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| Notices and Announcements Please contact me with information you'd like to list on this page. 19 August 2010 Rams choices for sept The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri A major international best-seller, "The Namesake" is the debut novel from Jhumpa Lahiri, the author of "Interpreter of Maladies" that bagged the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and won critical acclaim for its "grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America." The Namesake is a the cross-cultural, multigenerational story of a Hindu Bengali family’s journey to self-acceptance in Boston. Jhumpa masterfully explores the themes of the complexities of the immigrant experience and foreignness, the clash of lifestyles, cultural disorientation, the conflicts of assimilation, the tangled ties between generations... and paints a portait of an Indian family torn between the pull of respecting family traditions, and the American way of life. It’s a tale of love, solitude and emotional upheavals with an amazing eye for detail and ironic observation.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Namesake-Jhumpa-Lahiri/dp/0006551807/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_3 Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress – Sijie Dai During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, two teenage boys, who are sent to be re-educated at the Mountain of the Phoenix of the Sky, because their doctor parents have been declared "enemies of the people" and "reactionaries of the bourgeoise" by the Communist state, where their lives take an unexpected turn when they meet the beautiful daughter of a local tailor and stumble upon a forbidden stash of Western literature. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Balzac-Little-Chinese-Seamstress-Sijie/dp/0099286432
Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks - Christopher Brookmyre Do you believe in ghosts? Do we really live on in some conscious form after we die, and is that form capable of communicating with the world of the living? Aye, right. That was Jack Parlabane's stance on the matter, anyway. But this was before he found himself in the more compromising position of being not only dead himself, but worse: dead with an exclusive still to file. From his position on high, Parlabane relates the events leading up to his demise, largely concerning the efforts of charismatic psychic Gabriel Lafayette to reconcile the scientific with the spiritual by submitting to controlled laboratory tests. Parlabane is brought in as an observer, due to his capacities as both a sceptic and an expert on deception, but he soon finds his certainties crumbling and his assumptions turned upside down as he encounters phenomena for which he can deduce no rational explanation. Perhaps, in a world in which he can find himself elected rector of an esteemed Scottish university, anything truly is possible. One thing he knows for certain, however: Death is not the end -- it's the ultimate undercover assignment. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Attack-Unsinkable-Rubber-Christopher-Brookmyre/dp/0349118817/ref=tmm_pap_title_0 Eleanor choices for August The Leopard - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Her Fearful symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger
The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver 17 June 2010 Lissas choices for July One day by David Nicholls http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Day-David-Nicholls/dp/0340896981/ref=ed_oe_p 'It's rare to find a novel which ranges over the recent past with such authority, and even rarer to find one in which the two leading characters are drawn with such solidity, such painful fidelity, to real life that you really do put the book down with the hallucinatory feeling that they've become as well known to you as your closest friends. Hard to imagine anyone encountering characters as well drawn as this and not recognizing the extraordinary talent of the writer who has created them.' (Jonathan Coe, Guardian Books of the Year 2009 20090621) The Help by Kathryn Stockett http://www.amazon.co.uk/Help-Kathryn-Stockett/dp/0141039280/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren’t trusted not to steal the silver... There’s Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son’s tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared. Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they’d be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell... The very thought of you by Rosie Alison http://www.amazon.co.uk/Very-Thought-You-Rosie-Alison/dp/1846881005/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2010. A haunting coming-of-age novel with a love story at its heart, for anyone who has ever loved L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between. England, 31st August 1939: the world is on the brink of war. As Hitler prepares to invade Poland, thousands of children are evacuated from London to escape the impending Blitz. Torn from her mother, eight-year-old Anna Sands is relocated with other children to a large Yorkshire estate which has been opened up to evacuees by Thomas and Elizabeth Ashton, an enigmatic childless couple. Soon Anna gets drawn into their unravelling relationship, seeing things that are not meant for her eyes and finding herself part-witness and part-accomplice to a love affair, with unforeseen consequences. A story of longing, loss and complicated loyalties, combining a sweeping narrative with subtle psychological observation, The Very Thought of You is not just a love story but a story about love. Joans choices for June Oranges are not the only fruit - Jeannette Winterson
Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
We are all made of glue - Marina Lewycka Sharons choices for May Money by Martin Amis
The Other Hand by Chris Cleve
Raven Black by Ann Cleeves 15th March 2010 Eleanors choices for April: The girl with the dragon tattoo - Steig Larsson Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder - and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2009 'Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,' says Thomas More, 'and when you come back that night he'll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks' tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.' England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages. From one of our finest living writers, 'Wolf Hall' is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion, suffering and courage.
The inheritance of loss - Kiran Desai
In the foothills of the Himalayas sits a once grand, now crumbling house - home to three people and a dog. There is the retired judge dreaming of colonial yesterdays; his orphaned granddaughter Sai who has fallen for her clever maths tutor; the cook, whose son Biju writes untruthful letters home from New York City; and Mutt, the judge's beloved dog. Around the house swirls mountain mist - but also the forces of revolution and change. For a new world is clashing with the old, and the future offers both hope and betrayal ... Islas choices for March Three Cups of Tea – Greg Mortenson http://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Cups-Tea-Greg-Mortenson/dp/0141034262/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1266864974&sr=8-1-fkmr0 'Here we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything - even die' - Haji Ali, Korphe Village Chief, Karakoram mountains, Pakistan. In 1993, after a terrifying and disastrous attempt to climb K2, a mountaineer called Greg Mortenson drifted, cold and dehydrated, into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram Mountains. Moved by the inhabitants' kindness, he promised to return and build a school. "Three Cups of Tea" is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade Mortenson built not just one but fifty-five schools - especially for girls - in remote villages across the forbidding and breathtaking landscape of Pakistan and Afghanistan, just as the Taliban rose to power. His story is at once a riveting adventure and a testament to the power of the humanitarian spirit.
Bad Science – Ben Goldacre
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/product-description/000728487X/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books Guardian columnist Dr Ben Goldacre takes us on a hilarious, invigorating and informative journey through the bad science we're fed by the worst of the hacks and the quacks! When Dr Ben Goldacre saw someone on daytime TV dipping her feet in an 'Aqua Detox' footbath, releasing her toxins into the water and turning it brown, he thought he'd try the same at home. 'Like some kind of Johnny Ball cum Witchfinder General', using his girlfriend's Barbie doll, he gently passed an electrical current through the warm salt water. It turned brown. In his words: 'before my very eyes, the world's first Detox Barbie was sat, with her feet in a pool of brown sludge, purged of a weekend's immorality.' Dr Ben Goldacre is the author of the 'Bad Science' column in the Guardian and his book is about all the 'bad science' we are constantly bombarded with in the media and in advertising. At a time when science is used to prove everything and nothing, everyone has their own 'bad science' moments -- from the useless pie-chart on the back of cereal packets to the use of the word 'visibly' in cosmetics ads.This book will help people to quantify their instincts -- that a lot of the so-called 'science' which appears in the media and in advertising is just wrong or misleading. Satirical and amusing -- and unafraid to expose the ridiculous -- it provides the reader with the facts they need to differentiate the good from the bad. Full of spleen, this is a hilarious, invigorating and informative journey through the world of 'bad science'. The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kreutzer-Sonata-Penguin-Great-Loves/dp/0141032847/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266865173&sr=1-1 Pozdnyshev and his wife have a turbulent relationship. When her beauty blossoms after the birth of their children, men begin to flock around her, and he becomes increasingly jealous. Convinced his wife is betraying him with a young musician, his overpowering suspicion drives him to ever more dangerous lengths. 25th January 2010 Adams choices for February Riddley Walker - Will Self & Russell Hoban
'Walker is my name and I am the same. Riddley Walker. Walking my riddels where ever theyve took me and walking them now on this paper the same. There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis of every thing. Every time will have its happenings out and every place the same. Thats why I finely come to writing all this down. Thinking on what the idear of us myt be. Thinking on that thing whats in us lorn and loan and oansome.' Composed in an English which has never been spoken and laced with a storytelling tradition that predates the written word, RIDDLEY WALKER is the world waiting for us at the bitter end of the nuclear road. It is desolate, dangerous and harrowing, and a modern masterpiece.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Riddley-Walker-Russell-Hoban/dp/074755904X/ref=pd_ts_b_1?ie=UTF8&s=booksAlone in Berlin - Hans Fallada & Michael Hofmann
Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways: the bullying Hitler loyalists the Persickes, the retired judge Fromm and the unassuming couple Otto and Anna Quangel. Then the Quangels receive the news that their beloved son has been killed fighting in France. Shocked out of their quiet existence, they begin a silent campaign of defiance, and a deadly game of cat and mouse develops between the Quangels and the ambitious Gestapo inspector Escherich. When petty criminals Kluge and Borkhausen also become involved, deception, betrayal and murder ensue, tightening the noose around the Quangels’ necks …
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alone-Berlin-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/014118938X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264452551&sr=1-1Our Man In Havana
Wormold is a vacuum cleaner salesman in a city of powercuts. His adolescent daughter spends his money with a skill that amazes him so when a mysterious Englishman offers him an extra income he's tempted. In return all he has to do is file a few reports. But when his fake reports start coming true things suddenly get more complicated and Havana becomes a threatening place.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Our-Man-Havana-Vintage-Classics/dp/0099286084/ref=pd_ts_b_86?ie=UTF8&s=books
31st October 2009 Joans choices for November: The glass room Simon Mawer
The house of mirth Edith Wharton
Legend of a suicide David Vann. 18th September 2009 Eleanors choices for the October meeting The Shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/product-description/0753820250/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books
Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the 'cemetery of lost books', a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out 'La Sombra del Viento' by Julian Carax. But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. Then, one night, as he is wandering the old streets once more, Daniel is approached by a figure who reminds him of a character from La Sombra del Viento, a character who turns out to be the devil. This man is tracking down every last copy of Carax's work in order to burn them. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julian Carax and to save those he left behind. A page-turning exploration of obsession in literature and love, and the places that obsession can lead.
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Remains-Day-Kazuo-Ishiguro/dp/0571225381/ref=sr_1_141?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253299030&sr=1-141
The novel's narrator, Stevens, is a perfect English butler who tries to give his narrow existence form and meaning through the self-effacing, almost mystical practice of his profession. In a career that spans the second world war, Stevens is oblivious of the real life that goes on around him--oblivious, for instance, of the fact that his aristocrat employer is a Nazi sympathizer. Still, there are even larger matters at stake in this heartbreaking, beautifully crafted novel-- namely, Stevens' own ability to allow some bit of life-affirming love into his tightly repressed existence.
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prince-Penguin-Classics-Niccolo-Machiavelli/dp/0140449159/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253300248&sr=1-1
'It is far safer to be feared than loved...' Machiavelli made his name notorious for centuries with "The Prince", his clever and cynical work about power relationships. The key themes of this influential, and ever timely, writer are that adaptability is the key to success and that effective leadership is sometimes only possible at the expense of moral standards. Lissa's choices for September meeting Out by Natsuo Kirino In the Tokyo suburbs four women work the draining graveyard shift at a boxed-lunch factory. Burdened with chores and heavy debts and isolated from husbands and children, they all secretly dream of a way out of their dead-end lives. A young mother among them finally cracks and strangles her philandering, gambling husband then confesses her crime to Masako, the closest of her colleagues. For reasons of her own, Masako agrees to assist her friend and seeks the help of the other co-workers to dismember and dispose of the body. The body parts are discovered, the police start asking questions, but the women have far more dangerous enemies -a yakuza connected loan shark who discovers their secret and has a business proposition, and a ruthless nightclub owner the police are convinced is guilty of the murder. He has lost everything as a result of their crime and he is out for revenge. OUT is a psychologically taut and unflinching foray into the darkest recesses of the human soul, an unsettling reminder that the desperate desire for freedom can make the most ordinary person do the unimaginable. The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James Syrie James takes us into the unquiet soul of Charlotte Bronte. Poor, plain and unconnected, Charlotte, her sisters live in the wilds of Yorkshire. Their eccentric father allows no curtains on the windows and no rugs on the floors. Their brother is a drunkard and a drug addict. But these three sisters write some of the most beloved books ever created. Many don't know that Charlotte's life held hidden passions. And while many remember Jan Eyre, few know about her romance with Arthur Bell Nichols. After her death, he destroyed so much of the personal writing of her adulthood, but now, Charlotte's secrets are about to be told. Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson In a novel of stunning dimensions, the acclaimed author of the MARS trilogy brings us the story of the incredible life -- and death -- of Galileo, the First Scientist. Late Renaissance Italy still abounds in alchemy and Aristotle, yet it trembles on the brink of the modern world. Galileo's new telescope encapsulates all the contradictions of this emerging reality. Then one night a stranger presents a different kind of telescope for Galileo to peer through. Galileo is not sure if he is in a dream, an enchantment, a vision, or something else as yet undefined. The blasted wasteland he sees when he points the telescope at Jupiter, of harsh yellows and reds and blacks, looks just like hell as described by the Catholic church, and Galileo is a devout Catholic. But he's also a scientist, perhaps the very first in history. What he's looking at is the future, the world of Jovian humans three thousand years hence. He is looking at Jupiter from the vantage point of one of its moons whose inhabitants maintain that Galileo has to succeed in his own world for their history to come to pass. Their ability to reach back into the past and call Galileo "into resonance" with the later time is an action that will have implications for both periods, and those in between, like our own. By day Galileo's life unfurls in early seventeenth century Italy, leading inexorably to his trial for heresy. By night Galileo struggles to be a kind of sage, or an arbiter in a conflict ...but understanding what that conflict might be is no easy matter, and resolving his double life is even harder. This sumptuous, gloriously thought-provoking and suspenseful novel recalls Robinson's magnificent Mars books as well as bringing to us Galileo as we have always wanted to know him, in full. 2nd July 2009 Sharon's choices for August meeting Here are my choices for August, I’ve read books by all the authors and am keen to read more of their writing, but haven’t read the ones I’ve chosen.    1. Stone Junction by Jim Dodge I chose this having read my first Jim Dodge book recently. I picked up an odd little book called “Fup” in Waterstones on the recommendation from a member of staff (I’d told him I wanted something that I could read within a train journey and forget I was on the train). I loved it (funny little modern fable), would thoroughly recommend it and did think about it for the group but it's very short and would be only 1hrs read for the faster readers in the group. So I looked into Jim Dodge and found this, with lots of good reviews on amazon. Some info from amazon:
Starting with his mother's 'roundhouse' right to a nun's jaw, Stone Junction is a modern odyssey of one man's quest for knowledge and understanding in a world where revenge, betrayal, revolution, mind-bending chemicals, magic and murder are the norm. With jaw-dropping scope, a stiletto-sharp wit and an array of utterly bizarre characters, Jim Dodge has woven a mesmerising and age-defining tale. Like a river constantly changing direction, Stone Junction is both stomach-clutching hilarious and heart-rendingly sad - but always utterly compelling. Prepare to step into a world where nothing is ever as it seems.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stone-Junction-Jim-Dodge/dp/1841954888/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246448726&sr=1-1 2. Ascent by Jed Mercurio Jed Mercurio is a doctor turned novelist, who wrote Cardiac Arrest (a groundbreaking and somewhat cynical British medical t.v. series) and Bodies (also adapted for t.v.). I like his writing style, very engaging. Ascent is a non-medical subject, so I’m a bit curious. It has excellent reviews and made it into The Guardian’s top book listings, where I think it was listed under sci-fi. Review
"This is fighting fit, muscular prose, which carries no dead weight. In short, it's that rarest of things -- a highbrow book that's vertiginously thrilling."-"Observer"
"Ascent is storytelling of a high caliber; fully imagined, finely crafted."-"Guardian"
Product Description
Yefgenii Yeremin is a flyer and he is a phantom. In the Korean War, he is the legendary ace dubbed 'Ivan the Terrible', shooting down more American jets than any other pilot in history. But the Soviet Union's involvement in Korea must be kept secret, so Yefgenii is exiled to a remote Arctic base, his name unknown, his victories uncelebrated. But in 1964, a man arrives from Moscow, from the Space Committee, in search of a volunteer prepared to sacrifice everything for his country.
From the Publisher
A truly stunning novel – spare, powerful and ultimately awesome – Ascent will propel Jed Mercurio into the first rank of British novelists http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ascent-Jed-Mercurio/dp/0099468522/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246448698&sr=1-1 3. I am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak From the author of The Book Thief, one of my favourite book group choices so far. I keep meaning to read this, as its reviews seem to outshine TBT. Not much of a synopsis on amazon, but worth having a look at the reviews to see if it is your kind of thing. Synopsis
After capturing a bank robber, nineteen-year-old cab driver Ed Kennedy begins receiving mysterious messages that direct him to addresses where people need help, and he begins getting over his lifelong feeling of worthlessness. http://www.amazon.co.uk/I-am-Messenger-Markus-Zusak/dp/0375836675/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246448431&sr=1-1 Hope at least one of these books appeals to everyone. 18th June 2009 Michaels choices for July 1) Silas Marner by George Eliot George Eliot's own favourite novel centres on Silas Marner, the linen weaver of Raveloe, a village on the brink of industrialization. Once he was a respected member of a narrow congregation, but the events that took place during one of his cataleptic foots led to the loss of everything that he valued. Now he lives a withdrawn half-life and is an object of suspicion to his new neighbours; he exists only for his work and his golden guineas. But when his precious money is stolen and, shortly after, seemingly and mysteriously replaced by the child Eppie, Silas is awakened to life by the redemptive power of love. George Eliot's affectionate but unsentimental portrait of rural life combines irony, humour and sharp social comment. Above all, she demonstrate a profound and enduring knowledge of the human mind and heart.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Silas-Marner-Wordsworth-Classics-George/dp/1853262218/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245352138&sr=1-1
2) Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson On a peat and heather island off the west coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother Nora take refuge in the large mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. Nora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear, like who her father was - variously Jimmy, Jack, or Ernie. Effie tells of her life at college in Dundee, the land of cakes and William Wallace, where she lives in a lethargic relationship with Bob, a student who never goes to lectures, seldom gets out of bed, and to whom the Klingons are as real as the French and the Germans (more real than the Luxemburgers). But strange things are happening. Why is Effie being followed? Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Emotionally-Weird-Kate-Atkinson/dp/055299734X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245352284&sr=1-1 3) Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood Oryx and Crake moves beyond the futuristic fantasy of her 1985 bestseller The Handmaid's Tale to an even more dystopian world, a world where language--and with it anything beyond the merest semblance of humanity--has almost entirely vanished. Snowman may be the last man on earth, the only survivor of an unnamed apocalypse. Once he was Jimmy, a member of a scientific elite; now he lives in bitter isolation and loneliness, his only pleasure the watching of old films on DVD. His mind moves backwards and forwards through time, from an agonising trawl through memory to relive the events that led up to sudden catastrophe (most significantly the disappearance of his mother and the arrival of his mysterious childhood companions Oryx and Crake, symbols of the fractured society in which Snowman now finds himself, to the horrifying present of genetic engineering run amok. His only witnesses, eager to lap up his testimony, are "Crakers", laboratory creatures of varying strengths and abilities, who can offer little comfort. Gradually the reasons behind the disaster begin to unfold as Snowman undertakes a perilous journey to the remains of the bubble-dome complex where the sinister Paradice Project collapsed and near-global devastation began. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oryx-Crake-Margaret-Atwood/dp/1844080285/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245352440&sr=1-1 20 May 2009 Tots choices for June Company of Liars by Karen Maitland http://www.amazon.co.uk/Company-Liars-Karen-Maitland/dp/0141031913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242844666&sr=8-1
1348. Plague has come to England. And the lies you tell will be the death of you.
A scarred trader in holy relics, a conjuror, a musician and his apprentice, a one-armed storyteller, a young couple on the run, a midwife and a rune-reading girl. A group of misfits bands together to escape the plague. But in their midst lurks a curse darker and more malign than the pestilence they flee...
What you make it by Michael Marshall Smith
http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-You-Make-Selected-Stories/dp/0006510078/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242844992&sr=1-1
The first ever collection of Michael Marshall Smith's award-winning short stories. The first piece of fiction Smith ever wrote -- a short story called The Man Who Drew Cats -- won the World Fantasy award. It's included here along with many others, some unpublished, which show the incredible versatility of one of the most exciting writers working in Britain today. The collection is stuffed with surreal, disturbing gems
including: 'When God Lived in Kentish Town' Someone comes up to you when you're quietly eating your stir-fried rice in a great Chinese take away, and tells you: 'I've found God'. You try to ignore them, right? But what if they have, and what if He works in a drab old electrical store on Kentish Town Road and he's not getting many customers? 'Diet Hell' Some people will do anything to fit into their old jeans. 'Save As...' What if you could back up your life? Save it up to a certain point and return
to it when things went horribly wrong? 'Everybody Goes' An idyllic childhood day from a long, hot summer. The kind you want to last for ever. All good things must come to an end, mustn't they?
Let the right one in by John Ajvide Lindqvist
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Let-Right-John-Ajvide-Lindqvist/dp/1847248489/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242845088&sr=1-1
Oskar and Eli. In very different ways, they were both victims. Which is why, against the odds, they became friends. And how they came to depend on one another, for life itself. Oskar is a 12 year old boy living with his mother on a dreary housing estate at the city's edge. He dreams about his absentee father, gets bullied at school, and wets himself when he's frightened. Eli is the young girl who moves in next door. She
doesn't go to school and never leaves the flat by day. She is a 200 year old vampire, forever frozen in childhood, and condemned to live on a diet of fresh blood. John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel is a unique and brilliant fusion of social novel and vampire legend, a deeply moving fable about rejection, friendship and loyalty.
25th April 2009 Shahidas choices for May 'Innocent Traitor' by Alison Weir http://www.amazon.co.uk/Innocent-Traitor-Alison-Weir/dp/0099493799/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240648862&sr=1-2
Alison Weir, our pre-eminent popular historian, has now fulfilled a life's ambition to write historical fiction. She has chosen as her subject the bravest, most sympathetic and wronged heroine of Tudor England, Lady Jane Grey. Lady Jane Grey was born into times of extreme danger. Child of a scheming father and a ruthless mother, for whom she was merely a pawn in a dynastic power game with the highest stakes, she lived a live in thrall to political machinations and lethal religious fervour. Jane's astonishing and essentially tragic story was played out during one of the most momentous periods of English history. As a great-niece of Henry VIII, and the cousin of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I, she grew up realize that she could never throw off the chains of her destiny. Her honesty, intelligence and strength of character carry the reader through all the vicious twists of Tudor power politics, to her nine-day reign and its unbearably poignant conclusion.
'Rush Home Road' by Lori Lansens http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rush-Home-Road-Lori-Lansens/dp/1844085473/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240648908&sr=1-1
'Sharla didn't know how long she'd been sitting there when the door screeched open behind her. She held her breath, knowing that this was the beginning and the end of her life.' Sharla Cody is only five but has already had a troubled life- then finds herself dumped with Addy, an elderly neighbour, when her mother takes off for the summer. Two very unlikely people are about to transform each other's lives for ever. 'Purple Hibiscus' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie http://www.amazon.co.uk/Purple-Hibiscus-Chimamanda-Ngozi-Adichie/dp/0007189885/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240648959&sr=1-2
Fifteen year Kambile lives in fear of her father, a charismatic yet violent Catholic patriach who, although generous and well respected in the community, is repressive and fanatically religious at home. Escape and the discovery of new, liberated way of life come when Nigeria is shaken by a military coup, forcing Kambili and her brother to live at their aunt's home, a noisy place full of laughter. The visit will lift the silence from her world and, in time, unlock a terrible, bruising secret at the heart of her family life. 13th March 2009 Eleanors choices for April Jordan returns from California to Utah to visit his mother in jail. As a teenager he was expelled from his family and religious community, a secretive Mormon offshoot sect. Now his father has been found shot dead in front of his computer, and one of his many wives - Jordan's mother - is accused of the crime. Over a century earlier, Ann Eliza Young, the nineteenth wife of Brigham Young, Prophet and Leader of the Mormon Church, tells the sensational story of how her own parents were drawn into plural marriage, and how she herself battled for her freedom and escaped her powerful husband, to lead a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. Bold, shocking and gripping, "The 19th Wife" expertly weaves together these two narratives: a page turning literary mystery and an enthralling epic of love and faith. Nearing her one-hundredth birthday, Roseanne McNulty faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental hospital where she's spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr. Grene, and their relationship intensifies and complicates. Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne's story becomes an alternative, secret history of Ireland's changing character and the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope.
Winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award 2008 The White Tiger by Aravind AdigaWinner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Balram Halwai, the eponymous ‘white tiger’, is a diminutive, overweight ex-teashop worker who now earns his living as a chauffeur. But this is only one side of his protean personality; he deals in confidence scams, over-ambitious business promotions (built on the shakiest of foundations) and enjoys approaching life with a philosophical turn of mind. But is Balram also a murderer? We learn the answer as we devour these 500 odd pages. Born into an impoverished family, Balram is removed from school by his parents in order to earn money in a thankless job: shop employee. He is forced into banal, mind-numbing work. But Balram dreams of escaping -- and a chance arises when a well-heeled village landlord takes him on as a chauffeur for his son (although the duties involve transporting the latter's wife and two Pomeranian dogs). From the rich new perspective offered to him in this more interesting job, Balram discovers New Delhi, and a vision of the city changes his life forever. His learning curve is very steep, and he quickly comes to believe that the way to the top is by the most expedient means. And if that involves committing the odd crime of violence, he persuades himself that this is what successful people must do. 9th February 2009 Sharons choices for March Review
'The death of Primo Levi robs Italy of one of its finest writers...One of the few survivors of the Holocaust to speak of his experiences with a gentle voice' GUARDIAN 'A life-changing book.' Daily Express THE TRUCE: 'One of the century's truly necessary books.' Philip Roth 'One of the greatest human testaments of the era.' SCOTSMAN IF THIS IS A MAN: 'This book is the most profoundly affecting of all those written by survivors of the Holocaust. Sober and passionate, it depicts an experience of the ultimate nightmare related by a man both sensitive and resilient, who speaks for all those made dumb forever.' THE WEEK 'Levi's book still has the power to make one weep of the greatest and alas, the defining atrocity of our century. Yet throughout, the fear, the endless hunger and the pain are leavened by tiny grains of affection, of generosity, even humour. Which is why this masterpiece is not merely terrifying but also endlessly readable. It is, ultimately, about moral as well as physical endurance, about hope, and about the survival of man's unquenchable human spirit.' DAILY MAIL 'Levi builds a serene sense of Man's worth. This is an extraordinarily endearing testament.' LONDON DAILY NEWS 'His tone throughout the memoir is dry-eyed and understated. He makes few references to himself, and they are rarely flattering. But by the end of this short book one is left with a monument to human dignity.' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'In describing Levi's account of his experiences in Nazi camps it is tempting to say that words are not enough, that language crumbles before this unforgettable testament. But the book's achievement is precisely to abjure such hyperbole to name the unnameable. Eschewing a desire for recrimination, Levi offers a lucid document of a descent into hell which is courageous and unflinching.' DAILY TELEGRAPH
Revolutionary road by Richard Yates:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Revolutionary-Road-Richard-Yates/dp/0099518627/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=IULY5WNA5NLS5&colid=G0SZI140ZK9V Originally published in 1961 to great critical acclaim, Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road subsequently fell into obscurity in the UK, only to be rediscovered in a new edition published in 2001. Its rejuvenation is due in large part to its continuing emotional and moral resonance for an early 21st-century readership. April and Frank Wheeler are a young, ostensibly thriving couple living with their two children in a prosperous Connecticut suburb in the mid-1950s. However, like the characters in John Updike's similarly themed Couples, the self-assured exterior masks a creeping frustration at their inability to feel fulfilled or happy in their relationships or careers. Frank is mired in a well-paid but boring office job and April is a housewife still mourning the demise of her hoped-for acting career. Determined to identify themselves as superior to the mediocre sprawl of suburbanites who surround them, they decide to move to France where they will be better able to develop their true artistic sensibilities, free of the consumerist demands of capitalist America. However, as their relationship deteriorates into an endless cycle of squabbling, jealousy and recriminations, their trip and their dreams of self-fulfilment are thrown into jeopardy. Yates's incisive, moving and often very funny prose weaves a tale that is at once a fascinating period piece and a prescient anticipation of the way we live now. Many of the cultural motifs now seem quaintly dated--the early evening cocktails, Frank's illicit lunch breaks with his secretary, the way Frank isn't averse to knocking April around when she speaks out of turn all seem to belong to a different world--and yet the quiet desperation at thwarted dreams reverberates as much now as it did 40 years ago. Like F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, this novel conveys, with brilliant erudition, the poverty at the soul of many wealthy Americans and the exacting cost of chasing the American Dream. --Jane Morris --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Thinly disguised autobiography by James Delingpole:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thinly-Disguised-Autobiography-James-Delingpole/dp/0330493353/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2INK9NXVKZX2J&colid=G0SZI140ZK9V It's 1984 and wearing the bad clothes and bad hairstyle that everyone wore back then because they didn't realise it was the early Eighties, Josh starts his first year at Oxford busting with hopes, ambitions, and ludicrously unrealistic expectations. Brideshead has just been on TV, the Sloane Ranger Handbook has laid down the rules, and now all Josh needs is to find his own Sebastian Flyte (preferably with a tasty sister). But what he also wants to do is to take lots of drugs, hang with the cool set, wear black, lose his virginity, shag lots of chicks and listen to the Smiths and New Order. The two aims, he discovers, are not necessarily compatible. But then very few of his ambitions are, for Josh is a man who wants everything and isn't going to stop until he gets it. Or, at least, until ten years of heavy-duty reality intervene to hint that life might be a touch messier and more complicated than was dreamt of in his philosophy. Thinly Disguised Autobiography is the story of that rude awakening, from the horrors of Fleet Street to the thrills of the LA riots, the Es at the Wag to trips at Glastonbury, from Oxford to London via Venice, Spetses, Laguna Beach and Bromsgove: the highs, 18 January 2009 Joans choices for February On Chesil Beach- Ian Mc Ewan
It is June, 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the wedding night to come ..."On Chesil Beach" is another masterwork from Ian McEwan - a story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
We need to talk about Kevin- Lionel Schriver
The story is narrated by Eva, in letter form, as she writes to her estranged husband. Eva's son, Kevin, is in a juvenile detention centre, as at the age of 15yrs he went on a killing spree at his high school. He killed 7 fellow students, a teacher and a cafeteria worker. Through Eva's letters, the reader is taken through Kevin and her story, going right back into their past, even before Kevin was born. As Eva spills her heart out onto the paper, you are struck by how she is debating the point of just how to blame, if at all, she is for Kevin's actions.This skilfully constructed novel about high-school killings and parenthood raises a huge range of interesting questions. To what extent are parents responsible for the way their children turn out? Where does evil come from? Why do people commit massacres? Cleverly, Lionel Shriver does not answer these questions, but provides plenty of discussion material, for example by making both parents of the evil-doing Kevin deeply (and some!
times maddeningly) flawed. A gripping, harrowing read.
Morvern Callar-Alan Warner
The shock of waking one morning before Christmas to find her man dead on the floor proves less stressful for Morvern Callar, a produce-stacker who lives only for music and the next rave, than the inconvenience of having to deal with his body. She goes to work in her seaside Scottish town, then goes to a club, then an all-night party. But when she finally comes home a few days later, he's still there. So she hauls him into the attic and opens the windows for the winter, availing herself of his CDs and bank account and sending his unpublished novel around as he requested, but passing it off as her own. When warm weather arrives, Morvern has to deal with him again; this time she chops him up and goes on a camping trip to dispose of the pieces. Then, craving a change, she abandons work for a Mediterranean resort, where she spends everything, even a publisher's advance for "her" novel. Broke and jobless, she comes home to find her foster dad making out with her best friend - who ha!
s already confessed to having gone wild with Morvern's boyfriend the night before he cut his throat. But Morvern also finds a letter informing her that the boyfriend's ample inheritance has been left to her, so she immediately heads back to the blue skies, warm beaches, and the resort rave scene - where in her splendid isolation she has an epiphany. On her next return home a few years later, much is changed, but then so is she. Morvern is the raw, resilient voice of a generation, and if this not-quite-ironic tale of redemption and Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting are any indication, the Scottish Beats are already strong contenders for world-class literary status.
18 November 2008 Rachels choices for January The story of the isolated town of Macondo in Colombia and the family who founds it, the Buendías. Civil war begins, bringing violence and death to Macondo. Macondo changes from an idyllic, magical and sheltered town to a place irrevocably connected to the outside world. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera The book begins with a discussion of lightness versus heaviness. Kundera wonders if any weight can be attributed to life. The year is 1968 and the setting is Prague. The novel uses the life and happenings of artists and intellectuals in communist Czechoslovakia to highlight arguements discussed in the opening of the novel. The book centers on the idea that existence is full of unbearable lightness, because each of us has only one life to live: Einmal ist keinmal (once is nonce: "what happened once might never have happened at all"). Therefore, each life is, ultimately, insignificant; every decision, ultimately, does not matter. Since decisions do not matter, they are light, they don't make us suffer: they do not bind, yet simultaneously, the insignificance of our decisions — our lives, our being — is unbearably light, hence, the unbearable lightness of being. The Prestige by Christopher Priest In 1878, two magicians clash in the dark during the course of a fraudulent seance. From this moment on their lives become a web of deceit and revelation as they attempt to outwit and expose each other. Their rivilry takes them to the peak of their career but with terrible consequences. This book was made into a movie in 2006, the movie was an amazing story and I've been dying to read the book ever since. The book won the World Fantasy award and The James Tait Black Memorial Award.
23 October 2008 Lissas choices for November The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The German occupation of the Channel Islands, recalled in letters between a London reporter and an eccentric gaggle of Guernsey islanders.This debut by an "aunt-niece" authorial team presents itself as cozy fiction about comfortably quirky people in a bucolic setting, but it quickly evinces far more serious, and ambitious, intent. In 1946, Juliet, famous for her oxymoronic wartime humor column, is coping with life amid the rubble of London when she receives a letter from a reader, Dawsey, a Guernsey resident who asks her help in finding books by Charles Lamb. After she honors his request, a flurry of letters arrive from Guernsey islanders eager to share recollections of the German occupation of the islands. (Readers may be reminded of the PBS series, Island at War.) When the Germans catch some islanders exiting from a late-night pig roast, the group, as an excuse for violating curfew and food restrictions, invents a book club. The "Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" is born, affording Guernseyites an excuse to meet and share meager repasts. (The Germans have confiscated all the real food.) Juliet's fractious correspondents, including reputed witch Isola, Booker, a Jewish valet who masquerades as a Lord, and many other L&PPPS members, reveal that the absent founder of their society, Elizabeth, loved Christian, a German captain. No one accuses Elizabeth of collaboration (except one crotchety islander, Adelaide) because Christian was genuinely nice. An act of bravery caused Elizabeth's deportation to France, and her whereabouts remain unknown. The Society is raising four-year-old Kit, Elizabeth's daughter by Christian. To the consternation of her editor and friend, Sidney, Juliet is entertaining the overtures, literary and romantic, of a dashing but domineering New York publisher, Markham. When Juliet goes to Guernsey, some hard truths emerge about Elizabeth's fate and defiant courage.
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: or the Murder at Road Hill House - Kate Summerscale amazonIt is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks.The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them. Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects. The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment.A true story that inspired a generation of writers such as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, this has all the hallmarks of the classic murder mystery - a body; a detective; a country house steeped in secrets. Will - Christopher Rush amazonWilliam Shakespeare is dying and his last will and testament needs urgent attention. It is March 1616. Will's lawyer, Francis Collins, is at the Stratford deathbed, and is privy to the great dramatist's final words. The will must be watertight if his client's son-in-law, the execrable Thomas Quiney, is not to benefit by his death, though Will has much to confess before he can explain this and other concerns. On his deathbed, Will unburdens himself. He was a poet for all time, but here he speaks of his time, his loves and his regrets. We hear of the dark ladies Jacqueline Vautrollier and Emilia Bassano, of the captivating Henry Wriothesley.We listen to his chilling eye-witness accounts of the Tyburn executions. We watch young Will roaming the midnight streets and lanes of Stratford and Shottery, sighing for Anne Hathaway; we watch the consummation and decay of that great love. We see him crossing the frozen Thames with the wooden beams that were to become the Globe theatre. We return with him to Stratford to that most heartbreaking of all journeys, the funeral of his only son, Hamnet. In his own final scene Will returns to the work he has written for the stage. Lines from the plays rise to his lips as he recalls the occasions of their making, and we find his life in every one of those lines. Finally, like Prospero he surveys his island of art, and cannot decide whether his great gift has been a blessing or a curse. Irrepressible, shocking, bawdy, witty, extravagant and wise, Will speaks to us across 400 years.
15th September 2008 From Sharon Choices for October meeting: 1. The Complete MAUS by Art Spiegelman I read this recently, the complete collection of the MAUS graphic novels in chronological order. Took me about 3 days to read it (you'll all know that's very quick for me!) and I was stunned just how moving this story told graphically could be (another book to bring me to tears). The various races involved in the Holocaust are depicted by animals and this seems to highlight the meaninglessness of this huge waste of life. It is autobiographical, with the author depicting himself as he records his father's experiences through the Holocaust and bringing some insight into the impact on their relationship. The artwork is incredible. From amazon: Combined for the first time here are Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the children of survivors are in their own way affected by the trials of their parents. A contemporary classic of immeasurable significance. ISBN: 0141014083
2. The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer Never read this, one of those books I've always thought I "should" read. And would probably stir up some interesting discussion? Really quite interested to see whats changed since 1970. From amazon: Probably the most famous, most widely read book on feminism ever. First published in 1970, The Female Eunuch is a landmark in the history of the women's movement. A searing examination of women's oppression. A worldwide bestseller, translated into over 12 languages. ISBN: 0586080554 3. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey This is an autobiographical account of James Frey's experience of drug rehab. Very plainly told and written in a fairly free form conversational style. It is driven by some very interesting, likeable but flawed characters. I love this book, and wasn't put off by later controversies surrounding the degree of artistic licence employed by Frey. From amazon: When he entered a residential treatment centre at the age of twenty-three, James Frey had destroyed his body and his mind almost beyond repair. He faced a stark choice: accept that he wasn’t going to see twenty-four or step into the fallout of his smoking wreck of a life and take drastic action. Surrounded by patients as troubled as he, Frey had to fight to find his own way to confront the consequences of the life he had lived so far, and to determine what future, if any, he has. A Million Little Pieces is an uncommon account of a life destroyed and a life reconstructed.
Review:
James Frey comes to his senses on a plane, his face shattered and his body disintegrating from alcohol and drug abuse. In a desperate attempt to rescue him, his parents take him to a rehabilitation centre, where he must face the demons that have made him a violent, suicidal addict at the age of 23. He discovers a world peopled with despondent, damaged and determined characters. His friends, his family and most of all his beloved Lilly teach Frey how to love again. Frey's journey from the degradation of substance abuse to moral and spiritual redemption is as immaculately paced and structured as a novel. This bittersweet memoir is written with searing honesty. It is unflinching and devoid of self-pity, but filled with love and understanding for Frey's fellow-sufferers and his family. Uplifting, challenging and devastating in turns, this beautifully written book is poignant and compelling to the very end. (Kirkus UK)
Hope everyone can identify one of those they'd be happy to vote for! Sharon 1 Sept 2008 From Eleanor We now have no-one on the calender to host meetings beyond August. I'll ask at the next meeting on Thursday to see if anyone is keen. If you arent able to come on thursday, but want to get your name down on the calender please let me know. 28 July 2008 Claires choices for August meeting 1. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant. An enchanting debut and a spellbinding tale of fate and belief in the bonds of love, The Time Traveler's Wife is destined to captivate readers for years to come. 2. On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan It is June, 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the wedding night to come ..."On Chesil Beach" is another masterwork from Ian McEwan - a story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken. 3. Conversations with God, Book 1 - Neale Donald Walsch Conversations with God started when the author in the midst of a frustrating low-point in his life wrote a letter to God and was replied to. The book takes the format of the author questioning and God answering him. The theme that runs continually through the book is to remember our divine origins. Walsch's book makes God accessible in an almost secular way, different to our Bible-based one. An immediate,humorous, "guy next door kinda God" reminding us of basic truths. Thebook is written for Westerners and is practical and daily-life oriented,with answers on sexuality, money, relationships and health amongst many others. Conversations with God has the potential to reprogramme you to see the divine and spirituality in a totally new light. 23 June 2008 Shahidas choices for July meeting Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimanda Ngozi Adichie
In 1960s Nigeria, a country blighted by civil war, three lives intersect. Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university lecturer. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover, the professor. The third is Richard, a shy Englishman in thrall to Olanna's enigmatic twin sister. When the shocking horror of the war engulfs them, their loyalties are severly tested as they are pulled apart and thrown together in ways that none of them imagined.....
The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards
Families have secrects they hide even from themselves ....
It should have been an ordinary birth, the start of an ordinary happy family. But the night Dr David Henry delivers his wife's twins is a night that will haunt five lives for ever.
For though David's son is a healthy boy, his daughter has Down's syndrome. And, in a shocking act of betrayal whose consequences only time will reveal, he tells his wife their daughter died while secretly entrusting her care to a nurse.
A grief quietly tear apart David's family, so a little girl must make her own way in the world as best she can.
Bound Feet & Western Dress - Pang-Mei Natasha Chang
'In China, a woman is nothing', began Yu-i over tea and dumplings. 'This is the first lesson I want to give so that you will understand.' Growing up in the perilous years between the fall of the last Emporor and the Communist Revolution, Yu-i led a life marked by a series of rebellions that changed the course of her life, including the first and most lasting: her refusal to have her feet bound. And as Yu-i confides her innermost dreams and demons, Pang-Mei comes to understand something of her own ambivalence regarding her Chinese heritage - and the ever-present tug between familial duty and desire.
Bound Feet & Western Dress is an exquisitely written dual memoir that tells the story of independent women struggling to emerge from centuries of custom and tradition, a deeply textured portait which braids a woman's life in China with the very Western story of a young woman's search for identity and belonging.
16 May 2008 Eleanors Choices for June meeting The Shipping News by Annie Proulx Quoyle is a hapless, hopeless hack journalist living and working in New York. When his no-good wife is killed in a spectacular road accident, Quoyle heads for the land of his forefathers -- the remotest corner of far-flung Newfoundland. With 'the aunt' and his delinquent daughters -- Bunny and Sunshine -- in tow, Quoyle finds himself part of an unfolding, exhilarating Atlantic drama. The Shipping News is an irresistible comedy of human life and possibility. Life Of Pi by Yann Martel Some books defy categorisation: Life of Pi, the second novel from Canadian writer Yann Martel, is a case in point: just about the only thing you can say for certain about it is that it is fiercely and admirably unique. The plot, if that’s the right word, concerns the oceanic wanderings of a lost boy, the young and eager Piscine Patel of the title (Pi). After a colourful and loving upbringing in gorgeously-hued India, the Muslim-Christian-animistic Pi sets off for a fresh start in Canada. His blissful voyage is rudely interrupted when his boat is scuppered halfway across the Pacific, and he is forced to rough it in a lifeboat with a hyena, a monkey, a whingeing zebra and a tiger called Richard. That would be bad enough, but from here on things get weirder: the animals start slaughtering each other in a veritable frenzy of allegorical bloodlust, until Richard the tiger and Pi are left alone to wander the wastes of ocean, with plenty of time to ponder their fate, the cruelty of the gods, the best way to handle storms and the various different recipes for oothappam, scrapple and coconut yam kootu. The denouement is pleasantly neat. According to the blurb, thirtysomething Yann Martel spent long years in Alaska, India, Mexico, France, Costa Rica, Turkey and Iran, before settling in Canada. All those cultures and more have been poured into this spicy, vivacious, kinetic and very entertaining fiction. A Quiet Belief in Angels by RJ Ellory Joseph Vaughan's life has been dogged by tragedy. Growing up in the 1950s, he was at the centre of series of killings of young girls in his small rural community. The girls were taken, assaulted and left horribly mutilated. Barely a teenager himself, Joseph becomes determined to try to protect his community and classmates from the predations of the killer. But despite banding together with his friends as 'Guardians', he was powerless to prevent more murders - and no one was ever caught. Only after a full ten years did the nightmare end when the one of his neighbours is found hanging from a rope - with articles from the dead girls around him. Thankfully though, the killings finally ceased. Ill-fortune was not yet done with Joseph though and in desperation he leaves the town of his birth to forge a new life in New York. But the past won't leave him alone - for it seems that the real murderer still lives and is killing again. And the secret of his identity lies in Joseph's own history?
22 April 2008 Clares choices for the May meeting:We Need to Talk About Kevin - by Lionel Shriver
Two years ago, Eva Khatchadourian's son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker, and a popular algebra teacher. Because he was only fifteen at the time of the killings, he received a lenient sentence and is now in a prison for young offenders in upstate New York. Telling the story of Kevin's upbringing, Eva addresses herself to her estranged husband through a series of letters. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about both motherhood in general and Kevin in particular. How much is her fault? Lionel Shriver tells a compelling, absorbing, and resonant story while framing these horrifying tableaux of teenage carnage as metaphors for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be
bought but a sense of purpose.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
1939 - Nazi Germany - The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier. Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall. Some important information - this novel is narrated by death. It's a small story, about: a girl; an accordionist; some fanatical Germans; a Jewish fist fighter; and quite a lot of thievery. Another thing you should know - death will visit the book thief three times.
Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart by Tim Butcher
When "Daily Telegraph" correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to cover Africa in 2000 he quickly became obsessed with the idea of recreating H. M. Stanley's famous expedition - but travelling alone. Despite warnings that his plan was 'suicidal', Butcher set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden
in his boots. Making his way in an assortment of vessels including a motorbike and a dugout canoe, helped along by a cast of characters from UN aid workers to a campaigning pygmy, he followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian adventurers. Butcher's journey was a remarkable feat, but the story of the Congo, told expertly and vividly in this book,
is more remarkable still.3rd March 2008 (Sharon) While everyone is just getting started with "Interpretation of Murder" I've already been thinking about book choices for April, at my house. Here are my three choices, two are not very new so I hope I haven't limited everyones vote by including things you may have read already. I haven't read any of them, so I'll post the amazon synopses here too. Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold Amazon.co.uk Review
With romance, magic and science as its central themes, Glen David Gold's impressive debut Carter Beats The Devil is an inspired delight, a dazzling combination of fact and fiction. Charles Carter is given his stage name "Carter the Great" by the legendary Harry Houdini and the jazz age of the early 1900s is clearly well researched, yet the romance and strong cast of characters must owe more to the imagination than to history.
The novel begins in 1923 with the most daring performance of Carter's life. Unfortunately, two hours into the performance, US President Harding is dead and the magician must flee the country, pursued by the Secret Service. This is only an instalment in Carter's amazing life though as we are guided from his childhood, where both the family servant and a circus freak bullied him, to his rise to stardom and his eventual performance in front of the president. Subsequently, the protagonist is crippled by loneliness, widowed and hunted down by those who believe him a murderer and yet he rises again and again to delight and fulfil the highest expectations of his audience. The strong narrative and storyline make for a compelling read. And Carter is such a magical character that you cannot fail to be touched by him--loving whom he does and hating his enemies. This is an ambitious and compulsive novel and deserves all the praise that Carter himself received and more.
A Quiet Belief in Angels by RJ Ellory Joseph Vaughan's life has been dogged by tragedy. Growing up in the 1950s, he was at the centre of series of killings of young girls in his small rural community. The girls were taken, assaulted and left horribly mutilated. Barely a teenager himself, Joseph becomes determined to try to protect his community and classmates from the predations of the killer. But despite banding together with his friends as 'Guardians', he was powerless to prevent more murders - and no one was ever caught. Only after a full ten years did the nightmare end when the one of his neighbours is found hanging from a rope - with articles from the dead girls around him. Thankfully though, the killings finally ceased. Ill-fortune was not yet done with Joseph though and in desperation he leaves the town of his birth to forge a new life in New York. But the past won't leave him alone - for it seems that the real murderer still lives and is killing again. And the secret of his identity lies in Joseph's own history?
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami Amazon.co.uk Review
"I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me" "Norwegian Wood" (Lennon/McCartney).
With Norwegian Wood Murakami, best known as the author of off-kilter classics such as the Wind Up Bird Chronicle, A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard Boiled Wonderland, finally achieved widespread acclaim in his native Japan. The novel sold upwards of 4 million copies and forced the author to retreat to Europe, fearful of the expectations accompanying his new-found cult status
The novel is atypical for Murakami: seemingly autobiographical, in the tradition of many Japanese "I" novels, Norwegian Wood is a simple coming of age tale set, primarily, in 1969/70, the time of Murakami's own university years. The political upheavals and student strikes of the period form the backdrop of the novel but the focus here is the young Watanabe's love affairs and the pain (and pleasure) of growing up with all its attendant losses, (self-)obsessions and crises.
The novel is split into two volumes and beautifully presented here in a "gold" box containing both the green book and the red book. Young Japanese fans became so obsessed with the work that they would dress entirely in one or other colour denoting which volume they most identified with. And the novel is hugely affecting, reading like a cross between Plath's Bell Jar and Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women, if less complex and ultimately less satisfying than Murakami's other, more allegorical, work. He captures the huge expectation of youth, and of this particular time in history, for the future and for the place of love in it. He also saturates the work with sadness, an emotion that can cripple a novel but which here underscores the poignancy of the work's rather thin subject matter.
Synopsis:
When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past. Feel free to get in touch if you've read these, if lots of folk have read two and don't really have a choice there's time enough for me to think again! See you at the end of the month.
25th February 2008 Hello all, ahead of this weeks book group when we will be discussing George Orwells 1984, here are the book choices we will be voting on for March (with descriptions from Amazon): An interpretation of murder by Jed Rubenfeld Experienced readers of crime and thrillers tend to stifle a yawn these days when they encounter a mountain of hype about a new book or author. But the fevered word of mouth that has been generated by Jed Rubenfeld’s The Interpretation of Murder is, for once, justified. This is a remarkably ambitious book, taking on a powerful suspenseful narrative, assiduously researched historical detail and a brilliant evocation of time and character. It's not surprising that the book has already been sold in 20 different countries, and is already something of an international publishing phenomenon. The secret, of course, is in plotting, and few carry this off as adroitly as the author does here. But there is some wonderful historical detail here also, and a conjuring up of real-life characters that is very intelligently done.
Despite the outward success of his visit to the USA, Sigmund Freud always spoke as if some trauma had befallen him there. He blamed the country for physical ailments that afflicted him long before his visit. Freud’s biographers have been bemused by his reaction, wondering whether some terrible unknown event might have happened in America that could explain this. The Interpretation of Murder is strikingly written literary thriller constructed around Freud’s American visit. An attractive young debutante is discovered bound, whipped and strangled in a luxurious New York apartment and another society beauty narrowly escapes the same fate. But nothing about the attacks--or the victims--is as it seems.
The gathering by Ann Enwright The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that killed him - although that certainly helped - it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother's house, in the winter of 1968. His sister Veronica was there then, as she is now: keeping the dead man company, just for another little while."The Gathering" is a family epic, condensed and clarified through the remarkable lens of Anne Enright's unblinking eye. It is also a sexual history: tracing the line of hurt and redemption through three generations - starting with the grandmother, Ada Merriman - showing how memories warp and family secrets fester. This is a novel about love and disappointment, about thwarted lust and limitless desire, and how our fate is written in the body, not in the stars. "The Gathering" sends fresh blood through the Irish literary tradition, combining the lyricism of the old with the shock of the new. As in all Anne Enright's work, fiction and non-fiction, this is a book of daring, wit and insight: her distinctive intelligence twisting the world a fraction, and giving it back to us in a new and unforgettable light.
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell It's a dank January in the Worcestershire village of Black Swan Green and thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor -- covert stammerer and reluctant poet -- anticipates a stultifying year in the deadest village on Earth. But Jason hasn't reckoned with a junta of bullies, simmering family discord, the Falklands War, an exotic Belgian emigre, a threatened gypsy invasion and the caprices of those mysterious entities known as girls. BLACK SWAN GREEN charts thirteen months in the black hole between childhood and adolescence, set against the sunset of an agrarian England still overshadowed by the Cold War. Wry, painful, funny and vibrant with the stuff of life, it is David Mitchell's subtlest and most captivating achievement to date. 21st October 2007 November book choices from Heather: The Siege (Paperback)
by Helen Dunmore
Synopsis
Leningrad, September 1941. German tanks surround the city, imprisoning those who live there. The besieged people of Leningrad face shells, starvation, and the Russian winter. Interweaving two love affairs in two generations, THE SIEGE draws us deep into the Levin's family struggle to stay alive during this terrible winter. It is a story about war and the wounds it inflicts on people's lives. It is also a lyrical and deeply moving celebration of love, life and survival
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Paperback)
by Patrick Suskind
Synopsis
Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets of Paris as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in all the city. Yet, there is one odour he cannot capture. It is exquisite, magical: the scent of a young virgin. And, to get it, he must kill. And kill. And kill...
The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Paperback)
by Mitch Albom
Synopsis
THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN is a wonderfully moving fable that addresses the meaning of life, and life after death, in the poignant way that made TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE such an astonishing book. The novel's protagonist is an elderly amusement park maintenance worker named Eddie who, while operating a ride called the 'Free Fall', dies while trying to save a young girl who gets in the way of a falling cart that hurtles to earth. Eddie goes to heaven, where he meets five people who were unexpectedly instrumental in some way in his life. While each guide takes him through heaven, Eddie learns a little bit more about what his time on earth meant, what he was supposed to have learned, and what his true purpose on earth was. Throughout there are dramatic flashbacks where we see scenes from his troubled childhood, his years in the army in the Philippines jungle, and with his first and only love, his wife Marguerite. THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN is the perfect book to follow TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE. Its compellingly affecting themes and lyrical writing will fascinate Mitch Albom's huge readership.
27th September 2007 Thanks to all who attended the meeting this evening. And thanks to Jon for hosting (on his birthday) and providing our wine and snacks...especialy the Mars Bar cakes! The group review of Mrs Dalloway will be posted shortly. A few things were agreed about the next few meetings: It was generally felt that it is probably easier and preferable to make a choice of book when the options have been posted in advance and the next host is present to describe the choices so it was suggested that Esther might prefer to host at a later date when she is able to attend. I'll be checking with Esther if she can go ahead with the November meeting. If not, I'll send round an email looking for a volunteer to both host in November and, ideally, forward some choices at least a week ahead of the October meeting and attend in October to describe them.
The Christmas meeting plans were discussed. The meeting will be on the 13th December at a bar or restaurant to be arranged for drinks and snacks. There will be no book from the Nov meeting to read for Dec, as the time between meetings is short. Instead we'll all be bringing our favourite/interesting books to swap (for a loan!). Paul will also bring his choices to the Dec meeting, for discussion in the January meeting.
30th August 2007 Joan passes on her thanks to all who attended this months book group. The book chosen for next month was Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Jon will be emailing on directions/address. It was suggested at the end of the meeting that I email everyone on the current contact list as request that people "opt in" to remain on the email list. That is, everyone I dont hear back from will be taken off the list. A few people have dropped out along the way and this is to prevent the continued emailling around of addresses etc to people who are no longer interested. Please send me a quick reply if you wish to remain on the list even if you haven't made it along to the last meeting, thanks! 1st August 2007 Jon has sent me his 3 choices for the September meeting. We'll vote at this months meeting. Fairly eclectic choices, Jon describes his interest in the books below: Firstly 'Mrs Dalloway' by Virginia Woolf. I love this book- it's got some of the most beatiful descriptions and metaphors I've read, and is one of those books for which the term 'stream of conciousness' was created (see, I do remember some of my English classes ;-) ). It's a really nice character portrait, as well as a window onto the values of the time and Woolf's view of them. Summary from Amazon: "Clarissa Dalloway is civilised -without the ostentation of a socialite, but with enough distinction to attract them to her parties. She finds excess offensive, but surrounds herself with the highest quality and has an abhorrence for anything ugly or awkward. Mrs. Dalloway is as much a character study as it is a commentary on the ills and benefits society gleans from class. Through Virginia Woolf, we spend a day with Clarissa as she interacts with servants, her children, her husband, and even an ex-lover. As she plans and executes one of her celebrated parties, she reveals inner machinations incongruous with her class-defined behaviors, that ultimately enable her to transcend them." Secondly, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' by Philip K Dick. This is the book upon which the film 'Bladerunner' was fairly loosely based, and people say Dick is one of the better sci-fi authors so I've been meaning to read this for a while. Amazon says: "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a book that most people think they remember, and almost always get more or less wrong. Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner took a lot from it, and threw a lot away; wonderful in itself, it is a flash thriller where Dick's novel is a sober meditation. As we all know, bounty hunter Rick Deckard is stalking a group of androids returned from space with short life spans and murder on their minds -where Scott's Deckard was Harrison Ford, Dick's is a financially over-stretched municipal employee with bills to pay and a depressed wife. In a world where most animals have died, and pet-keeping is a social duty, he can only afford a robot imitation, unless he gets a big financial break. The genetically warped "chickenhead" John Isidore has visions of a tomb-world where entropy has finally won. And everyone plugs in to the spiritual agony of Mercer, whose sufferings for the sins of humanity are broadcast several times a day. Prefiguring the religious obsessions of Dick's last novels, this asks dark questions about identity and altruism. After all, is it right to kill the killers just because Mercer says so? --/Roz Kaveney/" Thirdly I'm going to go out on a limb, which may subsequently get chopped off, but hey. Following the 'any genre' philosophy, I'm going to suggest a non-fiction book, Guy Deutscher's 'The Unfolding of Language'- a sort of pop linguistics book. I had a hankering to understand something more about how language works and read this. It's pretty easy to read, and I was telling the useful titbits I got from it to friends and family alike for weeks. The last plundering of Amazon: "'Language is mankind's greatest invention - except of course, that it was never invented.' So begins Guy Deutscher's enthralling investigation into the evolution of language. No one believes that the Roman Senate sat down one day to design the complex system that is Latin grammar, and few believe, these days, in the literal truth of the story of the Tower of Babel. But then how did there come to be so many languages, and of such elaborate design? If we started off with rudimentary utterances on the level of 'man throw spear', how did we end up with sophisticated grammars, enormous vocabularies, and intricately nuanced shades of meaning? Drawing on recent, groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics, Deutscher exposes the elusive forces of creation at work in human communication. Along the way, we learn why German maidens are neuter while German turnips are female, why we have feet not foots, and how great changes of pronunciation may result from simple laziness..." 25th July 2007 Three choices from Joan for the August book group:
A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby
'Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block?' For disgraced TV presenter Martin Sharp the answer's pretty simple: he has, in his own words, pissed his life away'. And on New Year's Eve, he's going to end it all. But not, as it happens, alone. Because first single-mum Maureen, then eighteen-year-old Jess and lastly American rock-god JJ turn up and crash Martin's private party. They've stolen his idea, but brought their own reasons. Yet it's hard to jump when you've got an audience queuing impatiently behind you. A few heated words and some slices of cold pizza later, and these four strangers are suddenly allies. But is their unlikely friendship a good enough reason to carry on living?
Saturday, by Ian McEwan
Amazon.co.uk Review
The critical response to Saturday must be making Ian McEwan a very happy man (not that his virtually unassailable position as Britain’s leading novelist has been in doubt). While contemporaries (and rivals) Martin Amis and Will Self have had much more hit-or-miss records recently, each new McEwan novel gleans a host of plaudits, and Atonement has been generally hailed as his masterpiece. Saturday may not enjoy quite such acclaim, but it’s a remarkably accomplished piece of work, as richly drawn and characterised as anything he has written.
McEwan's protagonist is neurosurgeon Henry Perowne, a man comfortably ensconced in an enviable upper middle class existence. His wife is a successful newspaper lawyer, his daughter Daisy a budding poet. But as he wakes one Saturday morning and witnesses a plane accident through his window, he is not yet aware that this is a harbinger of a sustained assault on all that he holds dear. It’s a McEwan trademark to begin his novels with a striking or violent rupture of everyday existence, but this opening is a prelude to his most impressively sustained narrative yet. It’s the publication day of Henry’s daughter's poetry collection, but a chance encounter with a drunken trio emerging from a lap-dancing club ends violently, even as a march against the war in Iraq streams past nearby. And this encounter with the menacing Baxter, main antagonist of the group, is to have fateful consequences. As Saturday progresses, Henry is forced to examine every aspect of his life and beliefs, not least his attitude to the war.
Unlike many of his peers, McEwan is not content to reduce the issues of the war to simple opposition, in which Tony Blair is characterised as a war criminal. Henry has treated a victim of Saddam's brutality, and although a comic encounter with the Prime Minister himself is a highlight of the book, both Henry (and his creator) are obliged to consider the complex skein of the conflict from all sides. While there are missteps (the poetic daughter, Daisy, is thinly drawn), McEwan's invigorating and trenchant novel is an unmissable experience. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Love in a Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This love story, translated from the Spanish, tells the story of Florentino Ariza who has loved Fermina Daza for 50 years. When her husband dies, his chance for happiness comes.
24th July 2007 The group has been contacted by BBC Radio 4 regarding recording a "live" bookgroup at the DCA in September 2007. The chosen book is Joseph Knight, by James Robertson. They are looking for readers to come along, who would be willing and confident enough to ask questions.
They are particularly looking for some men because all takers so far are female! Get in touch with me for the contact details. Tickets are required for admission. Eleanor will have the original email request at the meeting on Thursday. Further details in the meantime:
18th June 2007 -Eleanor's choices for meeting 2 Eleanor has come up with three choices for the second meeting. We'll vote on this at the end of the first meeting. But in case you want to get thinking about it early (and to allow remote members to get a vote in), here they are: C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too...
by John Diamond
Once upon a time, being "unwell" meant a columnist was, how shall we put it, indisposed. Now, being truly unwell is no excuse for not filing your copy, and the resulting column is in danger of becoming something of a genre. If so, then here is its best exponent. John Diamond was just a common-or-garden Times columnist, a "sometime smoking, unexercised and overweight man of fortyish", and, being an expert hypochondriac, expectantly waiting for his first heart attack. Until 27 March 1997. Then he was diagnosed as having cancer. C is his "attempt to write the book I was looking for the night I got the bad news." C is a blow-by-blow account of the progress of his cancer and its various treatments, interlaced with forays into the daunting medical literature, autobiographical reminiscences, and meditative reflections on what this all means. As a guide to cancer, Diamond is usefully knowledgeable, able to cut through the medical profession's defensive euphemisms and tell us what's really going on. As a guide to himself, Diamond is unstintingly honest, so we get the whole man with all his personal strengths and foibles, and it's actually difficult to read the prognosis with which he leaves us. And to produce that degree of engagement is an achievement for any writer. --Alan Stewart
Synopsis
Shortly before his 44th birthday, John Diamond received a call from the doctor who had removed a lump from his neck. Having been assured for the previous 2 years that this was a benign cyst, Diamond was told that it was cancerous. This is the story of Diamond's life with, and without, a lump.
The Kite Runner (Paperback)
by Khaled Hosseini
The Kite Runner of Khaled Hosseini's deeply moving fiction debut is an illiterate Afghan boy with an uncanny instinct for predicting exactly where a downed kite will land. Growing up in the city of Kabul in the early 1970s, Hassan was narrator Amir's closest friend even though the loyal 11-year-old with "a face like a Chinese doll" was the son of Amir's father's servant and a member of Afghanistan's despised Hazara minority. But in 1975, on the day of Kabul's annual kite-fighting tournament, something unspeakable happened between the two boys. Narrated by Amir, a 40-year-old novelist living in California, The Kite Runner tells the gripping story of a boyhood friendship destroyed by jealousy, fear, and the kind of ruthless evil that transcends mere politics. Running parallel to this personal narrative of loss and redemption is the story of modern Afghanistan and of Amir's equally guilt-ridden relationship with the war-torn city of his birth. The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner begins in the final days of King Zahir Shah's 40-year reign and traces the country's fall from a secluded oasis to a tank-strewn battlefield controlled by the Russians and then the trigger-happy Taliban. When Amir returns to Kabul to rescue Hassan's orphaned child, the personal and the political get tangled together in a plot that is as suspenseful as it is taut with feeling.
The son of an Afghan diplomat whose family received political asylum in the United States in 1980, Hosseini combines the unflinching realism of a war correspondent with the satisfying emotional pull of master storytellers such as Rohinton Mistry. Like the kite that is its central image, the story line of this mesmerizing first novel occasionally dips and seems almost to dive to the ground. But Hosseini ultimately keeps everything airborne until his heartrending conclusion in an American picnic park.
Chart Throb (Paperback)
by Ben EltonA biting social satire of one of the world's most popular cultural phenomena from the bestselling author of The First Casualty.
Chart Throb is the ultimate pop quest. There are ninety five thousand hopefuls, three judges, just one winner. And that's Calvin Simms, the genius behind the show. Calvin always wins because Calvin writes the rules. But this year, as he sits smugly in judgement upon the mingers, clingers and blingers whom he has pre-selected in his carefully scripted 'search' for a star, he has no idea that the rules are changing. The 'real' is about to be put back into 'reality' television and Calvin and his fellow judges (the nation's favourite mum and the other bloke) are about to become ex-factors themselves. Ben Elton, author of "Popcorn" and "Dead Famous" returns to blistering comic satire with a savagely hilarious deconstruction of the world of modern television talent shows. Chart Throb has one winner and a whole bunch of losers.
13th June 2007 -Sharon There have been a lot of emails this week about joining the group. Anyone who hasnt had a reply yet, please bear with me. I'll be in touch by the end of the week. 8th June 2007 -Hazel passed on the following message: Waterstones are selling The Road for £3.99 just now and also you can tell the members to try greenmetropolis.com for second hand books for £3.75. 6th June 2007 -Sharon: Eleanor mentioned that there might be an availability problem with "The Road". Sorry! There didnt seem to be a problem just a few days ago but it has now sold out on amazon. I've just phoned Borders (near the City Quay by the new JJB gym) and they tell me that they have just have 35 copies of the paperback edition delivered. But I was warned that it is a popular book group choice.... 25th May 2007- Sharon: After some asking around and a "poster campaign" we now have around 10 members. I'm waiting for confirmation from all, then as the first host I'll be emailling out a choice of two books (I'm still making up my mind), date of the first meeting (likely to be the last Thursday in June; please do let me know if that doesnt suit you as it can be changed if it is a problem for a number of you) and finally, directions to my house. Don't worry if you can't make the first meeting; read the book and email comments and a rating (out of 10) and catch up at the next meeting. Please reply promptly with your preferred choice of book. I'll post the winning book on the Calendar and send out an email. Parking will be a problem at my place so car shares /asking an obliging partner to drop you off is recommended. Let me know what area you are travelling from and I can put appropriate co-travellers in touch. Many apologies for the sheer number of emails in organising the first meeting, it shouldn't be necessary in future. | |
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