Embedded Files
This is a list of books that the Melbourne Wednesday Book Club has already read.
The next book club will be April 26, 2022 at 6:30pm, at Kathy's
The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave
The instant #1 New York Times bestselling mystery and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick that’s captivated more than a million readers about a woman searching for the truth about her husband’s disappearance…at any cost.
Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.
As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered; as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss; as a US Marshal and FBI agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.
Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth, together. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they are also building a new future. One neither Hannah nor Bailey could have anticipated.
Hardcover, 320 pages
Published May 4th 2021 by Simon & Schuster
The next book club will be March 8, 2022 at 6:30pm, at Kathy's
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.
The next book club will be Thursday, December 16, 2021 at 6:30pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Eleanor is the new girl in town, and with her chaotic family life, her mismatched clothes and unruly red hair, she couldn't stick out more if she tried. Park is the boy at the back of the bus. Black T-shirts, headphones, head in a book—he thinks he's made himself invisible. But not to Eleanor... never to Eleanor. Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mix tapes, Eleanor and Park fall for each other. They fall in love the way you do the first time, when you're young, and you feel as if you have nothing and everything to lose.
Hardcover, 328 pages
Published February 26th 2013 by St. Martin's Press (first published April 12th 2012)
The Salt Path
The Salt Path
by
Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, their home and livelihood is taken away. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall.
They have almost no money for food or shelter and must carry only the essentials for survival on their backs as they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable journey.
The Salt Path is an honest and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.
Hardcover, 288 pages
Published March 22nd 2018 by Michael Joseph
The next book club will be Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 6:30pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans online.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret.
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.
When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.
But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.
An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.
Where the Crawdads Sing
Where the Crawdads Sing
by
For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world–until the unthinkable happens.
In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.
The next book club will be Thursday, January 28, 2021 at 7:00pm, meeting TBD (online maybe).
I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
by
I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday.
When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.
On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.
Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
I Am Malala is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.
The next book club will be Thursday, November 19, 2020 at 7:00pm, meeting TBD (online maybe).
Sourdough by Robin Sloan
Lois Clary, a software engineer at a San Francisco robotics company, codes all day and collapses at night. When her favourite sandwich shop closes up, the owners leave her with the starter for their mouthwatering sourdough bread.
Lois becomes the unlikely hero tasked to care for it, bake with it and keep this needy colony of microorganisms alive. Soon she is baking loaves daily and taking them to the farmer's market, where an exclusive close-knit club runs the show.
When Lois discovers another, more secret market, aiming to fuse food and technology, a whole other world opens up. But who are these people, exactly?
Hardcover, 259 pages
Published September 5th 2017 by MCD Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published August 1st 2017)
ISBN 0374203105 (ISBN13: 9780374203108)
Setting San Francisco Bay Area, California (United States)
The next book club will be Thursday, October 8 2020 at 7:00pm, meeting TBD (online maybe).
The Lido by Libby Page
A tender, joyous debut novel about a cub reporter and her eighty-six-year-old subject—and the unlikely and life-changing friendship that develops between them.
Kate is a twenty-six-year-old riddled with anxiety and panic attacks who works for a local paper in Brixton, London, covering forgettably small stories. When she’s assigned to write about the closing of the local lido (an outdoor pool and recreation center), she meets Rosemary, an eighty-six-year-old widow who has swum at the lido daily since it opened its doors when she was a child. It was here Rosemary fell in love with her husband, George; here that she’s found communion during her marriage and since George’s death. The lido has been a cornerstone in nearly every part of Rosemary’s life.
But when a local developer attempts to buy the lido for a posh new apartment complex, Rosemary’s fond memories and sense of community are under threat.
As Kate dives deeper into the lido’s history—with the help of a charming photographer—she pieces together a portrait of the pool, and a portrait of a singular woman, Rosemary. What begins as a simple local interest story for Kate soon blossoms into a beautiful friendship that provides sustenance to both women as they galvanize the community to fight the lido’s closure. Meanwhile, Rosemary slowly, finally, begins to open up to Kate, transforming them both in ways they never knew possible.
In the tradition of Fredrik Backman, The Lido is a charming, feel-good novel that captures the heart and spirit of a community across generations—an irresistible tale of love, loss, aging, and friendship.
Hardcover, 384 pages
Published April 19th 2018 by Orion
ISBN 1409175200
Setting Brixton, London, England
The next book club will be Thursday, August 27 2020 at 7:00pm, meeting TBD (online maybe).
The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose
The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose
A mesmerising literary novel about a lost man in search of connection - a meditation on love, art and commitment, set against the backdrop of one of the greatest art events in modern history, Marina Abramovic's The Artist is Present.
'This is a weirdly beautiful book.' David Walsh founder and curator, MONA
'Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one.' Stella Adler
'Art will wake you up. Art will break your heart. There will be glorious days. If you want eternity you must be fearless.' From The Museum of Modern Love
She watched as the final hours of The Artist is Present passed by, sitter after sitter in a gaze with the woman across the table. Jane felt she had witnessed a thing of inexplicable beauty among humans who had been drawn to this art and had found the reflection of a great mystery. What are we? How should we live?
If this was a dream, then he wanted to know when it would end. Maybe it would end if he went to see Lydia. But it was the one thing he was not allowed to do.
Arky Levin is a film composer in New York separated from his wife, who has asked him to keep one devastating promise. One day he finds his way to The Atrium at MOMA and sees Marina Abramovic in The Artist is Present. The performance continues for seventy-five days and, as it unfolds, so does Arky. As he watches and meets other people drawn to the exhibit, he slowly starts to understand what might be missing in his life and what he must do.
This dazzlingly original novel asks beguiling questions about the nature of art, life and love and finds a way to answer them.
Paperback, 296 pages
Published September 1st 2016 by Allen & Unwin
Original Title The Museum of Modern Love
ISBN 1760291862 (ISBN13: 9781760291860)
Edition Language English
Characters Marina Abramovic
Literary Awards
The next book club will be Thursday, July 16th 2020 at 7:00pm, meeting TBD (online maybe).
Any Ordinary Day: Blindsides, Resilience and What Happens After the Worst Day of Your Life
Any Ordinary Day: Blindsides, Resilience and What Happens After the Worst Day of Your Life
by
As a journalist, Leigh Sales often encounters people experiencing the worst moments of their lives in the full glare of the media. But one particular string of bad news stories – and a terrifying brush with her own mortality – sent her looking for answers about how vulnerable each of us is to a life-changing event. What are our chances of actually experiencing one? What do we fear most and why? And when the worst does happen, what comes next?
In this wise and layered book, Leigh talks intimately with people who’ve faced the unimaginable, from terrorism to natural disaster to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Expecting broken lives, she instead finds strength, hope, even humour. Leigh brilliantly condenses the cutting-edge research on the way the human brain processes fear and grief, and poses the questions we too often ignore out of awkwardness. Along the way, she offers an unguarded account of her own challenges and what she’s learned about coping with life’s unexpected blows.
Warm, candid and empathetic, this book is about what happens when ordinary people, on ordinary days, are forced to suddenly find the resilience most of us don’t know we have.
The next book club will be Thursday, June 11th 2020 at 7:00pm, meeting at Kathleen's (and online)
The Time Machine
The Time Machine
by
“I’ve had a most amazing time....”
So begins the Time Traveller’s astonishing firsthand account of his journey 800,000 years beyond his own era—and the story that launched H.G. Wells’s successful career and earned him his reputation as the father of science fiction. With a speculative leap that still fires the imagination, Wells sends his brave explorer to face a future burdened with our greatest hopes...and our darkest fears. A pull of the Time Machine’s lever propels him to the age of a slowly dying Earth. There he discovers two bizarre races—the ethereal Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks—who not only symbolize the duality of human nature, but offer a terrifying portrait of the men of tomorrow as well. Published in 1895, this masterpiece of invention captivated readers on the threshold of a new century. Thanks to Wells’s expert storytelling and provocative insight, The Time Machine will continue to enthrall readers for generations to come.
The next book club will be Thursday, April 30th 2020 at 6:45pm, Online
Rebecca
Rebecca
by
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .
The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives--presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.
The next book club will be Tuesday, March 10th 2020 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
Boy Swallows Universe
Boy Swallows Universe
by
A novel of love, crime, magic, fate and coming of age, set in Brisbane's violent working class suburban fringe - from one of Australia's most exciting new writers.
Brisbane, 1983: A lost father, a mute brother, a mum in jail, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crime for a babysitter. It's not as if Eli's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way - not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer.
But if Eli's life is about to get a whole lot more serious. He's about to fall in love. And, oh yeah, he has to break into Boggo Road Gaol on Christmas Day, to save his mum.
A story of brotherhood, true love and the most unlikely of friendships, Boy Swallows Universe will be the most heartbreaking, joyous and exhilarating novel you will read all year.
The next book club will be Thursday, January 30th 2020 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by
"I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers." January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she's never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb...
As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.
Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society's members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.
Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.
The next book club will be Thursday, October 24th 2019 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
Troll Hunting: Inside the World of Online Hate and its Human Fallout
Troll Hunting: Inside the World of Online Hate and its Human Fallout
by
In 2013, journalist Ginger Gorman was trolled online. She received scores of hateful tweets, including a death threat. A picture of Ginger heavily pregnant alongside her husband and two-and-half year old daughter appeared on a fascist website. Understandably she was terrified, but once the attack subsided, she found herself curious. Who were these trolls? How and why did they coordinate such an attack? And how does someone fight back against a troll?
Over the next five years Gorman spoke to psychologists, trolling victims, law enforcement, academics and, most importantly, the trolls themselves, embedding herself into their online communities and their psyches in ways she had never anticipated. What she discovered was both profoundly shocking and fascinating. Syndicates of highly organised predator trolls across the globe systematically set out to disrupt and disturb. Some want to highlight the media's alleged left-wing bias, some want to bring down capitalism, and some just want to have fun. Even if it means destroying someone's life...
An intense and compelling read, Troll Hunting is an important window into not just the mindset and motivation of trolls, but the history of this kind of aberrant behaviour. Ginger Gorman has gained unprecedented access to trolls, even formed strange and enduring relationships with them, and her comprehensive investigation into what makes them tick has given us a brilliant book that is impossible to put down.
The next book club will be Thursday, August 29th 2019 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans. Kathleen's pick.
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World
by
by
In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben shares his deep love of woods and forests and explains the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in the woodland and the amazing scientific processes behind the wonders of which we are blissfully unaware. Much like human families, tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, and support them as they grow, sharing nutrients with those who are sick or struggling and creating an ecosystem that mitigates the impact of extremes of heat and cold for the whole group. As a result of such interactions, trees in a family or community are protected and can live to be very old. In contrast, solitary trees, like street kids, have a tough time of it and in most cases die much earlier than those in a group.
Drawing on groundbreaking new discoveries, Wohlleben presents the science behind the secret and previously unknown life of trees and their communication abilities; he describes how these discoveries have informed his own practices in the forest around him. As he says, a happy forest is a healthy forest, and he believes that eco-friendly practices not only are economically sustainable but also benefit the health of our planet and the mental and physical health of all who live on Earth.
Hardcover, 288 pages
Published September 13th 2016 by Greystone Books (first published May 25th 2015)
The next book club will be Thursday, 18 July 2019 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans. Kerry's pick.
Picnic at Hanging Rock by
Picnic at Hanging Rock by
It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred.
Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three of the girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared.
They never returned.
Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction the reader must decide for themselves.
Paperback, 189 pages
Published July 2nd 1998 by Vintage (first published 1967)
Original Title Picnic at Hanging Rock
ISBN 0099750619 (ISBN13: 9780099750611)
Edition Language English
setting Australia
The next book club will be Tuesday, 26 March 2019 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans. Karen's pick.
All the Light We Cannot See
All the Light We Cannot See
by
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book, National Book Award finalist, more than two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller list
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).
Hardcover, 531 pages
Published May 6th 2014 by Scribner
Original Title
All the Light We Cannot See
ISBN
1476746583 (ISBN13: 9781476746586)
Edition Language
English
Characters
Werner Pfennig, Marie-Laure LeBlanc, Frank Volkheimer, Etienne LeBlanc, Frederick (All the Light We Cannot See)...more
setting
Paris (France)
Saint Malo (France)
Zollverein (Germany)
The next book club will be 22 November 2018 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
Bluebottle
Bluebottle
by
With sea-salt authenticity, Belinda Castles sets the Bright family in the sprawling paradise of Bilgola Beach. But darkness is found both in the iconic setting as well as in the disturbing behaviour of one of the family.
As he tilted the blinds she saw her mother in her tennis whites, standing at the kitchen bench, staring out into the dark bushland that bordered their houses. That was what Tricia did these days, looked into the bush as though it would attack one of them.
On a sweltering day in a cliff-top beach shack, Jack and Lou Bright grow suspicious about the behaviour of their charismatic, unpredictable father, Charlie. A girl they know has disappeared, and as the day unfolds, Jack's eruptions of panic, Lou's sultry rebellions and their little sister Phoebe's attention-seeking push the family towards revelation.
Twenty years later, the Bright children have remained close to the cliff edges, russet sand and moody ocean of their childhood. Behind the beautiful surfaces of their daily lives lies the difficult landscape of their past, always threatening to break through. And then, one night in late summer, they return to the house on the cliff...
Gripping and evocative, Bluebottle is a story of a family bound by an inescapable past, from the award-winning author of The River Baptists and Hannah and Emil.
The next book club will be 11 October 2018 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
Between a Wolf and a Dog
Between a Wolf and a Dog
by
Ester is a family therapist with an appointment book that catalogues the anxieties of the middle class: loneliness, relationships, death. She spends her days helping others find happiness, but her own family relationships are tense and frayed. Estranged from both her sister, April, and her ex-husband, Lawrence, Ester wants to fall in love again. Meanwhile, April is struggling through her own directionless life; Lawrence's reckless past decisions are catching up with him; and Ester and April's mother, Hilary, is about to make a choice that will profoundly affect them all.
Taking place largely over one rainy day in Sydney, and rendered with the evocative and powerful prose Blain is known for, Between a Wolf and a Dog is a celebration of the best in all of us -- our capacity to live in the face of ordinary sorrows, and to draw strength from the transformative power of art. Ultimately, it is a joyous tribute to the beauty of being alive.
Paperback, 272 pages
Published March 28th 2016 by Scribe Publications
The next book club will be 30 August 2018 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
The City & the City
The City & the City
by
New York Times bestselling author China Miéville delivers his most accomplished novel yet, an existential thriller set in a city unlike any other–real or imagined.
When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and more deadly than anything he could have imagined.
Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel’s equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives.
What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.
Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.
The next book club will be 19 July 2018 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
Restoration by
Restoration by
Robert Merivel, son of a glove maker and an aspiring physician, finds his fortunes transformed when he is given a position at the court of King Charles II. Merivel slips easily into a life of luxury and idleness, enthusiastically enjoying the women and wine of the vibrant Restoration age. But when he’s called on to serve the king in an unusual role, he transgresses the one law that he is forbidden to break and is brutally cast out from his newfound paradise. Thus begins Merivel’s journey to self-knowledge, which will take him down into the lowest depths of seventeenth-century society.
Paperback, 371 pages
Published January 14th 2008 by Penguin Books (first published 1989)
Original Title Restoration
ISBN 0140244883 (ISBN13: 9780140244885)
Edition Language English
Series Restoration #1
Characters Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland, Robert Merivel
setting Norfolk, England
Literary Awards Man Booker Prize Nominee (1989), Sunday Express Book of the Year (1989)
Here are discussion questions for Restoration
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/ReadingGuidesDetail.aspx?ID=4294977071&CID=4294972348&tid=3288&tcid=
Also a podcast interview with the author
https://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2012/nov/09/rose-tremain-book-club-podcast
And world book club answers to questions from readers
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02r7gx1
Kathleen - 6.5, Kerry - 5, Caroline - 6.5
The next book club will be 31 May 2018 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
1787: The Lost Chapters of Australia's Beginnings
1787: The Lost Chapters of Australia's Beginnings
by
Australian history did not start in January 1788. The time before the First Fleet is usually treated as a preface to the main story, a brief interlude that starts 50,000 years before the present and ends as sails are seen on an eastern horizon. But in 1787 the peoples of Australia were not simply living in a timeless ‘Dreamtime’, following the seasons, and waiting for colonisation by Britain in 1788.
In 1787, Nick Brodie uses the sailors, writers, scientists, and other visitors to our shores to reassess neglected chapters of Australia’s early history, and place Australia and its peoples into the great story of human history. He turns the narratives of ‘exploration’ and ‘discovery’ around to take a closer look at the Indigenous peoples, the broader regional scene, and what these encounters collectively tell. 1787 does not stand for a year—it stands for an idea. This is the sweeping story of Greater Australasia and its peoples, a long-overdue challenge to the myth that Australia’s story started in 1788.
Dr Nick Brodie is an historian, archaeologist, and writer. Nick’s previous book Kin was published to critical acclaim in 2015.
Paperback, First, 304 pages
Published September 1st 2016 by Hardie Grant Books
The next book club will be 12 April 2018 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
Inherited
Inherited
by
A dancer in a wheelchair. A collector of corks. One woman seduced by a mountain and another by Freddo Frogs. A man who hears his dead wife's voice. A poet whose voice has disappeared. A photographer distilling grief in his lens. A sound designer stealing the sound of a room. *** Written by Amanda Curtin, these are stories concerned with the gifts and burdens we inherit from those we love and from the world at large, and what we, in turn, leave behind. Families, relationships, memory, secrets, memorialization, creativity, collecting, ageing, and obsession all weave themselves through these 19 short fictional gems. (less)
Paperback, 237 pages
Published November 15th 2011 by University of Western Australia Press (first published January 1st 2011)
The next book club will be 22 February 2018 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
Cairo
Cairo
by
Frustrated by country life and eager for adventure and excitement, eighteen-year-old Tom Button moves to the city to study. Once there, and living in a run-down apartment block called Cairo, he is befriended by an eccentric musician Max Cheever, his beautiful wife Sally, and their close-knit circle of painters and poets.
Paperback, 304 pages
Published September 1st 2013 by Scribe Publications (first published January 1st 2013)
The next book club will be 10 January 2018 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
Lincoln in the Bardo
Lincoln in the Bardo
by
In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent, and moving work yet. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other—for no one but Saunders could conceive it.
February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy’s body.
From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.
Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?
Hardcover, 343 pages
Published February 14th 2017 by Random House
Original Title
Lincoln in the Bardo
ISBN
0812995341 (ISBN13: 9780812995343)
Edition Language
English
Characters
Literary Awards
Man Booker Prize (2017), Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Fiction (2018), Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Historical Fiction (2017), Waterstones Book of the Year Nominee (2017), Gordon Burn Prize Nominee for Longlist (2017)
The next book club will be 29 November 2017 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
The Boy Who Fell To Earth
The Boy Who Fell To Earth
by Kathy Lette
Meet Merlin. He's Lucy's bright, beautiful son - who just happens to be autistic.
Since Merlin's father left them in the lurch shortly after his diagnosis, Lucy has made Merlin the centre of her world. Struggling with the joys and tribulations of raising her eccentrically adorable yet challenging child, (if only Merlin came with operating instructions) Lucy doesn't have room for any other man in her life.
By the time Merlin turns ten, Lucy is seriously worried that the Pope might start ringing her up for tips on celibacy, so resolves to dip a poorly pedicured toe back into the world of dating. Thanks to Merlin's candour and quirkiness, things don't go quite to plan... Then, just when Lucy's resigned to a life of singledom once more, Archie - the most imperfectly perfect man for her and her son - lands on her doorstep. But then, so does Merlin's father, begging for forgiveness and a second chance. Does Lucy need a real father for Merlin - or a real partner for herself?
The next book club will be 18 October 2017 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde’s story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author’s most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray’s moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel’s corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, “a terrible moral in Dorian Gray.” Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde’s homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray’s relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.”
Paperback, Modern Library Classics, 254 pages
Published June 1st 1998 by Random House: Modern Library (first published 1890)
Original Title
The Picture of Dorian Gray
ISBN
0375751513 (ISBN13: 9780375751516)
Edition Language
English
Characters
Dorian Gray, Basil Hallward, Lord Henry Wotton, Sibyl Vane, James Vane...more
setting
England (United Kingdom)
The next book club will be 13 September 2017 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
The God of Small Things
The God of Small Things
The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, fraternal twins Esthappen and Rahel fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family. Their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu, (who loves by night the man her children love by day), fled an abusive marriage to live with their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), and their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt). When Chacko's English ex-wife brings their daughter for a Christmas visit, the twins learn that things can change in a day, that lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river...
Hardcover, 1st American, 340 pages
Published 1997 by Random House
Original Title
The God of Small Things
ISBN
0679457313 (ISBN13: 9780679457312)
Edition Language
English
Characters
Rahel, Ammu, Mammachi, Chacko, Estha
setting
Kerala (India)
Aymanam (India)
Literary Awards
The next book club will be 26 July 2017 at 6:45pm, meeting at Buck Mulligans.
In his black-walled fortress at Inuyama, the warlord Iida Sadamu surveys his famous nightingale floor. Constructed with exquisite skill, it sings at the tread of each human foot. No assassin can cross it unheard.
The youth Takeo has been brought up in a remote mountain village among the Hidden, a reclusive and spiritual people who have taught him only the ways of peace. But ...more
Paperback, 305 pages
Published January 1st 2002 by Riverhead Books
Original Title
Across the Nightingale Floor
ISBN
1573223328 (ISBN13: 9781573223324)
Edition Language
English
The next book club will be 31 May 2017 at 6:45pm, meeting at Lentil As Anything.
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
by J.D. Vance
From a former Marine and Yale Law School Graduate, a poignant account of growing up in a poor Appalachian town, that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. Part memoir, part historical and social analysis, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is a fascinating consideration of class, culture, and the American dream.
Vance’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love.” They got married and moved north from Kentucky to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. Their grandchild (the author) graduated from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving upward mobility for their family. But Vance cautions that is only the short version. The slightly longer version is that his grandparents, aunt, uncle, and mother struggled to varying degrees with the demands of their new middle class life and they, and Vance himself, still carry around the demons of their chaotic family history.
Delving into his own personal story and drawing on a wide array of sociological studies, Vance takes us deep into working class life in the Appalachian region. This demographic of our country has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, and Vance provides a searching and clear-eyed attempt to understand when and how “hillbillies” lost faith in any hope of upward mobility, and in opportunities to come.
At times funny, disturbing, and deeply moving, this is a family history that is also a troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large portion of this country. (less)
Hardcover, 272 pages
Published June 28th 2016 by Harper
Original Title
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
ISBN
0062300547 (ISBN13: 9780062300546)
Edition Language
English
setting
Middletown, Ohio (United States)
Literary Awards
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Memoir & Autobiography (2016)
Between the World and Me
Between the World and Me
In a series of essays, written as a letter to his son, Coates confronts the notion of race in America and how it has shaped American history, many times at the cost of black bodies and lives. Thoughtfully exploring personal and historical events, from his time at Howard University to the Civil War, the author poignantly asks and attempts to answer difficult questions that plague modern society. In this short memoir, the "Atlantic" writer explains that the tragic examples of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and those killed in South Carolina are the results of a systematically constructed and maintained assault to black people--a structure that includes slavery, mass incarceration, and police brutality as part of its foundation. From his passionate and deliberate breakdown of the concept of race itself to the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement, Coates powerfully sums up the terrible history of the subjugation of black people in the United States. A timely work, this title will resonate with all teens--those who have experienced racism as well as those who have followed the recent news coverage on violence against people of color. (less)
Hardcover, 152 pages
Published July 14th 2015 by Spiegel & Grau (first published June 2015)
Original Title
Between the World and Me
ISBN
0812993543 (ISBN13: 9780812993547)
Edition Language
Next Book for Discussion
Next Book for Discussion
The next book club will be 20 April 2017 at 6:45pm, meeting at Lentil As Anything.
The Strays by Emily Bitto
The Strays by Emily Bitto
On her first day at a new school, Lily meets Eva, one of the daughters of the infamous avant-garde painter Evan Trentham. He and his wife are attempting to escape the stifling conservatism of 1930s Australia by inviting other like-minded artists to live and work with them at their family home. As Lily’s friendship with Eva grows, she becomes infatuated with this makeshift family and longs to truly be a part of it.
Looking back on those years later in life, Lily realises that this utopian circle involved the same themes as Evan Trentham’s art: Faustian bargains and terrible recompense; spectacular fortunes and falls from grace. Yet it was not Evan, nor the other artists he gathered around him, but his own daughters, who paid the debt that was owing.
The Strays is an engrossing story of ambition, sacrifice and compromised loyalties from an exciting new talent.
Paperback, 290 pages
Published August 15th 2016 by Legend Press (first published April 30th 2014)
Original Title
The Strays
ISBN
1922213217 (ISBN13: 9781922213211)
Edition Language
English
URL
http://www.affirmpress.com.au/the-strays
setting
Melbourne, Victoria (Australia)
The next book club will be 1 March 2017 at 6:45pm, meeting at Lentil As Anything.
Pompeii by Robert Harris
Pompeii by Robert Harris
All along the Mediterranean coast, the Roman empire’s richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas, enjoying the last days of summer. The world’s largest navy lies peacefully at anchor in Misenum. The tourists are spending their money in the seaside resorts of Baiae, Herculaneum, and Pompeii.
But the carefree lifestyle and gorgeous weather belie an impending cataclysm, and only one man is worried. The young engineer Marcus Attilius Primus has just taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the enormous aqueduct that brings fresh water to a quarter of a million people in nine towns around the Bay of Naples. His predecessor has disappeared. Springs are failing for the first time in generations. And now there is a crisis on the Augusta’s sixty-mile main line—somewhere to the north of Pompeii, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.
Attilius—decent, practical, and incorruptible—promises Pliny, the famous scholar who commands the navy, that he can repair the aqueduct before the reservoir runs dry. His plan is to travel to Pompeii and put together an expedition, then head out to the place where he believes the fault lies. But Pompeii proves to be a corrupt and violent town, and Attilius soon discovers that there are powerful forces at work—both natural and man-made—threatening to destroy him.
Paperback, 304 pages
Published November 8th 2005 by Random House Trade Paperbacks (first published November 21st 2003)
Original Title
Pompeii
ISBN
0812974611 (ISBN13: 9780812974614)
Edition Language
English
The next book club will be 18 January 2017 at 6:45pm, meeting at Lentil As Anything.
Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey
Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey
In this darkly riveting debut novel—a sophisticated psychological mystery that is also a heartbreakingly honest meditation on memory, identity, and aging—an elderly woman descending into dementia embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared, and her search for the truth will go back decades and have shattering consequences.
Maud, an aging grandmother, is slowly losing her memory—and her grip on everyday life. Yet she refuses to forget her best friend Elizabeth, who she is convinced is missing and in terrible danger.
But no one will listen to Maud—not her frustrated daughter, Helen, not her caretakers, not the police, and especially not Elizabeth's mercurial son, Peter. Armed with handwritten notes she leaves for herself and an overwhelming feeling that Elizabeth needs her help, Maud resolves to discover the truth and save her beloved friend.
This singular obsession forms a cornerstone of Maud's rapidly dissolving present. But the clues she discovers seem only to lead her deeper into her past, to another unsolved disappearance: her sister, Sukey, who vanished shortly after World War II.
As vivid memories of a tragedy that occurred more fifty years ago come flooding back, Maud discovers new momentum in her search for her friend. Could the mystery of Sukey's disappearance hold the key to finding Elizabeth?
Hardcover, 320 pages
Published June 10th 2014 by Harper (first published March 13th 2014)
ISBN 0062309668 (ISBN13: 9780062309662)
Edition Language English
Characters Maud Horsham, Elizabeth Markham, Susan "Sukey" Gerrard, Mr. Palmer, Lilian Palmer...more
setting Dorset, England (United Kingdom)
Literary Awards Costa Book Award for First Novel (2014), Dylan Thomas Prize Nominee for Longlist (2014), Women's Prize for Fiction Nominee for Longlist (2015), Betty Trask Award (2015), Specsavers National Book Award Nominee for Books Are My Bag New Writer of the Year; Specsavers Popular Fiction Book of the Year (2014)
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Debut Goodreads Author (2014) ...less
The next book club will be 7 December 2016 at 6:45pm, meeting at Lentil As Anything.
From Lionel Shriver, the acclaimed author of the National Book Award finalist So Much for That and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin, comes a striking new novel about family, money, and global economic crisis.
The year is 2029, and nothing is as it should be. The very essence of American life, the dollar, is under attack. In a coordinated move by the rest of the world’s governments, the dollar loses all its value. The American President declares that the States will default on all its loans–prices skyrocket, currency becomes essentially worthless, and we watch one family struggle to survive through it all.
The Mandibles can count on their inheritance no longer, and each member must come to terms with this in their own way–from the elegant expat author Nollie, in her middle age, returning to the U.S. from Paris after many years abroad, to her precocious teenage nephew Willing, who is the only one to actually understand the crisis, to the brilliant Georgetown economics professor Lowell, who watches his whole vision of the world disintegrate before his eyes.
As ever, in her new novel, Shriver draws larger than life characters who illuminate this complicated, ever-changing world. One of our sharpest observers of human nature, Shriver challenges us to think long and hard about the society we live in and what, ultimately, we hold most dear.
Hardcover, 416 pages
Published June 21st 2016 by Harper (first published May 5th 2016)
Original Title
The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047
ISBN
0062328247 (ISBN13: 9780062328243)
Kathleen - 4, Kerry - 3, Kathy - 5, Karen - 8
October 26, 2016 at 6:45pm, meeting at Lentil As Anything.
Bitter Lemons of Cyprus by Lawrence Durrell
Bitter Lemons of Cyprus by Lawrence Durrell
One of a three-part series of Lawrence Durrell's writings. In this volume he explores the island of Cyprus, evoking the sun-drenched landscapes, dazzling light and vivid blue skies of the Aegean.
Paperback, 288 pages
Published July 3rd 2000 by Faber and Faber (first published 1957)
Original Title Bitter Lemons of Cyprus
ISBN 0571201555 (ISBN13: 9780571201556)
Edition LanguageEnglish
setting Cyprus, 1953
Literary Awards Duff Cooper Prize (1957)
Kathleen - 8, Kerry - 7.5, Kathy - 7.5
The next book club will be September 14, 2016 at 6:45pm, meeting at Lentil As Anything.
When the unconventional Durrell family can no longer endure the damp, gray English climate, they do what any sensible family would do: sell their house and relocate to the sunny Greek isle of Corfu. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of Durrell’s family’s experiences, from the many eccentric hangers-on to the ceaseless procession of puppies, toads, scorpions, geckoes, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies into their home.
Paperback, 273 pages
Published June 29th 2004 by Penguin Books (first published 1955)
Original Title
My Family and Other Animals
ISBN
0142004413 (ISBN13: 9780142004418)
Edition Language
English
Series
setting
Louise - 10, Kerry - 10
The following book club will be August 3, 2016 at 6:45pm, meeting at Lentil As Anything.
Ged, the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, was called Sparrowhawk in his reckless youth.
Hungry for power and knowledge, Sparrowhawk tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.
Paperback, 183 pages
Published September 28th 2004 by Bantam Spectra (first published 1968)
Original Title A Wizard of Earthsea
ISBN 0553383043 (ISBN13: 9780553383041)
Edition Language English
Series Earthsea Cycle #1
Characters Ged
Louise - 10, Kathleen - 9, Kerry - 7, Karen - 8
The next book club will be June 29, 2016 at 6:45pm, meeting at Lentil As Anything.
The first title in Arthur Ransome's classic series, originally published in 1930: for children, for grownups, for anyone captivated by the world of adventure and imagination. Swallows and Amazons introduces the lovable Walker family, the camp on Wild Cat island, the able-bodied catboat Swallow, and the two intrepid Amazons, Nancy and Peggy Blackett.
Paperback, 315 pages
Published July 16th 2010 by David R. Godine Publisher (first published 1930)
Original Title
Swallows and Amazons
ISBN 087923573X (ISBN13: 9780879235734)
Series Swallows and Amazons #1
Louise - 9.5, Kathleen - 9, Kerry - 9.5, Karen - 10
The next book club will be May 25, 2016 at 7:00pm, meeting at Lentil As Anything.
A few weeks after finishing their final exams high school sweethearts have an argument at a party. Joe wants to go - Jen begs him to stay. They fight in the corridor, following their usual script, and then he walks out and leaves her. A few hours later she dies.
Three years on, after burning up his own dreams for the future, Joe is working in dead-end jobs and mentoring a wayward teenager not dissimilar from his younger self. Driven by the need to make good, he spends all his spare time doing parkour under an inner-city bridge, training his mind and body to conquer the hostile urban environment that took his love and blighted his future.
Somewhere else, a middle-aged woman, Elise, is treading water in her life as her marriage breaks up. We watch as she retreats to the only place that holds any meaning for her - the tiger enclosure at Melbourne Zoo, where, for reasons she barely understands, she starts painting the tigers and forms a close connection to them.
Joe is broken by grief, but the outside world won't let him hide forever. A cool and bewitching girl turns up on the doorstep of his share house, somehow painfully familiar to him. Then there is the skateboarding chef at the bar where he works, the girl with the Cossack-blue eyes, who wants to be his friend. And someone going by the Facebook tag Emily Dickinson wants to reminisce about his dead girlfriend and won't leave him alone.
Can Joe staunch the flooding return of desire - or is it time to let go of the past? And will he make the nine-foot leap from girder to pillar or does he want to fall too?
While at its heart is a searing absence, Leap is driven by an unstoppable and exhilarating life force, and the eternally hopeful promise of redemptive love. Funny, moving, quirky and original, Leap is an effortlessly enjoyable novel that quietly creeps up on you until its final jaw-dropping pages and a narrative twist that will take your breath away.
Paperback, 336 pages
Published June 1st 2015 by Allen & Unwin (first published 2015)
Louise - 9, Kathleen - 8, Kerry - 4.5, Kathy - 9, Karen - 9
The next book club will be April 13, 2016 at 7:00pm, meeting at Lentil As Anything.
Jack Maggs
Jack Maggs
by Peter Carey
As a novelist, Peter Carey is hardly a stranger to the 19th century: his Oscar and Lucinda was a veritable treasure-trove of Victoriana. In this novel, however, Carey has set himself an even more complicated task--reimagining not only a vanished era but one of that era's masterpieces. Jack Maggs is a variation on Great Expectations, in which Dickens's tale is told from the viewpoint of Australian convict Abel Magwitch. The names, it's true, have been tinkered with, but the book's literary paternity is unmistakable. So, too, is the postcolonial spin that Carey puts on Dickens's material: this time around, the prodigal Maggs is perceived less as an invading alien than a righteous (if not particularly welcome) refugee.
Of course, rewriting a page-turner from the past offers some major perils, not the least of them being comparisons to the original. Carey, however, more than withstands the test of time, alluding to the formality of Victorian prose without ever bending over backward to duplicate it. In addition, his eye for physical detail--and the ways in which such details open small or large windows onto character--is on par with that of Dickens. Here, for example, he pins down both the body and soul of a household servant: "Miss Mott was lean and sinewy and there was nowhere much for such a violent shiver to hide itself. Consequently it went right up her spine and disappeared inside her little white cap and then, just when it seemed lost, it came out the other side and pulled up the ends of her thin mouth in a grimace." Throw in a wicked mastery of period slang, a subplot about Victorian mesmerism (of which Dickens was, in fact, a practitioner), and an amazing storytelling gift, and you have a novel which meets and exceeds almost any expectation one might bring to it.
344 pages
Published 1999 by Plon (first published January 1st 1997)
Original Title Jack Maggs
ISBN 2259187692 (ISBN13: 9782259187695)
Edition Language English
Literary Awards James Tait Black Memorial Prize Nominee for Fiction (1997), Miles Franklin Literary Award (1998), The Age Book of the Year (1997), Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book Overall (1998)
Louise - 6, Kathleen - 7, Kerry - 6.5, Kathy - 7, Karen - 7.5
The next book club will be February 24, 2016 at 6:30pm, meeting at Lentil As Anything.
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of the "Daily Beast", has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in a moment of weakness make another. Acting on a dinner-party tip from Mrs Algernon Smith, he feels convinced that he has hit on just the chap to cover a promising little war in the African Republic of Ishmaelia. One of Waugh's most exuberant comedies, "Scoop" is a brilliantly irreverent satire of "Fleet Street" and its hectic pursuit of hot news.
Paperback, 222 pages
Published 2003 by Penguin Books UK (first published 1937)
Original Title Scoop
Characters William Boot
setting London, England (United Kingdom) Ishmaelia
Louise - 7, Kathleen - 7, Kerry - 7
The first book club of 2016 will be January 13, 2016 at 6:30pm, meeting at Lentil As Anything.
Qiu Xiaolong's Anthony Award-winning debut introduces Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police.
A young “national model worker,” renowned for her adherence to the principles of the Communist Party, turns up dead in a Shanghai canal. As Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Special Cases Bureau struggles to trace the hidden threads of her past, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. Chen must tiptoe around his own superiors if he wants to get to the bottom of this crime, and risk his career—perhaps even his life—if he wants to see justice done.
Paperback, 465 pages
Published July 1st 2003 by Soho Crime (first published 2000)
original title: Death of a Red Heroine
ISBN:1569472424 (ISBN13: 9781569472422)
edition language: English
series: Inspector Chen Cao #1
setting: Shanghai, 1990 (China)
literary awards: Barry Award Nominee for Best First Novel (2001), Anthony Award for Best First Novel (2001), Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel (2001)
Louise - 6, Kathleen - 7, Kerry - 8, Kathy - 7, Karen - 7
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