The Ladies' Lending Library - Softcover

Keefer, Janice Kulyk

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9781554688999: The Ladies' Lending Library

Softcover

ISBN 10: 155468899X ISBN 13: 9781554688999

Publisher: HarperWeekend, 2010

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In August of 1963, the women of Kalyna Beach prepare fortheir annual end-of-summer party. With their husbands awayin the city all week, the women’s days are ruled by the predictablerhythms of children and chores, and lightened by the “racy”books they trade amongst themselves and their Friday afternoonmeetings for gin and gossip. But this summer, everything willchange for the girls and women of Kalyna Beach, as they gain anew understanding of the possibilities open to them all.

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About the Author

Janice Kulyk Keefer is widely acclaimed for her novels, short story collections, poetry, and nonfiction. The Ladies' Lending Library is her fifth novel. She lives in Toronto.

From Publishers Weekly

The Ukrainian-Canadian housewives of idyllic 1960s Kalyna Beach, Ontario, find that show business scandal has far-reaching power in this latest from Canadian novelist Keefer, her first published in the U.S. While their husbands work, former model Sonia Martyn and friends spend the summer of 1963 watching their children on the beach and reading racy books to discuss over Friday cocktails, while the kids test the limits of their mothers' supervisory skills and traditional Ukrainian values. Moms and daughters alike have become enchanted by the new film Cleopatra and the scandalous love affair between stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. When the beautiful, sad wife of a local millionaire embarks on her own misbegotten affair, the ladies of Kalyna Beach feel their familiar world shift, opening up novel possibilities for freedom and betrayal. Keefer neatly captures the security and claustrophobia of immigrant communities, but diffuses her story's power with too many points of view. Just as the ladies' books cannot match the drama in their lives, this story only begins to capture the personal cost of immigration and assimilation. (Jan.)
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