What Memory Serves

Bernardsville Library's book group, Memoirs and Coffee, will discuss Half a Life by Darin Strauss at its next meeting on Tuesday, April 24th, at 10:30 a.m.  Memoirs and Coffee, led by Pat Kennedy-Grant, welcomes newcomers, who may obtain copies of the book at the circulation desk.  The title of Half a Life refers in part to the author's realization that he had lived half a lifetime longer than the teenage bicyclist he accidentally killed with his car when he was also a teen. As The New York Times 2010 review notes, "At the center of this elegant, painful, stunningly honest memoir thrums a question fundamental to what it means to be human: What do we do with what we’ve been given?"  For Strauss, those pain-filled memories and present-day consequences must be thoroughly examined in the manner in which he can best deliver, as a writer.