Just before our half term holiday, we had our first book club meeting of the year. It’s so hard, sometimes, to arrange a time to meet in a school as busy as ours, and sometimes you just have to make a date, and hope that people come! Well, they did and we had a great catch up with what we had read over the past few weeks and reflected on the wonderful day we had had in London back in November at The Reading Agency when we participated in English PEN’s ‘From one reader to another’ event – more of this later.
Please see details below of our reading, in case you feel inspired to take a look:
| Persuasion | Jane Austen |
| Reasons to stay alive | Matt Haig (great exploration of the author’s own experience of depression and how there is a way through, turn to literature and mindfulness) |
| Sagan, Paris 1954
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Anne Berest (in translation – about the year when 18 year-old Françoise Sagan published her much-acclaimed novel Bonjour tristesse) |
| The shock of the fall | Nathan Filer (great reviews for this debut novel, well-written and observed, about a young man and how his mental health deteriorates, but not all doom and gloom) |
| The light between oceans | M L Stedman (a boat washes up on the shore of an island containing the body of a dead man and a crying baby, the lighthouse keeper and his wife have to decide what to do). |
| The age of miracles | Karen Thompson Walker (the world starts slowing down with days and nights becoming longer: what effect would this phenomenon have on the world?) |
| Disclaimer | Renée Knight (cleverly written thriller, a woman starts reading a book which turns out to be about her, and a secret that only she thought she knew) |
| The widow
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Fiona Barton (psychological thriller, after a man’s death, his past is dragged up as it is thought that he had abducted a child…) |
| After you | Jojo Moyes (sequel to Moyes’s Me before you, where we follow what happens to Louisa after Will’s death) |
| The memory book | Rowan Coleman (well-written novel by local author about a woman who develops early onset Alzheimers, and how her she and her family deal with it, again not all doom and gloom) |
The next meeting will be held on Tuesday 15th March when we will be discussing Sarah Waters’s novel The paying guests and Blood ties by Julie Shaw. I shall report back with our thoughts on these novels shortly afterwards.
On Saturday 14th November, 2015, we were lucky enough to be chosen to participate in a day of reading group activities based at The Free Word Centre in London, hosted jointly by English PEN and The Free Word Centre. ‘From one reader to another’ offered us the opportunity to read two books in translation:
- Dreams from the endz Faïza Guène
- Compartment no. 6 Rosa Liksom
We discussed each book with a different reading group, one based at English PEN itself and the other from a library reading group based in East London. We had a fascinating discussion and met some interesting people through a mutual love of reading. We listened to Jessie Burton talk about books which had inspired her to read and then to write her wonderful novel, The miniaturist. We were treated to a translation duel of a text from its native Polish into English which was exceedingly enjoyable, and then heard about the work of a reading group coordinator based in a prison. It’s easy to forget how literacy can enable and empower, he was telling us how those who’d participated had found that reading had improved their literacy to such an extent that they felt determined to improve their lives on leaving prison. We had an amazing experience and would like to thank all at English PEN and The Free Word Centre.
“He had always been scared of flying. Now, the fear is real. A plane crash. The water is rising over his mouth. In his nostrils. Lungs. As Daniel gasps, he swallows; and punches at his seat-belt. Nancy, the woman he loves, is trapped in her seat. He clambers over her, pushing her face into the headrest. It is a reflex, visceral action made without rational thought… But Daniel Kennedy did it. And already we have judged him from the comfort of our own lives. Almost a hundred years earlier, Daniel’s great-grandfather goes over the top at Passchendaele. A shell explodes, and he wakes up alone and lost in the hell of no-man’s-land. Where are the others? Has he been left behind? And if he doesn’t find his unit, is he a deserter? Love; cowardice; trust; forgiveness. How will any of us behave when we are pushed to extremes?” NielsenBookDataOnline
“Two police officers knock on Laura’s door and her life changes forever. They tell her that her nine-year old daughter Betty has been hit by a car and killed. When justice is slow to arrive, Laura decides to take her own revenge and begins to track down the man responsible. Laura’s grief also re-opens old wounds and she is thrown back to the story of her passionate love affair with Betty’s father David, their marriage and his subsequent affair with another woman. Haunted by her past, and driven to breaking point by her desire for retribution, Laura discovers the lengths she is willing to go to for love. “Whatever You Love” is a heart-wrenching novel of revenge, compulsion and desire from acclaimed novelist Louise Doughty” NielsenBookDataOnline
“‘An unknown place’. This was what Michael Frayn’s children called the shadowy landscape of the past from which their family had emerged. In this book, he sets out to rediscover that lost land before all trace of it finally disappears beyond recall. As he tries to see it through the eyes his parents and the others who shaped his life, he comes to realise how little he ever knew or understood about them. This is above all the story of his father, the quick-witted boy from a poor and struggling family, who overcame so many disadvantages and shouldered so many burdens to make a go of his life; who found happiness, had it snatched away from him in a single instant, and in the end, after many difficulties, perhaps found it again. Father and son were in some odd ways ridiculously alike, in others ridiculously different; and the journey back down the corridors of time is sometimes comic, sometimes painful, as Michael Frayn comes to see how much he has inherited from his father – and makes one or two surprising discoveries about both of them along the way…” NielsenBookDataOnline
“A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a shocking impulse purchase. That one moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy’s humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger at every turn. Witnesses to Tracy’s outrageous exchange in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie who has returned to his home county in search of someone else’s roots. All three characters learn that the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished. Kate Atkinson dovetails and counterpoints her plots with Dickensian brilliance in a tale peopled with unlikely heroes and villains . Started Early, Took My Dog is freighted with wit, wisdom and a fierce moral intelligence. It confirms Kate Atkinson’s position as one of the great writers of our time.” NielsenBookDataOnline
