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 Boy in the Gap by Paul Soye
Paul Soye's debut novel, The Boy in the Gap, is an atmospheric coming-of-age novel. It is full of mysterious local and familial secrets, capturing the claustrophopbia of small town life and its petty judgements. An angry mob assembles outside a town courthouse something terrible has happened. Jack Sammon is the local man accused of the crime in his village, and has become a figure of universal hate in the community. The Boy in the Gap charts Jack's childhood and family experiences, and it is through these episodes poignant, funny and heart-wrenching that the novel attempts to explain, or at least suggest, why Jack may have committed the crime. He befriends a local eccentric, Irene, who reveals to him secrets about his family. These revelations that act as the catalyst for Jack violent actions for which he now stands trial. Reminiscent of Pat McCabe in its dark humour and McGahern in its detailed evocation of small town dynamics, The Boy In The Gap is a striking debut.
amazon.co.uk
A beautifully written book; clear and unadorned; the story of a hidden Ireland, told with compassion and intelligence.
Michael Harding
Very powerful. A very strong sense of the dramatic.
RTE Arena
BEING compared to such authors as John McGahern, Pat McCabe and John Banville is an assured seal of approval for a first novel. It means that Paul Soye’s The Boy in the Gap probably furrows through the dark layers of a hidden Ireland. It does.
The Mayo News
About the Author
Paul Soye is the author of the plays 'Cherished' and 'The Birdcage', which won the Esso New Irish Play Award at the National Drama Festival in Athlone in 1996. In 2002 he was short-listed for the BBC's Tony Doyle Award. He has written a one act play for children and his play 'In Irons' was broadcast on RTE 1's Sunday Night Playhouse. He lives in County Mayo.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Renee is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building, home to members of the great and the good. Over the years she has maintained her carefully constructed persona as someone reliable but totally uncultivated, in keeping, she feels, with society s expectations of what a concierge should be. But beneath this façade lies the real Renée: passionate about culture and the arts, and more knowledgeable in many ways than her employers with their outwardly successful but emotionally void lives. Down in her lodge, apart from weekly visits by her one friend Manuela, Renée lives resigned to her lonely lot with only her cat for company. Meanwhile, several floors up, twelve-year-old Paloma Josse is determined to avoid the pampered and vacuous future laid out for her, and decides to end her life on her thirteenth birthday. But unknown to them both, the sudden death of one of their privileged neighbours will dramatically alter their lives forever.
amazon.co.uk
In this supple novel of ideas, a best-seller in France, the unschooled middle-aged concierge of an upper-class Paris apartment building acts like a stereotypical concierge, leaving the television on all day and sharing her quarters with an old, fat cat, but she secretly consumes vast quantities of literature. A few floors above her, the brilliant and prematurely disillusioned twelve-year-old daughter of a “holier-than-thou-left-wing-intellectual” family is planning arson and suicide, unless she can find something worth living for beyond the “vacuousness of bourgeois existence.” Unbeknown to each other, the two autodidacts share an allergy to grammatical errors (the concierge considers a misplaced comma an “underhanded attack”) and a love of tea and moments of ineffable beauty. Barbery’s sly wit, which bestows lightness on the most ponderous cogitations, keeps her tale aloft.
The New Yorker
Le Figaro has described this book as 'the publishing phenomenon of the decade'. Elsewhere, there were comparisons to Proust. It sold more than a million copies in France last year and has won numerous awards. Does it match up to the hype? Almost. It is a profound but accessible book (not quite Proust, then), which elegantly treads the line between literary and commercial fiction.
The Guardian
Resistance is futile ... you might as well buy it before someone recommends it for your book group. It's charm will make you say yes.
The Guardian
Clever, informative and moving... this is an admirable novel which deserves as wide a readership here as it had in France.
The Observer
This breathtakingly singular novel...is totally French yet completely universal.
Good Housekeeping
About the Author
Muriel Barbery teaches philosophy. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is her second novel. Her first book, The Gourmet has been translated into twelve languages.
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