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Recommendations
Book Club Favourites #25
by Brandon King
Saving Missy, by Beth Morrey
Missy Carmichael's life has become small. Grieving for a family she has lost or lost touch with, she's haunted by the echoes of her footsteps in her empty home; the sound of the radio in the dark; the tick-tick-tick of the watching clock. Spiky and defensive, Missy knows that her loneliness is all her own fault. She deserves no more than this; not after what she's done. But a chance encounter in the park with two very different women opens the door to something different.
A new life beckons for Missy, if only she can be brave enough to grasp the opportunity. But seventy-nine is too late for a second chance. Isn't it?
This is going to hurt: secret diaries of a junior doctor, by Adam Kay
Adam Kay was a junior doctor from 2004 until 2010, before a devastating experience on a ward caused him to reconsider his future. He kept a diary throughout his training, and 'This Is Going to Hurt' intersperses tales from the front line of the NHS with reflections on the current crisis. The result is a first-hand account of life as a junior doctor in all its joy, pain, sacrifice and maddening bureaucracy, and a love letter to those who might at any moment be holding our lives in their hands.
Borrow This is going to hurt →
I am, I am, I am: seventeen brushes with death, by Maggie O'Farrell
'I Am, I Am, I Am' is Sunday Times bestseller and Costa Novel-Award winner Maggie O'Farrell's electric and shocking memoir of the near death experiences that have punctuated her life. A childhood illness she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. A terrifying encounter on a remote path. A mismanaged labour in an understaffed hospital. This is a memoir with a difference: seventeen encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal to us a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots.
It is a book to make you question yourself: what would you do if your life was in danger? How would you react? And what would you stand to lose?
A room made of leaves, by Kate Grenville
It is 1788. 21-year-old Elizabeth is hungry for life but, as the ward of a Devon clergyman, knows she has few prospects. When proud, scarred soldier John Macarthur promises her the earth one midsummer's night, she believes him. But Elizabeth soon realises she has made a terrible mistake. Her new husband is reckless, tormented, driven by some dark rage at the world. He tells her he is to take up a position as Lieutenant in a New South Wales penal colony and she has no choice but to go. Sailing for six months to the far side of the globe with a child growing inside her, she arrives to find Sydney Town a brutal, dusty, hungry place of makeshift shelters, failing crops, scheming and rumours.
All her life she has learned to be obliging, to fold herself up small. Now, in the vast landscape of an unknown continent, Elizabeth has to discover a strength she never imagined, and passions she could never express.
Borrow A room made of leaves →
Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi
This text tells the story of Marjane Satrapi's life in Tehran from six to 14, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution & the devastating effects of war with Iraq. Satrapi paints a portrait of daily life in Iran & of the bewildering contradictions between home life & public life.
The shepherd's hut, by Tim Winton
For years Jaxie Clackton has dreaded going home. His beloved mum is dead, and he wishes his dad was too, until one terrible moment leaves his life stripped to nothing. No one ever told Jaxie Clackton to be careful what he wishes for. And so Jaxie runs. There's just one person in the world who understands him, but to reach her he'll have to cross the vast saltlands of Western Australia. It is a place that harbours criminals and threatens to kill those who haven't reckoned with its hot, waterless vastness. This is a journey only a dreamer - or a fugitive - would attempt.
The Sisters brothers, by Patrick Dewitt
From the author of 'Ablutions', 'The Sisters Brothers' is an offbeat Western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother who are on the trail of a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling and violent experiences in the Darwinian landscape of Gold Rush America.
A whole life, by Robert Seethaler
Andreas lives his whole life in the Austrian Alps, where he arrives as a young boy taken in by a farming family. He is a man of very few words and so, when he falls in love with Marie, he doesn't ask for her hand in marriage, but instead has some of his friends light her name at dusk across the mountain. When Marie dies in an avalanche, pregnant with their first child, his heart is broken. He leaves his valley just once more, to fight in WWII - where he is taken prisoner in the Caucasus - and returns to find that modernity has reached his remote haven.
The thirteenth tale, by Diane Setterfield
'The Thirteenth Tale' is an emotional mystery in the vein of Daphne du Maurier's 'Rebecca', about family secrets and the magic of books and storytelling. Margaret Lea is investigating Angelfield House. As she digs deeper, Margaret discovers tragedy and secrets about her own past.
Here we are, by Graham Swift
It is Brighton, 1959, and the theatre at the end of the pier is having its best summer season in years. Ronnie, a brilliant young magician, and Evie, his dazzling assistant, are top of the bill, drawing audiences each night. Meanwhile, Jack - Jack Robinson, as in 'before you can say' - is everyone's favourite compère, a born entertainer, holding the whole show together. As the summer progresses, the off-stage drama between the three begins to overshadow their theatrical success, and events unfold which will have lasting consequences for all their futures. Rich, comic, alive and subtly devastating, 'Here We Are' is a masterly piece of literary magicianship which pulls back the curtain on the human condition.
Crow Lake, by Mary Lawson
In this universal drama of family love and misunderstandings, of resentments harboured and driven underground, Lawson ratchets up the tension, playing out her story with heartbreaking humour.
Summerwater, by Sarah Moss
'Summerwater' is a devastating story told over 24 hours in the Scottish highlands, and a searing exploration of our capacity for both kinship and cruelty in these divided times. On the longest day of the summer, twelve people sit cooped up with their families in a faded Scottish cabin park. The endless rain leaves them with little to do but watch the other residents. A woman goes running up the Ben as if fleeing; a retired couple reminisce about neighbours long since moved on; a teenage boy braves the dark waters of the loch in his red kayak.
Each person is wrapped in their own cares but increasingly alert to the makeshift community around them. One particular family, a mother and daughter without the right clothes or the right manners, starts to draw the attention of the others. Tensions rise and all watch on, unaware of the tragedy that lies ahead as night finally falls.