FEBRUARY BOOK

Our book for February is the latest novel from contemporary English author Zadie Smith, The Fraud (link).  We'll meet on Tuesday, February 13 at our usual Zawa's location on Commercial Drive (link) with the usual 7pm start time.  All lifeforms welcome.

  

     It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.

     Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

     Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

 

JANUARY BOOK

Happy New Year to one and all!  We'll start off the new year with a collection of Kurt Vonnegut short stories Welcome to the Monkey House (link).  We're sticking with our second Tuesday of the month schedule, so that means Tuesday, January 9 this time around.  And we're back at Zawa's on the Drive (link) at our usual 7pm start time.  Come and join the gang for some literary chatter and chow.  All residents of the Milky Way welcome.

A MASTERFUL COLLECTION OF TWENTY-FIVE SHORT STORIES FROM THE INIMITABLE AUTHOR OF SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, KURT VONNEGUT

'Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer...a zany but moral mad scientist' Time

A diabolical government asserts control by eliminating orgasms. A scientist discovers the secret to unlocking instant happiness, with unexpected consequences. In an America where everyone is equal every which way, a teenage boy plans to overthrow the system.

Welcome to the Monkey House gathers together twenty-five of Kurt Vonnegut's short stories from the 1950s and 1960s. Shot through with Vonnegut's singular humor, wit and bewilderment at humanity, this is a collection that celebrates a true master of short-form fiction.