railway club bookclub

SEPTEMBER BOOK

NOTE:  No meeting in August, as we take our traditional summer break.

 

September's book will be Ferocity by Nicola Lagioa (https://www.amazon.com/Ferocity-Nicola-Lagioia/dp/1609453816).  Join us at 7pm on Tuesday, September 4, for a lovely evening of literature and libations at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge, grandly overlooking English Bay.  Newcomers are always welcome to stop by for a test drive.

         

 

Part of the excellent Europa Editions line of continental European fiction in translation (My Brilliant Friend, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, etc.), Ferocity is at once an intimate family saga and a cinematic portrait of the moral and political corruption of an entire society. It is an ambitious, stylish work by one of Italy's foremost novelists.

Bari, southern Italy. On a stifling summer's night, on the outskirts of town, a young woman named Clara—the daughter of the region's most prominent family of real estate developers—stumbles naked, dazed, and bloodied down a major highway. Her death will be deemed a suicide. Her estranged half-brother, however, cannot free himself from her memory or the questions surrounding her death, and the more he learns about Clara's life, the more he reveals the moral decay at the core of his family's ascent to social prominence.

Ferocity combines suspense, psychological acuity, and contemporary realism in a feat of storytelling. It is fierce and relentless in pursuit of its characters' psychological truths, yet lyrical and moving as it describes the natural splendor of Italy ravaged by greed and regulatory negligence.