Tooting Book Club - current book list
Here is the list of books on the current list - if you would like to add a book to the list please bring your suggestion to the next meeting.
The Whalebone Theatre - Joanna Quinn (356 pages)
Kindle £4.99: Amazon paperback £8.49
This is the story of an old English manor house by the sea, with crumbling chimneys and a library full of dusty hardbacks. It is the story of the three children who grow up there, and the adventures they create for themselves whilst the grown-ups entertain endless party guests.
It is the story of a whale that washes up on the beach whose bones are claimed by a 12 year old orphan girl with big ambitions and an even bigger imagination. But as the children grow to adulthood, another story has been unfolding…and when the war finally takes centre stage they find themselves cast, unrehearsed, into roles they never expected to play.
Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout (288 pages)
Kindle £5.99: Amazon paperback £6.29
Set in Maine, this short story cycle comprises 13 stories that are interrelated but narratively discontinuous and non-chronological. Olive Kitteridge might be described by some as a battle axe or as brilliantly pushy; by others as the kindest person they have ever met. Olive herself has always been certain that she is 100% correct about everything, although lately her certitude has been shaken. This indomitable character appears at the centre of these narratives that comprise the book. In each of them we watch Olive, a retired schoolteacher as she struggles to make sense of the changes in her life and the lives of those around her.
Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng (352 pages)
Kindle £4.99; Amazon paperback £7.35
Novel takes place in Shaker Heights Ohio, focusing on 2 families in the 1990s who are brought together through their children. Elena Richardson thrives on structure and rules and her family. When Mia Warren, an artist who has been living a nomadic lifestyle as a single mother arrives, it threatens everything the Richardsons stand for. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese American baby a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town - and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeymoon (400 pages)
Kindle £2.99; Amazon paperback £8.97
Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend.
Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.
One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she's avoided all her life.
Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely any change is better than... fine?
HARDCOVER WAITLIST
Yellow-face - Rebecca Kuang (336 pages)
Kindle £7.99: Amazon paperback not released until 23 May £9.19
Satirises the publishing industry with a tale of a struggling writer who passes off her recently deceased friend’s book as her own. As evidence threatens her stolen success, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves - with deadly consequences.
What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.