Book Club - Request for Nominations

[MistyMeena]

I know that Book Club is generally a very small group but we'd welcome nominations from anyone to widen our reading.

Please nominate up to two books (fiction, non-fiction, biography, poetry, short stories, anything that takes your fancy). Nominations for our next reads can be made up to midnight on Sunday 6th August after which a voting thread will be set up to make the final selection.

[midnightcatprowl]

My first nomination is a book sent to me by a close friend who read it for her book club. It came accompanied by two sheets of closely typed comments by the two book club members who reviewed it at their Book Club meeting - most of the comments are completely mystifying to someone who hasn't read the book! The author is J.M. Coetzee who I've managed not to hear of before - which is very bad as apparently he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003 and was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice.


The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee

is a novel about what? Well opinion is divided but the blurb on the back of the book says "After crossing oceans, a man and a boy - both strangers to each other - arrive in a new land. David, the boy, has lost his mother and Simon vows to look after him. In this strange new country they are both assigned a new name, a new birthday, a new life. Knowing nothing of their surroundings, nor language or customs, they are determined to find David's mother. Though the boy has no memory of her, Simon is certain he will recognise her at first sight. "But after we find her" David asks "what are we here for?"

My second nomination is - after some hesitation - a book by Jane Austin. It may scarcely matter which one but I'm avoiding the obvious choice of 'Pride and Prejudice' and going instead for one which I think may provoke more debate:

Mansfield Park by Jane Austin

Jane Austin is very much in the news at present. I first read one of her books I think at about 11 years old and remained a big fan for many years - just as well as I attended the sort of second class selective secondary school where staff thought it 'easier' to ensure that as many as possible of the books you studied for A level were the same as those you'd studied for O level - easier for them obviously rather than for the students! I've continued - at intervals - throughout my life to read Jane Austin but my view of this author and my reaction to the books has changed radically over the decades!

[carrie80]

Thanks MistyMeena. I am nominating two books that have won awards and which I've seen mentioned a lot this year:

The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Essex-Serpent- ... B01AWUTMHY
London, 1893. When Cora Seaborne's controlling husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness. Along with her son Francis - a curious, obsessive boy - she leaves town for Essex, in the hope that fresh air and open space will provide refuge.

On arrival, rumours reach them that the mythical Essex Serpent, once said to roam the marshes claiming lives, has returned to the coastal parish of Aldwinter. Cora, a keen amateur naturalist with no patience for superstition, is enthralled, convinced that what the local people think is a magical beast may be a yet-undiscovered species. As she sets out on its trail, she is introduced to William Ransome, Aldwinter's vicar, who is also deeply suspicious of the rumours, but thinks they are a distraction from true faith.

As he tries to calm his parishioners, Will and Cora strike up an intense relationship, and although they agree on absolutely nothing, they find themselves at once drawn together and torn apart, affecting each other in ways that surprise them both.
The Essex Serpent is a celebration of love, and the many different shapes it can take.

The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Underground-Ra ... 01FE6V5Q2/
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North.

In Whitehead's razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But its placid surface masks an infernal scheme designed for its unknowing black inhabitants. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher sent to find Cora, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

At each stop on her journey, Cora encounters a different world. As Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America, from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once the story of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history.

[carrie80]

PS My nomination theme of main characters named Cora is entirely coincidental!