Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: Author Louise Eldrich Wins 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award

Congratulations to Louise Erdrich who won the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction!

This award is given biannually to "a distinguished living American author of fiction whose body of work in English possesses qualities of excellence, ambition, and scale of achievement over a sustained career which place him or her in the highest rank of American literature." (according to PEN/Saul Bellow website. Click here to read more.)

With over 40 novels, short stories, poems and children's books to her name, Louise Erdrich focuses her award winning writing on "the delicate politics of the American Indian Reservation System and explored the relationships between its residents and the adjacent communities." (BookTradeInfo.com)

Here are a few of Ms. Erdrich's novels available at the Community Library:

The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008 by Louise Erdrich

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Genre: Adult Non-Fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5

"Being Mortal is about the limitations of what modern medicine can provide for people as their lives draw to a close. Gawande argues that the objective of medicine should not merely be treatment and survival; medical care should also ensure dignity in death and having control over one's final moments. He argues that instead of aggressively fighting the inescapable realities of aging, we should ask the hard questions of ourselves and our loved ones -- What makes life worth living? When should we try to extend our lives, and when should we choose a better quality of our remaining days over extending their quantity?

This book is difficult to read. Not because of the way Gawande writes -- his style is highly engaging, and he never lapses into excessively scientific jargon or overly simplistic explanations -- but because of the tough subject matter. Gawande draws on his own experiences as a doctor and peppers his book with honest and humane stories of his patients, friends, and family; the stories he tells make the book more accessible, and also more heartbreaking. (And that's not a bad thing.)

No one likes to think about their loved ones', or their own, impending mortality. But it's important to have these hard conversations, because as Gawande says, "endings matter." - Amanda

Author Louise Eldrich Wins 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award

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