The September meeting of the group discussed David Nicholls’ ubiquitous novel One Day. Those who attended the session had enjoyed this very readable and entertaining novel which focuses on what initially seems a casual relationship formed between Emma and Dexter, two recently graduated students on the crest of a wave, with most of their lives yet [...]
Filed under: Book review, London, New Cross reading group, Romance | Tagged: David Nicholls | 1 Comment »
August’s meeting discussed the novel Room by Emma Donoghue. What they say about it “Part childhood adventure story, part adult thriller, Room is above all the most vivid, radiant and beautiful expression of maternal love I have ever read. Emma Donoghue has stared into the abyss, honoured her sources and returned with the literary equivalent [...]
Filed under: Book review, Children, Crime, Gay/Lesbian, Manor House reading group, Women | Tagged: Emma Donoghue | Leave a Comment »
Blind Eye: Stuart MacBride MacBride does for Krakow and Warsaw tourism what he’s been doing for the granite city of Aberdeen for years in this one. I felt that the story suffered when the setting changed, but it was essential to the plotline and illustrates how gang warfare is going global. As always DI Steel [...]
Filed under: Book review, Crime | Tagged: Steve Mosby, Stuart MacBride | Leave a Comment »
What they say about it After a chance encounter on a train the English teacher William Bradshaw starts a close friendship with the mildly sinister Arthur Norris. Norris is a man of contradictions; lavish but heavily in debt, excessively polite but sexually deviant. First published in 1933 Mr Norris Changes Trains piquantly evokes the atmosphere [...]
Filed under: Book review, History, Politics | Tagged: Christopher Isherwood | Leave a Comment »
The July meeting of the group discussed One Day by David Nicholls. What they say “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 [...]
Filed under: Book review, Culture, Manor House reading group, Music, Politics, Romance, Women | Tagged: David Nicholls | Leave a Comment »
The August meeting of the group discussed Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help. Those who attended the session had enjoyed this compelling novel which presents vividly drawn characters like Aibileen and Minny who, from page one, give voice to their experience of life in a closed community in Mississippi, where, as black maids employed during the [...]
Filed under: America, Book review, Family, History, New Cross reading group, Racism, Women | Tagged: Kathryn Stockett | Leave a Comment »
The July meeting of the LCRG looked at Jo Nesbø’s hugely successful novel The Snowman. What they say about it The night the first snow falls a young boy wakes to find his mother gone. He walks through the silent house, but finds only wet footprints on the stairs. In the garden looms a solitary [...]
Filed under: Book review, Crime, Death, Lewisham crime reading group, Scandinavian crime fiction, Spooky | Tagged: Jo Nesbo | Leave a Comment »
When the author of The Hayseed Chronicles, Arthur Hayman, is mown down by a concrete truck in Soho, his legacy passes to his widow, Martha, and her children – the fragile Rachel, and Luke, reluctantly immortalised as Luke Hayseed, the central character of his father’s books. But others want their share, particularly Laurie, who has [...]
Filed under: Book review, Children, Family | Tagged: Charles Elton | Leave a Comment »
This month the group read the 2008 Booker prize winner, The White Tiger by Aravid Adiga. Overall the group “really enjoyed this book” , despite “finding a lot of sadness in it.” The story telling was remarkably vivid and one reading group member described it as ”a semi parable”. The following review by Adam Lively from The [...]
Filed under: Awards, Book review, Crime, Culture, Death, Forest Hill reading group, Postcolonial, Racism | Leave a Comment »
‘Caught’ tells the story of a missing girl, the community stunned by her loss, the predator who may have taken her, and the reporter who suddenly realizes she can’t trust her own instincts about this case or the motives of the people around her. What I say about it I really love Harlan Coben books [...]
Filed under: Book review, Crime, Family | Tagged: Harlan Coben | Leave a Comment »
