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)
Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne
Opening dramatically with the horrors of the 2005 London bombings, this is the profoundly moving story of a country on the brink of civil war and a child's struggle to come to terms with loss. London. On a bright July morning a series of bombs brings the capital to a halt. Simon Swann, a medic from one of the large teaching hospitals, is searching frantically amongst the chaos and the rubble. All around police sirens and ambulances are screaming but Simon does not hear. He is out of breath because he has been running, and he is distraught. But who is he looking for? To find out we have first to go back thirty years to a small island in the Indian Ocean where a little girl named Alice Fonseka is learning to ride a bicycle on the beach. The island is Sri Lanka, and its community is on the brink of civil war. Alice's life is about to change forever. Soon she will have to leave for England, abandoning her beloved grandfather, and accompanied by her mother Sita, a woman broken by a series of terrible events. In London, Alice grows into womanhood. Trapped in a loveless marriage, she has a son. Slowly she fulfils her grandfather's prophecy and becomes an artist. Eventually she finds true love. But London in the twenty-first century is a mass of migration and suspicion. The war on terror has begun and everyone, even Simon Swann, middle class, rational, medic that he is, will be caught up in this war in the most unexpected and terrible way.
amazon.co.uk
[A] richly characterised, elegantly modulated and deeply moving novel.
Daily Mail
An ambitious, lyrical novel, distinguished by its refusal to offer false consolation.
Times Literary Supplement
Tearne is a vividly sensitive writer who spares her readers unnecessary sentiment and hones in on raw emotions just below the surface. The refugee in all of us can recognise the desperate desire to belong and the sometimes terrible price we pay for it.
Independent
The most moving novels of war speak of the battles fought within individual human hearts; causes and geographies are their backdrop. A timely lament for the dead and displaced of the Sri Lankan civil war, Roma Tearne's third novel, Brixton Beach, follows four generations of a family doomed to be estranged not only from their land, but also from love.
Financial Times
Rich and satisfying, and written with a painter's instinct for the beautiful.
The Times
The Wife’s Tale by Lori Lansens
On the eve of her wedding anniversary, Mary Gooch is waiting for her husband to come home, listening for his car along the dark, icy roads. As the night draws on, and he fails to appear, Mary reflects on the true nature of their marriage: the secrets, the silences, and the unmentionable yet inescapable fact that for each loss and disappointment, there has been a corresponding physical gain: the woman she once was is now imprisoned in mountainous flesh. The Wife's Tale is the inspirational story of the journey Mary is finally forced to make across a continent, ostensibly in search of her husband, but eventually towards the self she has buried for too long.
amazon.co.uk
In much the same way as the over-sized Mary Gooch spends her time eating or fantasizing about food in this book, I found myself gorging on its richly satisfying chapters, not finishing after three or four bite-sized portions, but keeping going until I had finished the whole thing. And it still wasn’t enough. The Wife’s Tale is one of those books you wish would go on for longer, and having surpassed her outstanding second novel, The Girls, Lori Lansens has definitely established herself as a writing force to be reckoned with. Mary Brody marries Jimmy Gooch when, barely out of high school, she finds herself pregnant. The night before the wedding, Mary loses the baby but doesn’t tell Jimmy until after they are married. Now, the night before their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Jimmy doesn’t come home and Mary finally lets out the breath she’s been holding in for all those years. She always expected to be left behind, especially since starting to pile on the weight. Desperate for answers, and unsure how to handle the unexpected windfall in her bank account, she heads to Jimmy’s mother’s house in California to try and track him down. Along the way she makes some new friends and discovers some interesting things about herself. A fantastic read.
The Connaught Telegraph
Lansens’ lyrical flashbacks expose the true heartbreak and misery behind Mary’s childhood struggles with weight, food, and self-esteem. Gooch’s sudden departure seems unexplainably cruel, yet without it Mary never would have had the impetus to leave her stymied situation.
Elle magazine
Reader's Area of this site
- Reader's Review site with active discussion board
- 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.
- 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