June reading-group round-up
If you’re looking for inspiration for new titles to read with your reading circle or book group, let us help. Here are some titles which have reading guides ready and waiting.
The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry
Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture won the 2009 Costa Book of the Year, having also been on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize 2008. Roseanne McNulty, perhaps nearing her one-hundredth birthday – no one is quite sure – faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital where she’s spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr Grene. This relationship, guarded but trusting after so many years, intensifies and complicates as Dr Grene mourns the death of his wife.
Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges – of Roseanne’s family in 1930s Sligo – is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne’s story becomes an alternative, secret, history of Ireland. Exquisitely written, it is the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love, passion and hope.
Download The Secret Scripture reading guide (PDF, 3.8MB)
The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver’s new book, The Lacuna, is out later in the year – and her last, The Poisonwood Bible, is a reading group classic. It tells the story of an American family in the Congo during a time of tremendous political and social upheaval. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them all they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it – from garden seeds to Scripture – is calamitously transformed on African soil. This tale of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction, over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa, is set against one of history’s most dramatic political parables.
The Poisonwood Bible dances between the darkly comic human failings and inspiring poetic justices of our times. In a compelling exploration of religion, conscience, imperialist arrogance, and the many paths to redemption, Barbara Kingsolver has written a novel of overwhelming power and passion.
Download The Poisonwood Bible reading guide (PDF, 600KB)
Faber Firsts
If you fancy exploring some true classics, Faber have made available reading guides for all of their Faber Firsts – seminal first novels, repackaged with covers inspired by the originals and by the design trends of the time. You can pick from:
- Bliss, by Peter Carey – PDF, 1.8MB
- The White Castle, by Orhan Pamuk – PDF, 1.7MB
- The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath – PDF, 1.5MB
- A Pale View of Hills, by Kazuo Ishiguro – PDF, 1.3MB
- Such a Long Journey, by Rohinto Mistry – PDF, 3.4MB
- The Barracks, by John McGahern – PDF, 1.9MB
- The Buddha of Suburbia, by Hanid Kureishi – PDF, 1.6MB
- The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster – PDF, 1.4MB
- Cover Her Face, by P.D. James – PDF, 1.5MB
- Lord of the Flies, by William Golding – PDF, 3.5MB
