*Next book to be read
*Love (Roddy Doyle)
How to Build a Boat (Elaine Feeney)
Love (Roddy Doyle) [Oct 2023] First published 2020
The action takes place in Dublin, mostly in a pub, where two friends, Joe and Davy, have reconnected for a night of drinking.
How to Build a Boat (Elaine Feeney) [Dec 2023] First published 2023
This is the story of how one boy and his mission transforms the lives of his teachers, Tess and Tadhg, and brings together a community. It is about love, family and connection, the power of imagination, and how our greatest adventures never happen alone.
Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons) [Sep 2023] Published 1932
Flora Poste, orphaned at 19 when her parents are both carried off by the 1919 Spanish flu epidemic, is penniless. Her only option is to throw herself on the charity of her remote Sussex relatives, the Starkadders – Judith, her preacher husband Amos, their sons Seth and Reuben, several other cousins (Harkaway, Urk, Ezra, and Caraway) including the dominant matriarchal figure of aunt Ada Doom – all living, or partly living, in Cold Comfort Farm, Howling, Sussex.
The Stranger’s Child (Alan Hollinghurst) [Oct 2023] First published 2011
A minor poet, Cecil Valance, visits a Cambridge friend in 1913, in Stanmore, Middlesex. There, he writes a poem that goes on to become famous. The novel charts the progress of the poem’s reputation over the decades and also follows the lives of those who were present at that visit and their ancestors.
Demon Copperhead (Barbara Kingsolver) [Oct 2023] Published 2022
This was inspired by Dickens’ novel David Copperfield. Damon Fields is born to a teenage mother in a trailer home. He is raised in the Appalachian Mountains and nicknamed Demon Copperhead for the colour of his hair and his attitude. Demon must use his charms and wit to survive poverty in the American South.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Gabrielle Zevin) [Oct 2023] Published 2022
Taking place over 30 years, this novel examines the nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play and our need to connect and to be loved.