Description: The Book Club meets every 6 weeks to discuss a current book for review. If you like to read and to talk about books this is for you – or you can just listen to what others have to say. Give it a go.
Coordinator: Alan Corkhill
Day: See list below
Time: 9:30 am
Location: Shed
More Information
Please contact Alan to be put on the email distribution list for the Book Club.
Any enquiries: Alan Corkhill Email: a.corkhill127@gmail.com 045 012 7270
Focus Questions Tom Sharpe, “The Gropes” (2009)
- Sharpe has employed several types of satire throughout his long writing career. What is the nature of his satire in “The Gropes”?
- How successfully does he lampoon a) suburban mediocrity and b) the British police force?
- Do you consider the slapstick overdone?
- Find some examples of Sharpe’s vulgarity and political incorrectness that particularly resonate with you.
- Despite the preeminence of Grope matriarchy over the centuries, in which ways is being a woman no fun for Vera and Belinda?
- To what extent is the gangly-legged Esmond Wiley a beneficiary of his change of fortunes?
- Do you agree with several critics that the novel’s ending is too abrupt?
Book List 2022
Tom Sharpe, “The Gropes” (2010) [a farcical series of events enacted around an old English Northumberland family] 5 MAY
Amor Towles, “A Gentleman in Moscow” (2016) [the historical narrative of a Russian count who is condemned to spend the rest of his life under house arrest] 16 JUNE
Lia Hills, “The Crying Place” (2017) [an Australian tale of love and grief in borderland country] 28 JULY
Kelly Rimmer, “The Things We Cannot Say” (2019) [the story of a young woman trying to survive war-torn Poland, juxtaposed with the story of the intergenerational complexities of modern life] 8 SEPTEMBER
Patrick Modiano, “The Search Warrant [Dora Bruder]”(2020) [about the quest of one man to discover the whereabouts of a missing Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied Paris] 20 OCTOBER
Hannah Kent, “Devotion” (2021) [tells the story of a new life in Australia for a Prussian family escaping religious persecution] 1 DECEMBER