Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood (February 2020)
A collection of highly imaginative short pieces that speak to our times with deadly accuracy.
A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by 
the voice of her late husband. An elderly lady with Charles Bonnet syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence. A woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire, and a crime committed long ago is revenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite.
In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood ventures into the shadowland earlier explored by fabulists and concoctors of dark yarns such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Daphne du Maurier and Arthur Conan Doyle – and also by herself, in her award-winning novel Alias Grace. In Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game.
As can often happen with short story collections, this one from Atwood was a mixed bag. Some confusing, some indifferent, some hilarious. One thing is certain is that this collection is full of Atwood’s trademark macabre wit. Definitely one for fans.
A Weekend in New York by Benjamin Markovits (January 2020)
‘What are you feeling so anxious about? I’m the guy who has to go out there and lose.’
‘That’s what I don’t like. That’s what you don’t realise. It’s harder on the rest of us.’
‘I’m sure it must be,’ he said.
Tolstoy claimed: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’. But what if the happy families are actually the most unusual of all?
Paul Essinger is a mid-ranking tennis professional on the ATP tour. His girlfriend Dana is an ex-model and photographer, and the mother of their two-year-old son, Cal. Together they form a tableau of the contented upper-middle-class New York family. But summer storms are blowing through Manhattan, and Paul’s parents have come to stay in the build-up to the US Open. Over the course of the weekend, several generations of domestic tension are brought to boiling point . . .
What does it mean to be a family? To be an individual? And how do we deal with the responsibilities these roles impose upon us? A Weekend In New York intertwines the politics of the household and the state to forge a luminous national portrait on a deceptively local scale. Recalling some of America’s most celebrated novelists – this is John Updike’s Rabbit for a new generation – Benjamin Markovits’ writing reminds us of the heights that social realism can reach.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (March 2020)
A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoingheralds the arrival of a 
major new voice in contemporary fiction.
Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle’s dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast’s booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia’s descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.
Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi’s magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer.
Elmet by Fiona Mosley (April 2020)
Fresh and distinctive writing from an exciting new voice in fiction, Elmet is an unforgettable novel about family, as well as a beautiful meditation on landscape.
Daniel is heading north. He is looking for someone. The simplicity of his early life with 
Daddy and Cathy has turned sour and fearful. They lived apart in the house that Daddy built for them with his bare hands. They foraged and hunted. When they were younger, Daniel and Cathy had gone to school. But they were not like the other children then, and they were even less like them now. Sometimes Daddy disappeared, and would return with a rage in his eyes. But when he was at home he was at peace. He told them that the little copse in Elmet was theirs alone. But that wasn’t true. Local men, greedy and watchful, began to circle like vultures. All the while, the terrible violence in Daddy grew.
Atmospheric and unsettling, Elmet is a lyrical commentary on contemporary society and one family’s precarious place in it, as well as an exploration of how deep the bond between father and child can go.
It was a brave new world that faced our group this month as we met online for the first time in eight years! Ironically this worked better for book discussion in many ways and both our meeting and Elmet itself provided some much needed relief from current events. Quiet, unexpected and beautifully symbolic, a fabulous debut.
Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch (May 2020)
The blistering, compulsively readable new novel from Herman Koch, author of the instant New York Times bestseller The Dinner.
When a medical procedure goes horribly wrong and famous actor Ralph Meier winds up dead, Dr. Marc Schlosser needs to come up with some answers. After all, reputation is everything in this business. Personally, he’s not exactly upset that Ralph is gone, but as a 
high profile doctor to the stars, Marc can’t hide from the truth forever.
It all started the previous summer. Marc, his wife, and their two beautiful teenage daughters agreed to spend a week at the Meier’s extravagant summer home on the Mediterranean. Joined by Ralph and his striking wife Judith, her mother, and film director Stanley Forbes and his much younger girlfriend, the large group settles in for days of sunshine, wine tasting, and trips to the beach. But when a violent incident disrupts the idyll, darker motivations are revealed, and suddenly no one can be trusted. As the ultimate holiday soon turns into a nightmare, the circumstances surrounding Ralph’s later death begin to reveal the disturbing reality behind that summer’s tragedy.
Featuring the razor-sharp humor and acute psychological insight that made The Dinner an international phenomenon, Summer House with Swimming Pool is a controversial, thought-provoking novel that showcases Herman Koch at his finest.
Opinions varied wildly on this one, with some finding the grisly storyline and sardonic narrator too much to bear in the current climate. Others found it gripping and rather amusing – albeit in a creepy, cringeworthy kind of way.
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend (June 2020)
Teen angst has never been such serious business – or this much fun! In his secret diary,
British teen Adrian Mole excruciatingly details every morsel of his turbulent adolescence. Mixed in with daily reports about the spot sprouting on his chin are heartrending passages about his parents’ chaotic marriage.
Adrian sees all, and he has something to say about everything. Delightfully self-centered, Adrian is the sort of teen who could rule a much better world – if only his crazy relatives and classmates would get out of his way!
Although not as laugh-a-minute as some of us remembered from our youth, Adrian Mole provided us with the wistful nostalgia we needed this month as the world turned upside down. If only we could travel back in time to experience this book as fourteen year olds. As adults the broken marriages and lonely old aged pensioners didn’t make us laugh as loudly as we’d hoped…
Why I am No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge (July 2020)
In 2014, award-winning journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote about her frustration with the way that discussions of race and racism in Britain were being led by those who weren’t 
affected by it. She posted a piece on her blog, entitled: ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’ that led to this book.
Exploring issues from eradicated black history to the political purpose of white dominance, whitewashed feminism to the inextricable link between class and race, Reni Eddo-Lodge offers a timely and essential new framework for how to see, acknowledge and counter racism. It is a searing, illuminating, absolutely necessary exploration of what it is to be a person of colour in Britain today.
The group were feeling very grateful to read Reni Eddo-Lodge’s essential study of racism in Britain this month. At such a pivotal point in our history it was important that we confront our own ignorance. This book clearly represents just the tip of the iceberg but all were agreed it is the best starting point. Absolutely essential, accessible and an amazing bookclub debate.
Ordinary People by Diana Evans (August 2020)
Two London couples find themselves at a moment of reckoning. Melissa has a new baby and doesn’t want to let it change her but, in the crooked walls of a narrow Victorian 
terrace, she begins to disappear. Michael, growing daily more accustomed to his commute, still loves Melissa but can’t quite get close enough to her to stay faithful.
Meanwhile out in the suburbs, Stephanie is happy with Damian and their three children, but the death of Damian’s father has thrown him into crisis – or is it something, or someone, else?
Ordinary People is an intimate study of identity and parenthood, sex and grief, love and ageing. It is the story of our lives, and those moments that threaten to unravel us.
The group felt that, although the blurb was slightly misleading, the title of this novel was very on the money. Although some were bored by the highly ‘ordinary’ parts of Ordinary People, we appreciated the fact of characters of colour defined not by their blackness but by their very, ordinary, middle-class lives. Characters not there to be exoticised or to make a point but to relate to.
Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (September 2020)
The Mayan god of death sends a young woman on a harrowing, life-changing journey in this one-of-a-kind fairy tale inspired by Mexican folklore.
The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her 
wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own.
Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it—and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea’s demise, but success could make her dreams come true.
In the company of the strangely alluring god and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City—and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.
A fantastical romp that we all enjoyed well enough and could see pitched as an equally fantastical film. Slow in parts but ultimately building up to an enjoyable quest.
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (November 2020)
Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They 
live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They’re completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that is silent and suffocating.
As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father’s authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins’ laughter rings throughout the house. When they return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together.
Purple Hibiscus is an exquisite novel about the emotional turmoil of adolescence, the powerful bonds of family, and the bright promise of freedom.
A moving coming-of-age tale that, although slow in parts, was moving, stifling and subtle in equal parts. Adichie’s debut novel definitely hints at the works of art to come and an enjoyable read was had by all.
In Black and White by Alexandra Wilson (November 2020)
‘I glanced around the courtroom, quickly at first and then repeated it. Slower this time, taking in the details of everyone’s faces. I began to play the game I’d played my whole life: spot the black person. Of 
course, I wish it didn’t matter what I looked like or where I came from, but it was obvious that no one there looked like me.’
Alexandra is 25, mixed-race and from Essex. As a trainee criminal barrister, she finds herself navigating a world and a set of rules designed by a privileged few. This is her story.
We follow Alexandra through a criminal justice system still divided by race and class. We hear about the life-changing events that motivated her to practice criminal law, beginning with the murder of a close family friend and her own experiences of knife crime. She shows us how it feels to defend someone who hates the colour of your skin or someone you suspect is guilty, and the heart-breaking cases of youth justice she has worked on. We see what it’s like for the teenagers coerced into county line drug deals and the damage that can be caused when we criminalise teenagers.
Her story is unique in a profession still dominated by a privileged section of society with little first-hand experience of the devastating impact of violent crime.
A fascinating discussion this month as we explore the strange world of the criminal courts and the people who inhabit them, namely Alexandra Wilson, a young black female barrister who is the modern face of the criminal bar. Although some found her account of her pupillage year and personal experiences of becoming a barrister fascinating, some found it on the slightly dry side.
The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan (December 2020)
A charming, clever, and quietly moving debut novel of of endless possibilities and joyful 
discoveries that explores the promises we make and break, losing and finding ourselves, the objects that hold magic and meaning for our lives, and the surprising connections that bind us.
Lime green plastic flower-shaped hair bobbles—Found, on the playing field, Derrywood Park, 2nd September.
Bone china cup and saucer—Found, on a bench in Riveria Public Gardens, 31st October.
Anthony Peardew is the keeper of lost things. Forty years ago, he carelessly lost a keepsake from his beloved fiancée, Therese. That very same day, she died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Anthony sought consolation in rescuing lost objects—the things others have dropped, misplaced, or accidentally left behind—and writing stories about them. Now, in the twilight of his life, Anthony worries that he has not fully discharged his duty to reconcile all the lost things with their owners. As the end nears, he bequeaths his secret life’s mission to his unsuspecting assistant, Laura, leaving her his house and and all its lost treasures, including an irritable ghost.
Recovering from a bad divorce, Laura, in some ways, is one of Anthony’s lost things. But when the lonely woman moves into his mansion, her life begins to change. She finds a new friend in the neighbor’s quirky daughter, Sunshine, and a welcome distraction in Freddy, the rugged gardener. As the dark cloud engulfing her lifts, Laura, accompanied by her new companions, sets out to realize Anthony’s last wish: reuniting his cherished lost objects with their owners.
Long ago, Eunice found a trinket on the London pavement and kept it through the years. Now, with her own end drawing near, she has lost something precious—a tragic twist of fate that forces her to break a promise she once made.
As the Keeper of Lost Objects, Laura holds the key to Anthony and Eunice’s redemption. But can she unlock the past and make the connections that will lay their spirits to rest?
Full of character, wit, and wisdom, The Keeper of Lost Things is heartwarming tale that will enchant fans of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Garden Spells, Mrs Queen Takes the Train,and The Silver Linings Playbook.
Manchester Book Club 