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)
The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd
The Blue Afternoon, published in 1993, won the Sunday Express Book of the Year award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (1995).
Worth £20,000 for the winner, the Sunday Express award was the most lucrative fiction prize in Britain at the time.
"This novel recreates a corner of Manila in 1902 - the hospital corner, in fact, for its hero, Salvador Carriscant, is the most forward-looking surgeon in town. He operates in a clean, white coat, and washes his hands before, not after, rummaging around the insides of his patients: innovations to scandalise his more traditional, frock-coated colleagues. Even more of an outrage is Carriscant's affair with the wife of an American officer, whom he loves and loses in that mixture of tragedy and farce which is one of Boyd's trademarks. There is a long preamble, but once the story proper gets under way, the effect is spellbinding".
Robin Blake, The Independent.co.uk
"A perfect-pitch story of love and redemption"
The New York Times
"William Boyd has always, and justifiably, been described as a great storyteller......here he creates a world both elegiac and hopeful, and achingly memorable"
The Times
"Richly entertaining.....Boyd has organized his narrative into one elegant and almost seamless weave"
Independent
"A brilliant achievement....has a sense of place and storytelling which you rarely find these days in British novels"
Time Out
Boyd's atmospheric new novel confirms his reputation as heir to the grand narrative traditions of Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham. In 1936 Los angeles, as her long-estranged father tells architect Kay Fischer the story behind her secret parentage, he plunges readers into a tale of grisly murders and an illicit passion that still obsseses him 30 years later.
Synopsis from Random House Publishers
Los Angeles 1936. Kay Fischer, a young, ambitious architect, is shadowed by Salvador Carriscant, an enigmatic stranger claiming to be her father. Within weeks of their first meeting, Kay will join him for an extraordinary journey into the old man's past, initially in search of a murderer, but finally in celebration of a glorious, undying love.
Synopsis from Penguin Books
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