The Lunch at Luann’s Book Club will discuss Evensong, by Gail Godwin, on Wednesday, May 19.
The group will meet from noon to 1 p.m. in the Luann Dummer Center for Women, Room 103, O’Shaughnessy Educational Center. Everyone is welcome; bring your lunch and join the discussion even if you have not finished or read the book.
In this sequel to Father Melancholy’s Daughter (1990), Godwin contemplates family ties, the prickly bonds of marriage and the varieties of religious faith. Walter and Ruth Gower’s daughter is now Margaret Bonner, 33, an Episcopal minister like her father, married to his former colleague, Adrian Bonner.
All the characters are well drawn, particularly the irritating but lovable Adrian and manipulative Grace Munger, an evangelical revivalist with a grim past. The young minister also is an engaging heroine who struggles with spiritual and domestic commitment.
Godwin portrays the lives of the people in a small Smokey Mountain town and "translates everyday experience into soul-touching truths” (Random House).