If you are a keen reader, we would like to invite you to join the GLC Book Club, which takes place on the 3rd Thursday of every month, usually at Pam’s house in Reans, at 2.30.
Everyone gets a chance to select a number of books and we choose one from their selection to read. This seems the most democratic way and we end up with some fascinating books to discuss – some of which you wouldn’t have necessarily chosen to read yourself, so it broadens our knowledge of books and authors. I have also introduced a theme month when a theme is chosen and you choose a book to read which relates, however loosely, to that theme. We’ve had some great themes like Queens, Plants and Gardening, and Food. Apart from all that, it’s a good group of people who enjoy a lively discussion. We swap and recommend books and enjoy tea and cake! The person who is responsible for the book choice gets to make a cake for that particular meeting.
Hope to see you soon
Jo
For more information or to join our Book Club, please email us at
SELECTED BOOKS FOR 2019
MARCH
Our book selection for March is “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” by Heather Morris.
Brief description : I tattooed a number on her arm. She tattooed her name on my heart. In 1942, L’ale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival – scratching numbers into his fellow victims’ arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of The most potent symbols of the Holocaust. Waiting in line to be tattooed, terrified and shaking, was a young girl. For Lale – a dandy, a jack-the-lad, a bit of a chancer – it was love at first sight. And he was determined not only to survive himself, but to ensure this woman, Gita, did, too. So begins one of the most life-affirming, courageous, unforgettable and human stories of the Holocaust: the love story of the tattooist of Auschwitz. If you are interested in joining the group or borrowing the book from one of the members please contact Jo.
SELECTED BOOKS FOR 2018
JUNE
MAY
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
by Maggie O’Farrell
About the book:
Edinburgh in the 1930s. The Lennox family is having trouble with its youngest daughter. Esme is outspoken, unconventional, and repeatedly embarrasses them in polite society. Something will have to be done.
Years later, a young woman named Iris Lockhart receives a letter informing her that she has a great-aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released.
Iris has never heard of Esme Lennox and the one person who should know more, her grandmother Kitty, seems unable to answer Iris’s questions. What could Esme have done to warrant a lifetime in an institution? And how is it possible for a person to be so completely erased from a family’s history?
APRIL
Runaway
by Alice Munro
At the centre of Runaway are three stories connected into one marvellously rich, long narrative, about Juliet – who escapes from teaching at a girls’ school into a wild and passionate love match; then returns to the home of her parents, whose life and curious marriage she finally begins to examine; while in the third part of her story, her vanished child turns up caught in the grip of a religious cult. The whole picture emerges only when all the pieces of the jigsaw are finally in place. The runaway of the disturbing title story is Carla, a congenital ‘bolter’, who has neighbourly fantasies that take on a frightening afterlife…Elsewhere, a stagestruck girl finds life is more Shakespearean than even she imagines; while Tessa, a young country woman with strange powers cannot foresee what will happen if she makes off with a plausible charmer. Munro’s stories unravel layers of the past, and different versions of the truth: her characters learn that if you look too closely at anything – the past, the truth – it may crumble. Runaway is about the power and betrayals, and twists, of love, about lost children, lost chances. There is pain and desolation beneath the surface, like a needle in the heart, which makes them powerful and compelling. Munro is a magician with words, but also with layers of life and emotion.
Gascogne Ladies Club (GLC) 