April Selection 2006
April Selection 2006
The Book Club meets once a month (usually the second Tuesday of the month) in Castlebar Library at 8.00pm. Check events page for next meeting.
Books for April Meeting, 2006
How Many Miles to Babylon
Jennifer Johnston is regarded as one of our foremost Irish writers. She has won the Whitbread Prize (The Old Jest), the Evening Standard Best First Novel Award (The Captains and the Kings), the Yorkshire Post Award, Best Book of the Year (twice, The Captains and the Kings and How Many Miles to Babylon?). She has also been shortlisted for the Booker Prize with Shadows on our Skins.
How Many Miles to Babylon is the story of two friends whose lives were divided by the bigotries of class and war. What they share as boys is a passion for horses and the Irish countryside. What they share as men is the experience of war in Flanders, and an ordeal beyond even the horrors of the battlefield.
Viewed by Roddy Doyle as the greatest ever Irish writer, Derry born Jennifer Johnston has been writing fiction for over four decades. Influenced by Brian Moore, she shares a sense of beauty in the mundane, and has created a cast of characters that feel instantly alive and recognisable. How Many Miles To Babylon? remains a classic.
Jennifer Johnsonr stories are low key and personal but far from sentimental and conventional. Her books are about relationships - between lovers, spouses, parents and children, friends, the old and the young. Many of her characters are what psychologists would term damaged, and loss and loneliness are recurrent themes. she neither fits neatly into any category nor radically ruptures any particular genre. But she is very good at what she does. As she puts it: "I'd like people to find small truths in my work and go on doing so."
The Guardian, Rosie Cowan, 2004
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Written in 1958, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" portrays a world in which women were invariably best seen and not heard, and totally reliant on men for money and worldly comforts. And yet Capote has created a female character, Holly Golightly, that is largely independent and emotionally strong, although she's vulnerable too (loneliness, depression and desperation are hinted at). While she might be having a lot of fun, she's also on the run from a past that is forever trying to catch up with her as she tries to find a place that makes her feel as happy as Tiffany's does.All in all, this short novella is a joy to read. Capote's writing is typically rich and lyrical. He describes this woman in such a way that you get the sense he has moulded her on someone that intrigued him, that held some allure or had an aura of mysticism that left a deep impression.
kimbofo.typepad.com/readingmatters
Truman Capote was already a celebrity by the time Breakfast at Tiffany’s was released in 1958. It was written at the end of what he called his second cycle of writing which began with his first published novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms. Although it was never assumed by the critics at the time, Breakfast at Tiffany’s was to become one of the most famous and influential works Capote ever wrote.
Capote later in life said that Holly Golightly was his favorite character. In an early version of the book he gave her the inappropriate name of Connie Gustafson, but later gave her the more symbolic name Holly Golightly: for she is a woman who makes a holiday of life, but treads through it lightly. Along with the book’s publishing came what Capote called the Holly Golightly Sweepstakes, where half the women he knew and some he did not, claimed to be the inspiration for his character. One New York resisdent, named Bonnie Golightly, even tried to sue Capote for invasion of privacy and libel. But she was an overweight forty-year-old woman and lost the lawsuit without much effect. But in truth the person that Holly most resembles is her creator. She shares Capote’s philosophies as well as his fears and anxieties, an example is Holly’s panic attacks which she calls "the mean reds."
Clarke, Gerald. Capote: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.
"Truman Capote I do not know well, but I like him. He is tart as a grand aunt, but in his way is a ballsy little guy, and he is the most perfect writer of my generation, he writes the best sentences word for word, rhythm upon rhythm. I would not have changed two words in Breakfast at Tiffany’s which will become a small classic."
Norman Mailer
Some useful book club links(external links: open in a new window)
- Reader's Area of this site
- Reader's Review site with active discussion board
- Book Group Links: A selection of sites compiled by the Salt Lake City Library.
- Great Books Foundation: The grandfather of them all
- Reading Group Choices Online: Over 550 guides from publishers. 150 can be printed from the site
- Reading Group Guides: A very useful selection of reading group guides from Random House Publishers
- Writer's Resource site for writers of all abilities