Book Club: Nominations for May/June reads

[midnightcatprowl]

More than one person has messaged to say they will be along sooner or later with a review of one or both of our last choice of books but it is time to start choosing our next reads. It does take a while for people to be able to buy or borrow books or get hold of the e-book or audio version that they want so the sooner we choose the better.

You are invited to nominate up to two books. Novels, short stories, poetry, non-fiction, as you wish.

Nominations will close at midnight on Saturday 6th May.

[midnightcatprowl]

My nomination this time is:

Jean Rhys: The Collected Short Stories.

"Includes some of the best British short stories of the last century". "fusion of elegant prose with an uncanny penetration into the darker reaches of the soul". This book was a lucky find on the 'Just Returned' shelf at the library and I was particularly interested in a comment in the introduction that Rhys was "no good at managing life - so inept in practical matters that circumstances which would have been difficult for anyone were crushing for her - and who suffered from a tendency to be paranoid".

[MistyMeena]

A couple of nominations:

At Freddie's - Penelope Fitzgerald

It is the 1960s, in London's West End, and Freddie is the formidable proprietress of the Temple Stage School, which supplies child actors for everything from Shakespeare to musicals to the Christmas pantomime. Of unknown age and provenance, Freddie is a skirt-swathed enigma--a woman who by sheer force of character and single-minded thrust has turned herself and her school into a national institution. Anyone who is anyone must know Freddie.


The Shock of the Fall - Nathan Filer

‘I’ll tell you what happened because it will be a good way to introduce my brother. His name’s Simon. I think you’re going to like him. I really do. But in a couple of pages he’ll be dead. And he was never the same after that.’

"The Shock of the Fall is an extraordinary portrait of one man’s descent into mental illness. It is a brave and groundbreaking novel from one of the most exciting new voices in fiction."

[carrie80]

I nominate:

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hate-U-Give-An ... 406372153/

"Sixteen-year-old Starr lives in two worlds: the poor neighbourhood where she was born and raised and her posh high school in the suburbs. The uneasy balance between them is shattered when Starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil, by a police officer. Now what Starr says could destroy her community. It could also get her killed. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping YA novel about one girl's struggle for justice."