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 »
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 »
The June meeting of the Lewisham Reading Group discussed Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel The Help. What they say about it 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 [...]
Filed under: Book review, Death, Family, History, Lewisham reading group, Racism | Tagged: Kathryn Stockett | Leave a Comment »
What they say about it 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 [...]
Filed under: Book review, Death, History, Holocaust, War | Tagged: Hans Fallada | Leave a Comment »
Widely regarded as one of the finest crime writers of all time, famed for such popular creations as mega-moustacheod Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and elderly sleuth Miss Marple, Agatha Christie is a crime fiction icon. Lewisham Library Crime Reading Group is paying tribute to her this month with an Agatha Christie Special. The group will [...]
Filed under: Book event, Book review, Crime, Death, History, Lewisham crime reading group | Tagged: Agatha Christie | Leave a Comment »
The April meeting of the group discussed Katherine Webb’s novel The Legacy. This novel, which appealed to those who attended the session, has an intriguing plot linking characters spanning five generations from both sides of the Atlantic. As Erica and Beth who are sisters living in present day society, with mixed feelings take up residence [...]
Filed under: America, Death, Depression, Family, New Cross reading group, Women | Tagged: Katherine Webb | Leave a Comment »
The April meeting of the LLRG discussed Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume: The Story of a Murder. What they say about it 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 [...]
Filed under: Book review, Crime, Death, History, Lewisham reading group | Tagged: Patrick Süskind | Leave a Comment »
March’s NXRG discussed Beatrice Colin’s novel The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite. This novel appealed to those who attended the session. It vividly depicts life in Berlin during the first decades of the twentieth century while focussing on the fortunes of Lilly who, deprived of a conventional upbringing, survives by drawing on her own inner resources [...]
Filed under: Book review, Culture, Death, New Cross reading group | Tagged: Beatrice Colin | Leave a Comment »
