Castlebar Book Club
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. (Previous Book Club selections)
Tony & Susan by Austin Wright
First published in 1993, this forgotten novel from a little-known and now deceased US writer has received a new lease of life thanks to a UK publishing house. It's an unusual move but one that turns out to be fully merited, because Tony and Susan is a brilliant novel which works on a number of different levels.
Behind the rather unpromising title, the premise is simple enough. Susan is a middle-aged and middle-class, married, professional woman who receives in the post a manuscript for a novel by her ex-husband of long ago, Edward. Susan sets about reading the manuscript, entitled "Nocturnal Animals", and we do too, as well as getting Susan's reactions to it, both as a piece of work and as a reminder of her life with Edward.
The story-within-a-story is a familiar enough device in literature, but seldom can it have been executed with such impeccable style and precision. Writers often have trouble running more than one narrative concurrently, because very often one story becomes more compelling to the detriment of the other, but that never happens here. Wright is adept at providing thrills and spills galore in his fictional manuscript, as well as being capable of beautifully crafted psychological insight in his more sedate storyline.
The Independent
(T)his is … an excellent book: gripping, well-written, structurally interesting. It begins with Susan Morrow, a married university teacher in her late 40s, receiving a letter from her first husband, Edward, from whom she has barely heard for 20 years, asking her if she would like to read his novel. Edward, she remembers, always wanted to be a writer, and indeed his obsession with becoming one (and his depression at failing to do so) had been the main sticking-point of their marriage. Remembering the pretentious poems Edward used to write, Susan wonders what this novel might be like. One thing she is certain of: "It won't be a detective story or baseball story or western. It won't be a story of blood and revenge."
Its one real flaw – and what makes it, in my eyes, fall short of being a masterpiece – is that the final third of Nocturnal Animals is much less good than the earlier sections. Having started out as a pulsating account of violent tragedy and its aftermath, it becomes a schlocky revenge fantasy featuring a ridiculous renegade detective. Because, at this point, it becomes less enjoyable to read, so, inevitably, does Tony and Susan (and the problem is intensified by the fact that Wright's inbuilt voice of self-criticism, Susan, doesn't seem to notice this falling-off). Still, this one flaw aside, Tony and Susan is a fine achievement, and its reappearance is to be welcomed.
The Observer
Absorbing, terrifying, beautiful and appalling. I loved Tony and Susan and became intensely involved in it. Parts of it shocked me and I am not easily shocked. It is easy to say that something one has read is unforgettable, but this novel I know I never shall forget.
Ruth Rendell
In an era when writers scarcely get a first chance to make their mark, much less a second, the reissue of Austin Wright's superb novel is a real treat... A masterful example of narrative intensity and artistic control.
Sunday Times
About the author
Wright, who died in 2003, was the epitome of the academic as novelist. He was a professor at the University of Cincinnati for 23 years and was obsessed by the interconnection of real and invented worlds and believing that at least in some sense the reader writes the book. His daughter Katharine told the Daily Telegraph recently that his last words to her were: "You. Are. Invented."
The Guardian
Readers' Resources
Dedicated to book clubs, ReadersPlace.co.uk (Random House) is a website where reading groups can find inspiration, have their say on books, and connect with other book clubs and authors. Reader's Review site with active discussion board
- CompletelyNovel.com links readers as well as new writers, offering a one-stop author-reader experience.
- 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