Caleb’s Crossing – Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks was inspired to write Caleb’s Crossing after discovering that the first Native American to graduate from Harvard was from her home town, Martha’s Vineyard, and graduated in 1665.  Caleb’s Crossing is set at this time and told primarily from the perspective of Caleb’s good friend Bethia Mayfield.  

Both characters are hungry for knowledge but Caleb struggles with racism and Bethia struggles with sexism.  Bethia’s mother died when she was 12 and so she runs the household and while her father is quite liberal, arguing against the subjugation the local native Indians and tutoring Caleb, he sees books and learning as a purely male domain.  It is this struggle against the bounds imposed upon these characters by their culture and religion that dominates Caleb’s Crossing.

Caleb's Crossing is available as a Book Group Set at Maribyrnong Library.

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

I first read The Handmaid's Tale for Year 12 English and the totalitarian theocracy it is set in really struck a chord with me.  I had read stories set in dystopian worlds before reading The Handmaid's Tale, but the way Margaret Atwood described her dystopian world through the eyes of the protagonist, Offred, really hit home just how powerless most people, and in particular women, were within this society.  Despite being set in the future, it was as if society had regressed.  Offred's only sorce of information was the propaganda spewing news service and snippet's of guarded gossip with strangers who could easily be spies.

It was particularly striking because, while foreign to me, Atwood's dystopian society shared a lot of traits with real-life countries where religion or culture separates the rights of men and women.  It made real for me a lot of talk about freedom and the phrase "to live in fear."

The Handmaid's Tale is one of our new Book Group titles for 2012.