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.
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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.
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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 Otto Quangel is a dry, withdrawn working man, the foreman at a furniture factory – soon to be turned over to the production of coffins, in response to need.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.
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Our book choice for March 2011 is The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré. Alex Leamas is tired. It’s the 1960s, he’s been out in the cold for years, spying in Berlin for his British masters, and has seen too many good agents murdered for their troubles.
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Our book choice for February 2011 is The End of the Party by Andrew Rawnsley. Lifting the lid on the second half of New Labour’s spell in office, with riveting inside accounts of all the key events from 9/11 and the Iraq War to the financial crisis and the parliamentary expenses scandal.
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