New Book Club Choices....
The first three Cancerkin book club sessions are now underway in and the books chosen. Following a thought provoking first session with some interesting and challenging responses to Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader the next dates for the book club have now been booked in:
1. Tuesday 6th April 11-12 Half of a Yellow Sun (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
2. Tuesday 4th May 11-12 Playing in the Light (Zoe Wicomb)
For the sessions following May 4th, I would like to offer YOU the opportunity of suggesting some books that you would like to read together. Please may I ask you to post up your suggestion with a short blurb by Monday 26th April. Once all suggestions have been posted I will ask every bookclubber to vote for their top 3; the most popular ones will form the reading list for our next 3 sessions. I have attached below a few suggestions to get the ball rolling, but please feel free to add at your whim. Post your suggestions in the ‘comment on this’ section at the end of this blog.
1. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers)
At its centre is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music.
Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated — and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty
2. The Beautiful and the Damned (F.Scott Fitzgerald)
A novel emblematic of the roaring 20s, here is the story of Harvard-educated, aspiring aeshete Anthony Patch and his beautiful wife, Gloria. As they await the inheritance of his grandfather's fortune, their reckless marriage sways under the influence of alcohol and avarice. A devastating look at the nouveaux riches and New York nightlife, as well as the ruinous effects wild ambition, The Beautiful and the Damned achieved stature as one of Fitzgerald’s most accomplished novels. Its distinction as a classic endures to this day.
3. Lady Chatterley’s Lover (D.H Lawrence)
Constance Chatterley feels trapped in her sexless marriage to the invalid Sir Clifford. Unable to fulfil his wife emotionally or physically, Clifford encourages her to have a liaison with a man of their own class. But Connie is attracted instead to her husband’s gamekeeper and embarks on a passionate affair that brings new life to her stifled existence. Can she find a true equality with Mellor’s, despite the vast gulf between their positions in society? One of the most controversial novels in English literature, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is an erotically charged and psychologically powerful depiction of adult relationships.
4. The Consequences of Love (Sulaiman Addonia)
Naser’s friends have all left town for cooler climes but he can’t get away: he’s an outsider in Saudi and he needs to hold down his job at the local carwash. During his time off, he sits beneath his favourite palm tree, writing to the mother he has left behind in Africa and yearning for the glamorous Egyptian actress he hopes to meet one day. It’s hard to adjust to a world that puts up so many barriers between men and women: walls in the mosque, divider panels in the buses and veils on the street. Naser feels increasingly trapped, not least by the religious police who keep watch through the shaded windows of their government jeeps.
A splash of colour arrives in Naser’s world when, unexpectedly, a small piece of paper is dropped at his feet. It is a love note, from a woman whose face he has never seen and whose voice he has never heard. Erotic tension runs high; Naser and his ‘habibati’ begin to exchange letters. But in moments of doubt Naser is led into a cul-de-sac of thwarted desire, fraught with danger. Relationships between unmarried men and women are illegal under the strict Wahhibism of Saudi state rule – and it’s not long before their real, but illicit, love must face the hardest test of all…
5. The Black Dahlia (James Ellroy)
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy is an exquisitely written book of murder and obsession that takes the true details of the unsolved 1947 Elizabeth Short murder and creates a fictional story of a police detective determined to solve the case. The Black Dahlia is a page turning mystery novel, but it is also much more. Ellroy uses the story to delve into the dark recesses of the human psyche and force the reader to deal with obsession, evil, right and wrong.
