Come and join us in the always-hospitable surroundings of Twain Bar and BBQ on the first floor of the Tiger Hotel for an informal book discussion (with alcohol!) about a notable book with links to the Show-Me State. In August we’ll be discussing Kate Chopin’s classic novel, The Awakening.

First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief  novel so disturbed critics and the public that it  was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read  and admired, The Awakening has  been hailed as an early vision of woman's  emancipation. This sensuous book tells of a woman's  abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her  awakening to desires and passions that threated to  consumer her. Originally entitled "A Solitary  Soul," this portrait of twenty-eight-year-old  Edna Pontellier is a landmark in American fiction,  rooted firmly in the romantic tradition of Herman  Melville and Emily Dickinson. Here, a woman in  search of self-discovery turns away from convention and  society, and toward the primal, from convention  and society, and toward the primal, irresistibly  attracted to nature and the senses. The novel, Kate Chopin's last, has been  praised by Edmund Wilson as "beautifully written." And Willa Cather described its style as "exquisite," "sensitive," and “iridescent.”