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October 23, 2008
The God of War
Literary Affairs invites you to an evening with Marisa Silver the author of The God of War. Silver has ended her novel with a question and has stated that, "I want readers to shut the book and for the story to continue in their minds, for the deeper questions of why we behave the way we do to linger. I want to leave them with questions -- unanswered and maybe unanswerable questions. I suppose that I feel that what fiction can do best is to expose these questions and cause people to wonder more about the human condition, not less." Please join the author and facilitator Julie Robinson as they explore these questions in a book group setting at the Westwood Branch Library.
THIS EVENT IS FREE: PLEASE RSVP TO THE LIBRARY AT (310) 474-1739 ABOUT THE BOOK The year is 1978. Ares Ramirez, age 12, lives with his mother, Laurel, and his younger brother Malcolm in a trailer at the edge of the Salton Sea, an unintentionally man-made body of water in the middle of the Southern California desert. It is a desolate, forgotten place, whose inhabitants thrive amidst seemingly impossible circumstances Where birds fly by day across the desert sky, by night government fighter planes and helicopters make training runs using live ammunition, and an anonymous dead body floats in from the sea. These events inspire Ares, on the cusp of his adolescence, to enact elaborate fantasies of mortal combat. His membership in a troubled family marks Ares as a casualty of a different kind of war. Malcolm, age 7, is mentally handicapped, and his mother chooses not to do anything about it. Ares' struggle with the burden of responsibility — to himself and others — draws him into a world of drugs, violence, and sex that he is not prepared for, launching him into a very personal battle for his own identity, one that has a lethal outcome. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Marisa Silver made her fictional debut in The New Yorker when she was featured in that magazines first “Debut Fiction” issue. Her collection of short stories, Babe in Paradise was published by W.W. Norton in 2001. That collection was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. A story from the collection was included in The Best American Short Stories 2000. In 2005, W.W. Norton published her novel, No Direction Home. Her latest novel, The God of War, was published in April 2008 by Simon and Schuster. Her short fiction continues to be published in The New Yorker. BEYOND THE BOOK Los Angeles Times Book Review Barnes and Noble Review The New York Times Book Review Esquire feature written by Marisa Silver  Event Info
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