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.
You are Here by David Nicholls (368 pages)
Kindle: £5.49 Paperback £5.48
Marnie is stuck.
Stuck working alone in her London flat, stuck battling the long afternoons and a life that often feels like it's passing her by.
Michael is coming undone.
Reeling from his wife's departure, increasingly reclusive, taking himself on long, solitary walks across the moors and fells.
When a persistent mutual friend and some very English weather conspire to bring them together, Marnie and Michael suddenly find themselves alone on the most epic of walks and on the precipice of a new friendship. But can they survive the journey?
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (384 pages)
Kindle £6.99 Paperback £9.19
Fan-favourite female stars Loretta Thurwar and Hamara ‘Hurricane Staxxx’ Stacker are teammates and lovers. Thurwar is nearing the end of her time on the circuit, free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. But as protestors clash with the baying crowds and the programme’s corporate owners stack the odds against her – will the price be simply too high?
Ragnarok by AS Byatt (192 pages)
Kindle £5.99 Paperback £9.19
As the bombs rain down in the Second World War, one young girl is evacuated to the English countryside. Struggling to make sense of her new wartime life, she is given a copy of a book of ancient Norse myths and her inner and outer worlds are transformed.
The Stationery Shop of Tehran by Marjan Kamali (320 pages)
Kindle £2.99 Paperback £9.19
1953, Tehran. In a small shop in a country on the brink of unrest, two people meet for the very first time.
Roya loves nothing better than to while away the hours in the stationery shop run by Mr Fakhri. The store, stocked with fountain pens, shiny ink bottles, and thick wads of writing paper, also carries translations of literature from all over the world. Bahman, with his burning passion for justice, is like no one else she has ever met.
But all around them, as their relationship blossoms, life in Tehran is changing.
Suddenly, shockingly, violence erupts: a coup d'etat that forever changes their country's future, as well as their own.
Aerth by Deborah Tomkins (160 pages)
Kindle £4.99 Paperback £9.95
Magnus lives on Aerth, which is currently moving into an Ice Age, with a strange virus limiting the population. When the planet Urth is discovered, he vows to become an astronaut and travel there, but on arriving he finds it hot, crowded, corrupt and violent, despite it being initially welcoming. Slowly Magnus realises he will not find what he's looking for, but there seems to be no way back…..
Blank Canvas by Grace Murray (288 pages)
Kindle £7.99 Paperback £12.49
On a small liberal arts campus in upstate New York, Charlotte begins her final year with a lie. Her father died over the summer, she says. Heart attack. Very sudden.
Charlotte had never been close with her classmates but as she repeats her tale, their expressions soften into kindness. And so she learns there are things worth lying for: attention, affection, and, as she embarks on a relationship with fellow student Katarina, even love. All she needs to do is keep control of the threads that hold her lie – and her life – together.
But six thousand miles away, alone in the grey two-up-two-down Staffordshire terrace she grew up in, her father is very much alive, watching television and drinking beer. Charlotte has always kept difficult truths at arm’s length, but his resolve to visit his distant daughter might just be the one thing she can’t control.
Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai (288 pages)
Kindle £5.99 Paperback £10.99
In the darkening embers of a communist utopia, life in a desolate Hungarian town has come to a virtual standstill. Flies buzz, spiders weave, water drips and animals root desultorily in the barnyard of a collective farm.
But when the charismatic Irimias - long thought dead- returns, the villagers fall under his spell. Irimias sets about swindling the villagers out of a fortune that might allow them to escape the emptiness and futility of their existence. He soon attains a messianic aura as he plays on the fears of the townsfolk and a series of increasingly brutal events unfold.
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (318 pages)
Kindle £5.99 Amazon Paperback £7.99
A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A storm gathering force.
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny weather-lashed island that is home to the world’s largest seed bank. As Shearwater risks being lost to rising sea levels, the island’s researchers have fled, and only the Salts remain.
Until, during the worst storm in living memory, a stranger washes ashore. The family nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, but it seems she isn’t telling the whole truth about why she’s there. And when Rowan stumbles upon sabotaged radios and a recently dug grave, she realises that she’s not the only one on the island with a secret.
The Names by Florence Knapp (352 pages)
Kindle £5.49 Amazon Paperback £4.99
It is 1987, and in the wake of a great storm, Cora sets out with her young daughter to register the birth of her son. Her husband expects her to follow tradition and call the baby after him - but is it right for her child to inherit his name from generations of domineering men? Her choice will shape the course of their lives.
Seven years later, her son is Bear, a name chosen by his sister, hoping he will grow up to be brave and big-hearted. Or he is Julian, the name his mother set her heart on, keen for him to become his own person. Or he is Gordon, named after his father and raised in his cruel image - but is there still a chance to break the mould?
Powerfully moving and full of hope, this is the story of three names, three versions of a life, and the infinite possibilities that a single decision can spark.
