will try to get as much out of you as they can, but keep in mind that there is a longer journey ahead. You must learn to haggle. People are not like bees. We do not work together, we have no real sense of a greater good — I’ve come to realize this now.” These passages are lyrically written and provide a much-needed palate cleanser after scenes of violence and hopelessness. Nuri’s goal throughout the book is to reach Mustafa, but once he arrives he’s afraid to contact the best friend he’s been separated from for so long. The emotional and physical journey for him and Afra is nearly insurmountable, they are entirely different people in the U.K. than they were in Syria. Nuri says, “I do not want Mustafa to know what has become of me. We are finally in the same country,
but if we meet he will see a broken man. I do not believe he will recognize me.” Lefteri captures the inner life of a broken man who can’t fully process his own trauma with heartbreaking accuracy. But even after arriving in the U.K., Nuri and Afra’s journey is far from over. Nuri knows the immigration officer “will want to know how we got here and she will be looking for a reason to send us away. But I know that if I say the right things, if I convince her that I’m not a killer, then we will get to stay here because we are the lucky ones, because we have come from the worst place in the world.” They have to be coached on how to describe their suffering convincingly. Even then, the immigration officer tells them, “To stay in the U.K. as a refugee you must be unable to live safely in any part of your own country because you fear persecution there.” Nuri responds, “Any part? Will you send us back to a different part?” He’s met with silence. The plight of refugees is a hard pill to swallow, but a necessary one. When you’re thrust into a first-person account (even a fictional one), you’re forced to reckon with how war affects identity. At one crowded checkpoint, Nuri detachedly observes the other refugees in the market stalls. “Sometimes I forgot that I was one of these people,” he thinks. In Aleppo, Nuri and Afra had a family, their careers and charming nights with friends eating rich food with fresh jasmine and honeycomb. Even after the worst happens — the loss of a child — how could they move on? One can only hope they are met with compassion along the way, but as The Beekeeper of Aleppo shows us, that’s hardly the case. A — Katherine Ouellette