Lit Youngstown's series of book discussions center around the literary element of place. We meet at 5:30pm on the 2nd Thursday at the Main Library, 305 Wick Ave., in the 2nd floor meeting room. Haven't read the book yet? No worries.
The May title is Ohio by Stephen Markley. This book is available at the Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County, the YSU Barnes & Noble, and POP! Arts, Book, Culture via Bookshop.
A review by NPR's Michael Schaub reads, "Ohio, the debut novel from author Stephen Markley, begins with a parade, but it's not a happy one. The town of New Canaan has gathered to salute Rick Brinklan, a native of the city who was killed in action in Iraq. The novel then jumps in time to 2013, six years after that parade: 'It's hard to say where any of this ends or how it ever began, because what you eventually learn is that there is no such thing as linear,' Markley writes. 'There is only this wild ... flamethrower of a collective dream in which we were all born and traveled and died.'"
Ohio, though, is more of a nightmare than a dream. Markley's debut is a sprawling, beautiful novel that explores the aftermath of the Great Recession and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a powerful look at the tenuous bonds that hold people together at their best and at their worst."
Upcoming titles:
September (novel) The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
October (poetry) Death Prefers the Minor Keys by Sean Thomas Dougherty
November (novel) Trash Lands by Alison Stine
December (creative nonfiction) If This Were Fiction by Jill Christman
January (novel) Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
February (memoir) Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
March (travel writing) Bad Lands by Jonathan Raban
April (poetry) West: a Translation by Paisley Rekdal
May (travel writing) Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horowitz