Our book choice for February 2012 is Hard Times by Charles Dickens. The novel is set in Coketown, a northern industrial city. Thomas Gradgrind rules his family and his school according to Utilitarianism, the philosophy of the time, which has as its aim the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number of people. However, the form of Utilitarianism which […]
Our book choice for January 2012 is Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. It is an evocative and poignant story of forbidden love and the loss of innocence, set in pre-war England when privileged aristocracy fell into decline.
Brideshead Revisited Read More »
Our choice for December 2011 is We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. In this gripping novel of motherhood gone awry, Shriver approaches the tragedy of a high-school massacre from the point of view of the killer’s mother.
We Need to Talk About Kevin Read More »
Our book choice for November 2011 is The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. Meet Balram Halwai, the ‘White Tiger’: servant, philosopher, entrepreneur and murderer. Balram, the White Tiger, was born in a backwater village on the River Ganges, the son of a rickshaw-puller.
Our choice for October 2011 is The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. From the author of the acclaimed Ablutions, this dazzlingly original novel is a darkly funny, offbeat western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother.
The Sisters Brothers Read More »
Our book choice for September 2011 is Alone in Berlin (UK title) by Hans Fallada, translated by Michael Hofmann. It is 1940, France has capitulated, Nazism seems impregnable. Otto Quangel is a dry, withdrawn working man, the foreman at a furniture factory – soon to be turned over to the production of coffins, in response to need.
Our choice for July 2011 is Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris. 1959. Russ and Bev are moving out of their desirable house in Clybourne Park. Their neighbours are alarmed because they have sold it to a black family.
The choice for June 2011 is Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. Black Swan tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy.
Our book choice for May 2011 is Rabbit, Run by John Updike. It’s 1959 and Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom, one time high school sports superstar, is going nowhere. At twenty-six he is trapped in a second-rate existence – stuck with a fragile, alcoholic wife, a house full of overflowing ashtrays and discarded glasses, a young son and a futile job.
Our book choice for April 2011 is Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney. It is written about a character’s time spent caught up in, and notably escaping from, the mid-1980s New York City fast lane. It is one of the few well-known English-language novels written in the second person and its main character is unnamed.
Bright Lights Big City Read More »
