The Little Book

Hello Readers,

My name is Jennifer, I've been a book club member since June 2008 and I will be hosting for June in Lisa's absence. This is my first time choosing both a book and dinner venue, so I hope you enjoy them both!

This month, we will be reading "The Little Book" by Selden Edwards (I was able to find the book at Half Price Books for $7 or I'm sure you can check it out at the library). The story takes place in early 1900's Vienna.

Check out some of the reviews:

From Publishers Weekly
The subtitle of Edwards's Twain-indebted debut, written over the course of 30 years, might be "A California Yankee in Doctor Freud's Court." Following a physical assault, Stan "Wheeler" Burden is precipitated into the past-1897 Vienna, to be exact-from 1988 San Francisco. Wheeler has been a teenage baseball star and famed rock 'n' roller, but he's dreamed of Vienna since his prep school days, where his teacher, Arnauld Esterhazy, instilled a love of the city's gilded paradoxes. Vienna of 1897 is indeed hopping: Freud is discovering the Oedipus complex, Mahler is conducting his symphonies, and the mayor, Karl Lueger, is inventing modern, populist anti-Semitism-which the young Hitler will soon internalize. Making this a true oedipal drama, Wheeler's father and grandparents come to town, too, all at different ages, and with very different agendas. Edwards has great fun with time travel paradoxes and anachronisms, but the real romance in this book is with the period, topped by nostalgia for the old-school American elite, as represented by the we-all-went-to-the-same-prep-school Burdens. This novel ends up a sweet, wistful elegy to the fantastic promise and failed hopes of the 20th century.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
Wheeler Burden one day finds himself mysteriously transported from 1988 San Francisco to the Ringstrasse of 1897 Vienna. This strange occurrence begins a tale that sprawls over 91 years, two continents, two world wars, and a century of intense intellectual, cultural, and political change. Readers also get a great saga about Boston Brahmins, wealthy yet with a morass of tacky little secrets. The author adds to this tasty little ragout cameo appearances by Freud, Mahler, Schoenberg, Wickstein, Mark Twain, Buddy Holly, and Winston Churchill. A leisurely tale, the plot unfolds slowly through a complex structure of multiple viewpoints and narrators. It’s very talky, but the dialogue usually drives the plot forward and is often leavened by touches of ironic humor. Readers may find the overabundance of coincidences maddening, but that won’t keep them from reading on to the shocking climax and the thoroughly satisfying and elegant resolution. Myriad readers will enjoy this book—especially historical-fiction buffs and family-saga devotees—so stock up. --Ellen Loughran --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
“A soaring thing of joy whose only purpose—and I mean this as a compliment—is to delight and entertain.”
—Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air

“Delightfully mad. . .a thrilling adventure.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“The product of a writer in full command of his gifts.”
—Louisville Courier-Journal

“A wide-ranging novel of grand ideas. . .a graceful waltz of a book, spinning at times at dizzying speed, but leaving behind a haunting, unforgettable melody.”
—New Orleans Times-Picayune

“Back to the Future for the intellectual set.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Inventive, bracing, poignant and well written. . . it should be at the top of everyone’s summer reading list.”
—Tucson Citizen

“It’s hard not to be thoroughly taken with such an approach to both the real and imagined past.”
—New York Daily News

“Required reading.”
—New York Post

Product Description
Thirty years in the writing, Selden Edwards’s dazzling first novel is an irresistible triumph of the imagination. Wheeler Burden—banking heir, philosopher, student of history, legend’s son, rock idol, writer, lover, recluse, half-Jew, and Harvard baseball hero—one day finds himself wandering not in his hometown of San Francisco in 1988 but in a city and time he knows mysteriously well: Vienna, 1897. Before long, Wheeler acquires a mentor in Sigmund Freud, a bitter rival, a powerful crush on a luminous young woman, and encounters everyone from an eight-year-old Adolf Hitler to Mark Twain as well as the young members of his own family. Solving the riddle of Wheeler’s dislocation in time will ultimately reveal nothing short of one eccentric family’s unrivaled impact upon the course of human history.