The busy bees behind the shopfront have compiled this list according to some set criteria, one of which is the book must be easily available, either via the library as a free download or at a reasonable price either online or locally. All the books are available at the library.
The God Of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car sit two-egg twins Rahel and Esthappen, and so begins their tale. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family - their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts). #
July reading for the August meeting:
Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan
A novel of the cruelty of war, and tenuousness of life and the impossibility of love. Richard Flanagan's story — of Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor haunted by a love affair with his uncle's wife — journeys from the caves of Tasmanian trappers in the early twentieth century to a crumbling pre-war beachside hotel, from a Thai jungle prison to a Japanese snow festival, from the Changi gallows to a chance meeting of lovers on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Taking its title from 17th-century haiku poet Basho's travel journal, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is about the impossibility of love. At its heart is one day in a Japanese slave labour camp in August 1943. As the day builds to its horrific climax, Dorrigo Evans battles and fails in his quest to save the lives of his fellow POWs, a man is killed for no reason, and a love story unfolds. #
The Dinner - Herman Koch
Paul Lohman and his brother Serge and their wives are going out to dinner. Paul knows the evening will not be fun. The restaurant will be over-priced and pretentious, and almost everything about the charismatic Serge does, will infuriate him. But tonight's get-together will be worse than usual because there is something the two couples have to discuss. When the small talk is over, the conversation will turn to their teenage sons. And the terrible thing they have done. And how far the four of them will go to save their children from the consequences of their actions. #
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