TUESDAY POTPOURRI: INTROS/TEASERS — “SOMEWHERE OFF THE COAST OF MAINE” — MAY 14

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Today’s feature is Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine, by Ann Hood, which I have downloaded for Sparky.

Intro:  To Sparrow, her father was a man standing in front of a Day-Glo green VW van in a picture dated June 1969.  The picture had been taken the year before Sparrow was born.  In it, her father’s hair was bushy and blond and he had a big droopy mustache.  Sparrow liked the way he was looking up, with his head tilted back and his mouth open in a wide smile.

Sparrow’s mother, Suzanne, never talked about Sparrow’s father.  Suzanne was a serious businesswoman.  She dressed in pleated skirts and Oxford shirts with little bow ties.  She would tell Sparrow to forget about the past and look ahead.  “Don’t worry,” she would say, “about things that happened a long time ago.”  Sparrow’s obsession with her father began to grow when her mother started to date Ron.

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Teaser:  For the past year or so, Sparrow’s mother called her Susan.  She said that the name Sparrow was too dated, too silly. (4%)

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Amazon Description: “Brilliant….[The Vietnam era] is vividly captured by Ann Hood.”—New York Times Book Review

In 1969, as Peter, Paul and Mary croon on the radio and poster paints are splashing the latest antiwar slogans, three friends find love. Suzanne, a poet, lives in a Maine beach house awaiting the birth of a child she will call Sparrow. Claudia, who weds a farmer during college, plans to raise three strong sons. Elizabeth and her husband marry, organize protests, and try to rear two children with their hippy values. By 1985, things have changed: Suzanne, now with an MBA, calls Sparrow “Susan.” Claudia spirals backward into her sixties world—and into madness. And Elizabeth, fatally ill, watches despairingly as her children yearn for a split-level house and a gleaming station wagon. Reading group guide included.

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I love revisiting this era through books and movies.  What do you think?  Would you keep reading?