Caterham and Coulsdon Book Club Meetup

 
 
 

How does it work?

For those of you who've not come along before, we'll read the book, then discuss it on the night guided by questions to keep us focused. It's relaxed, good fun and fascinating to hear the different perspective each person brings to the session. We'll do this over drinks.

About the book

The Ninth Hour opens with a suicide. Jim, a young railway employee fired from his job, turns on the gas in the tenement he shares with his pregnant wife, Annie. This being Irish Catholic Brooklyn in the early 20th century, the nuns are not slow to appear. Sister St Saviour – pragmatic, unsentimental, class-conscious – attempts to cover up the cause of death so Jim can be buried in consecrated ground, and gets Annie a job in the convent laundry. Catholicism, as rendered by McDermott, can be a cold, hard place, but within its world there are individuals of clear-sightedness and compassion.

Book availability

Due to the short notice change of book, best to get from Amazon paperback or kindle - it's a short book at 256 pages and we still have 2 weeks to go!

 
 
 

How does it work?
For those of you who've not come along before, we'll read the book, then discuss it on the night guided by questions to keep us focused. It's relaxed, good fun and fascinating to hear the different perspective each person brings to the session. We'll do this over drinks.

About the book
One by one, she undid each event, each decision, each choice.
If Davy had remembered to put on a coat.
If Seamie McGeown had not found himself alone on a dark street.
If Michael Agnew had not walked through the door of the pub on a quiet night in February in his white shirt.

There is nothing special about the day Cushla meets Michael, a married man from Belfast, in the pub owned by her family. But here, love is never far from violence, and this encounter will change both of their lives forever.

As people get up each morning and go to work, school, church or the pub, the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploded, another man beaten, killed or left for dead. In the class Cushla teaches, the vocabulary of seven-year-old children now includes phrases like 'petrol bomb' and 'rubber bullets'. And as she is forced to tread lines she never thought she would cross, tensions in the town are escalating, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together.

Book availability
The book is widely available from libraries and from second-hand book outlets.

 
 
 

For those of you who've not come along before, we'll read the book, then discuss it on the night guided by questions to keep us focused. It's relaxed, good fun and fascinating to hear the different perspective each person brings to the session. We'll do this over drinks. If it's your first time, I know it can be a bit daunting, but don't worry, we'll make you very welcome and before you know it you'll be stuck in!

About the Book

Pakistan, 1968. As riots erupt in the streets of Lahore, Inspector Faraz Ali returns to his birthplace, the red-light district in the walled inner city. Wrested from it as a child by his powerful father to be raised by a respectable family, Faraz has hidden his roots ever since. Now his father has sent him back: to cover up the murder of a young courtesan.

'A stunning debut novel - a noir-inspired thriller that weaves in politics, family ties, corruption and murder, while also being sharp about different kinds of power, particularly as it relates to women'' Kamila Shamsie

'A rich and deeply moving novel about confronting histories both personal and political . . . Marvellous' Yaa Gyasi

(The book is widely available to buy from various second hand outlets, on kindle, but I haven't found it on the Surrey Library website)