What they say about it: Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, an architecture student, has arrived from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to Clara Morgenstern a young widow living in the city. When Andras meets Clara he is drawn deeply into her extraordinary and secret life, [...]
Filed under: Book review, Family, Romance, War | Tagged: Julie Orringer | Leave a Comment »
Saturday 28 April 11.30am-12.30pm Sandra Agard celebrates Dickens Storyteller Sandra Agard invites families to come and discover the lives of Victorian children and families in the novels of Charles Dickens. Through readings and role play, it will be fun for all the family best suited to accompanied children aged 5-7 but children aged 8-11 are [...]
Filed under: Book event, Children, Deptford Lounge, Family, Victoriana | 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 »
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 »
‘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 »
The New Cross Reading Group has now relocated to Wavelengths Library. The July meeting looked at Kate Summerscale’s novel The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. Those who attended the meeting were intrigued by this incredibly detailed consideration of the investigation, made during the 1860s into the murder of a small child which seemed to scandalize the local [...]
Filed under: Book review, Crime, Family, History, New Cross reading group, Victoriana | Tagged: Kate Summerscale | Leave a Comment »
What they say about it Anthony Farrant has always found his way, lying to get jobs and borrowing money to get by when he leaves them in a hurry. His twin sister Kate persuades him to move and sets him up with a job as bodyguard to Krogh, her lover and boss, an all-powerful Swedish [...]
Filed under: Book review, Family | Tagged: Graham Greene | Leave a Comment »
What they say about it: “Jane Eyre is the first fictional heroine to give women permission, as it were, to have an intense inner life.” Joanna Trollope What I thought about it: I have read this book repeatedly since my childhood and each time I read it again I am struck by depth of feeling [...]
Filed under: Book review, Family, Women | Tagged: Charlotte Bronte | 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 »
