Bookclub News January 2025
Dear Readers, our bookclub does not shrink from a challenge. Our choice was to boldly go into 2025 with Italo Calvino's experimental novel "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller", published in 1979 and now considered a classic.
Our votes varied widely, before settling on an average score of 7, Recommended. The book examines what it is to write a novel, or read it or interpret it, through a series of episodes based on a journey through different loosely connected stories.. The reader has just time to absorb a new set of characters and a new plot when it ends in suspense and leads to another title. Inevitably one tries to find a logic binding the various episodes together when perhaps simply going with the flow would be a better option. Too many beginnings, not enough conclusions? A tiresome behind the scenes documentary of interest only to other writers?
But through it all runs Calvino's masterful writing, his sense of fun and remarkable narrative gifts, with a symmetry that finally pulls everything together. Well worth a second read if you felt overwhelmed by the first attempt.
For February, we come bang up to date with "Orbital" by Samantha Harvey, the winner of the 2024 Booker Prize. A team of astronauts in the International Space Station observe the planet Earth and each other. And it's a short book for a short month. Our meeting will be on Wednesday 26 February.
Our read for March will be chosen from the following - The Fraud, Night Watch or Death at the Sign of the Rook, according to availability. Watch this space for confirmation soon. Remember that comments and suggestions are always welcome on our Facebook page, Friends of the English Bookshop.
Enjoy your reading