Claire Messud’s This Strange Eventful History is a sweeping, multigenerational family saga told over the course of 70 years. Messud joins us to talk about her family connection to the novel, identity and colonialism, the concept of home and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over. We end this episode with TBR Top Off […]
This Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition includes a personal essay from Sarah Blake, as well as a discussion guide.
A novel about past mistakes and betrayals that ripple throughout generations, The Guest Book examines not just a privileged American family, but a privileged America. It is a literary triumph.
The Guest Book follows three generations of a powerful American family, a family that “used to run the world.”
And when the novel begins in 1935, they still do. Kitty and Ogden Milton appear to have everythingperfect children, good looks, a love everyone envies. But after a tragedy befalls them, Ogden tries to bring Kitty back to life by purchasing an island in Maine. That island, and its house, come to define and burnish the Milton family, year after year after year. And it is there that Kitty issues a refusal that will haunt her till the day she dies.
In 1959 a young Jewish man, Len Levy, will get a job in Ogden’s bank and earn the admiration of Ogden and one of his daughters, but the scorn of everyone else. Len’s best friend, Reg Pauling, has always been the only black man in the roomat Harvard, at work, and finally at the Miltons’ island in Maine.
An island that, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, this last generation doesn’t have the money to keep. When Kitty’s granddaughter hears that she and her cousins might be forced to sell it, and when her husband brings back disturbing evidence about her grandfather’s past, she realizes she is on the verge of finally understanding the silences that seemed to hover just below the surface of her family all her life.
An ambitious novel that weaves the American past with its present, Sarah Blake's The Guest Book looks at the racism and power that has been systemically embedded in the U.S. for generations.
This Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition includes a personal essay from Sarah Blake, as well as a discussion guide.
A novel about past mistakes and betrayals that ripple throughout generations, The Guest Book examines not just a privileged American family, but a privileged America. It is a literary triumph.
The Guest Book follows three generations of a powerful American family, a family that “used to run the world.”
And when the novel begins in 1935, they still do. Kitty and Ogden Milton appear to have everythingperfect children, good looks, a love everyone envies. But after a tragedy befalls them, Ogden tries to bring Kitty back to life by purchasing an island in Maine. That island, and its house, come to define and burnish the Milton family, year after year after year. And it is there that Kitty issues a refusal that will haunt her till the day she dies.
In 1959 a young Jewish man, Len Levy, will get a job in Ogden’s bank and earn the admiration of Ogden and one of his daughters, but the scorn of everyone else. Len’s best friend, Reg Pauling, has always been the only black man in the roomat Harvard, at work, and finally at the Miltons’ island in Maine.
An island that, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, this last generation doesn’t have the money to keep. When Kitty’s granddaughter hears that she and her cousins might be forced to sell it, and when her husband brings back disturbing evidence about her grandfather’s past, she realizes she is on the verge of finally understanding the silences that seemed to hover just below the surface of her family all her life.
An ambitious novel that weaves the American past with its present, Sarah Blake's The Guest Book looks at the racism and power that has been systemically embedded in the U.S. for generations.
![The Guest Book (Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition)](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.10.4)
The Guest Book (Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition)
512![The Guest Book (Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition)](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.10.4)
The Guest Book (Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition)
512Paperback(Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition)
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781250760470 |
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Publisher: | Flatiron Books |
Publication date: | 05/05/2020 |
Edition description: | Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition |
Pages: | 512 |
Sales rank: | 344,995 |
Product dimensions: | 5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.40(d) |
About the Author
![About The Author](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.10.4)