Reading Groups Collection
The Night Watch |On Beauty |One Day | The Other Side of You | The Outcast | The Painted Drum | The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake | Paths of Glory | Pigeon English | Back to the List
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
What
are the truly beautiful things in the life - and how far will you go to get
them?
Howard Belsey is an Englishman abroad, an academic teaching in Wellington, a college town in New England. Married young, thirty years later his is struggling to revive his love for his African-American wife, Kiki. Meanwhile, his three teenage children - Jerome, Zora and Levi - are each seeking the passions, ideals and commitments that will guide them through their own lives.
After Howard has a disastrous affair with a colleague, his sensitive elder son, Jerome, escapes to England for the holidays. In London he defies everything the Besleys represent when he goes to work for Trinidadian right-wing academic and pundit Monty Kipps. Taken in by the Kipps family for the summer, Jerome falls for Monty's beautiful, capricious daughter, Victoria.
But this short-lived romance has long-lasting consequences, drawing these very different families into each other's lives. As Kiki develops a friendship with Mrs. Kipps, and Howard and Monty to do battle on different sides of the culture war, hot-headed Zora brings a handsome young man from the Boston streets into their midst whom she is determined to draw into the fold of the black middle-class - but at what price?
'One of the prominent voices of her generation.' - The Sunday Times
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The One Day by David Nichols
15th July 1988. Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their
graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways.
So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows?
'The funniest, loveliest book I've read in ages. Most of all it is horribly, cringingly, absolutely 100% honest and true to life. I lived every page.' Jenny
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The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
This
is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them
has to make a terrible choice. Two years later, they meet again - the story
starts there...
'A powerful piece of art shocking, exciting and deeply effecting'
Independent
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The Other Side of You by Salley Vickers
One
day, a failed suicide, Elizabeth Cruikshank, is admitted to the care of
psychiatrist Dr David McBride. She is mysteriously reticent and it is not until
he recalls a painting by Caravaggio that she is moved to recount her story. As
her account unfolds, David finds himself unusually touched by his patient's
story of her tragic dereliction of love and trust, and by a ahunting sense that
his elusive patient's life has special resonance for the hidden 'other side' of
his own.
'Tremendously moving, subtle and thoughtful'
Sebastian Faulks
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The Outcast by Sadie Jones
1957,
and Lewis Aldridge is travelling back to his home in the South of England. He is
straight out of jail and nineteen years old. His return will trigger the
implosion not just of his family, but of a whole community.
A decade earlier, his father's homecoming takes a different shape. The war is
over and Gilbert has recently been demobbed. He revert easily to suburban life -
cocktails at six thirty, church on Sundays - but his wife and young son resist
the stuffy routine. Lewis and his mother escape to the woods for picnics, just
as they did in wartime days. Nobody is surprised that Gilbert's wife counters
convention, but they are all shocked when, after one of their jaunts, Lewis
comes back without her.
Not far away, Kit Carmichael keeps watch. She has always understood more than
most, not least from what she has been dealt by her own father's hand. Lewis's
grief and burgeoning rage are all too plain, and Kit makes a private vow to
help. But in her attempts to set them both free, she fails to predict the
painful and horrifying secrets that must first be forced into the open.
'The prose is elegant and spare, but the story it reveals is raw and
explosive... Devastatingly good.'
Daily Mail
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The Painted Drum by Louise Erdich
When
a woman named Faye Travers is called upon to appraise the estate of a family in
her small New Hampshire town, she isn't surprised to discover a forgotten cache
of valuable Native American artefacts. After all, the family descends from an
Indian agent who worked on the North Dakota Ojibwe reservation that is home to
her mother's family. But when she finds a rare drum - a poweful yet delicate
object, made from a massive moose skin stretched across a hollow of cedar, and
ornamented with symbols she doesn't recognise - she is surprised. Especially
since, without touching the instrument, she hears it sound.
From Faye's discovery we trace the drum's passage both backward and forward in
time, and learn about how it changes the lives of those whose path is crosses.
'Resonant, poetic and exact these visions will remain imprinted in the
reader's mind'
Los Angeles Times
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Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
On
the eve of her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein bites into her mother's homemade
lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her
mother's emotions in the slice.
All at once her cheerful, can-do mother tastes of despair and desperation.
Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes perilous. Anything can be
revealed at any meal.
Rose's gift forces her to confront the truth behind her family's emotions - her
mother's sadness, her father's detachment and her brother's clash with the
world. But as Rose grows up, she learns that there are some secrets even her
taste buds cannot discern.
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Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer
Some
people have dreams that are so outrageous that, if they were to achieve them,
their place in history would be guaranteed. Francis Drake, Robert Scott, Percy
Fawcett, Charles Lindburgh, Amy Johnson, Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong are
among such individuals.
But what if one man had such a dream and, when he'd fulfilled it, there was no proof that he'd achieved his ambition?
Paths of Glory is the story of such a man. But not unilt you've turned the last page of this extraordinary novel, will you be able to decide if George Mallory should be added to this list of legends, because if he were, another name would have to be removed.
'Archer is a master entertainer.' - Time
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Pigeon English by Stehoen Kelman
Eleven-year-old
Harrison Opoku, the second best runner in Year 7, races through his new life in
England in his personalised trainers - the Adidas stripes drawn on with marker
pen - blissfully unaware of the very real threat around him. Newly arrived from
Ghana with his mother and older sister Lydia, Harri absorbs the many strange
elements of city life, from the bewildering array of Haribo sweets, to the
frightening, fascinating gang of older boys from his school. But his life in
changed for ever when one of his friends is murdered. As the victim's nearly new
football boots hang in tribute on railings behind fluorescent tape and a police
appeal draws only silence, Harri decides to act, unwittingly endangering the
fragile web his mother has spun around her family to keep them safe.
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Page last updated: 21st March 2014