Elma Turner book chat September

There is no set book or need to register, just come along and chat to others about what you've been reading lately.

We meet at the Elma Turner Library on the second Tuesday of each month, 10.30am.

Diane Chamberlain Necessary lies

Set in North Carolina in the 1960s, recently married social worker who works with families and children, witnesses extreme poverty and racial prejudice. Riveting

Diane Chamberlain The stolen marriage

Set in 1944 and the start of the polio epidemic. The protagonist is a nurse who gets pregnant after a one-night stand and marries the father despite loving someone else

Jenny Erpenbeck Kairos

Booker winner 2024. Hans and Katerina meet by chance at a bus shelter in Berlin 1986. She is 19 and he is in his 50s. An intense affair begins and unravels as the certainties and loyalties of East Berlin unravel as well. Betrayal, families, nations. The time before the wall crumbles.

Alice Hoffman The red garden

Short stories set in a town called Blackwell in Massachusetts following pioneers until present day. The stories are linked by characters who are outsiders or strangers to the town.

Samuel Butler Erewhon, or, over the range

Butler worked as a high-country shepherd in his 20s when he wrote this satirical utopian novel where morality is turned upside down and inspired by Darwinian theory this is prescient and beautifully written.

S J Bennet A death in diamonds

Part of the highly entertaining ‘Her Majesty the Queen investigates’ series. This one set in 1957 when the Queen is about to visit Paris. Her speech disappears, she is served oysters ( a non no) and her face cream is doctored. Two bodies are found in the Mews apartment of the Dean of Winchester, one wearing a real tiara that the Queen Mother was looking to buy for Margaret… (Library has 3 of this series on Libby but not this title, yet. Have suggested we purchase it.)

Christina Sweeney – Baird The end of men

Written from multiple viewpoints and started in 2017 before the Covid epidemic struck, the author edited parts of it in 2021 to include the scientific response to a real epidemic in Britain. This novel has a plague beginning in Scotland. It kills only males. Women must take on all the roles vacated by a quickly disappearing male workforce ( except warfare which halts). NZ even gets a mention.

Peter Carey Amnesia

A political novel – a cyber activist in Australia hacks the security system of prisons and detention centres in Australia and the US causing all the locks to open. She aims to expose how Australia and America’s government are intertwined. Told through the eyes of a drunk journalist. Good writing

Claire Keegan Small things like these

This a small book with a perfect piece of writing . Set in an Irish town we meet Bill a coal and timber merchant who is making deliveries before Christmas. One encounter at the convent on the hill makes him question the status quo and the control the church has over the village. Evocative, tender and remarkable in its simplicity.

Alice Winn In memoriam

It’s 1914 when we meet our protagonists Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood still at Preshute, a boarding school in the country. There are many reports of older boys who’ve gone off to the front to serve their country and despite their published injuries and deaths, they are seen as heroes. When Gaunt then Ellwood sign up, both as officers , we are taken to the horrors of the trenches with injuries & losses of life relentless. The gay love affair between them is ever present and beautifully depicted right until the end of the novel. I couldn’t put it down. Highly recommended.

Shana Abé The second Mrs Astor

Madeleine is just 17 when she meets just divorced Jack Astor who is 29 years older. During their honeymoon in Egypt she becomes pregnant. They return home aboard the RMS Titanic but Jack is drowned and Madeleine survives to give birth to their son in New York. In the book she is writing to the son about the father he never knew. Loved it

David John Star of the North

A story of a Korean family who emigrated to the USA. The twin sisters are separated when one returns to Korea only to disappear. The CIA recruit the twin in America to go undercover to North Korea to uncover the truth. Twists and turns. Eye opening. Needs a sequel.

Nguyen Phan Que Mai - Dust Child (coming soon)

Set during the Vietnam War Rural sisters forced to go to Saigon to become bar girls. A US veteran returns to Vietnam in search of a child born to one of the girls. Moving picture of Vietnam though sometimes contrived.

Christian Lewis Finding Hildasay & Hildasay to home:how I found my family by walking the UK’s coastline

Former paratrooper Lewis set off from Swansea to walk the entire coastline of the UK to shake off depression and raise funds and awareness for a veterans charity. He also walks the Scottish island coasts in winter, living in a tent. Along the way he adopts a stray dog . After 6 years away during lockdown he meets a woman en route who is also trekking. By the time his adventure ends he has a fiancée and a baby.

Flora Feltham Bad archive

Essays about life, loss, joy and the fabric of memory

Janice Y K Lee Piano teacher

When World War II strikes Hong Kong and her English lover is sent to an internment camp, Trudy is forced to form dangerous alliances with the head of the Japanese gendarmerie, which leads to a chain of terrible betrayals. A second storyline is set in the 1950s when a piano teacher Claire has an affair with the mysterious chauffeur. Good sense of setting, 40s and 50s HK and the social life of ex-pats

Percival Everett James

A re-telling of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim, the runaway slave. Commentary of the horrors of slavery and race relations. A brilliant fast read.

Jayne Anne Phillips Night watch

Won a Pulitzer but not sure I know why. Set in 1874, in the wake of the Civil War, eleven-year-old ConaLee and her mother arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia. They're delivered to the hospital's entrance by Papa - an abusive veteran who forces himself into their lives - after ConaLee's mother, who hasn't spoken in a year, grows even more withdrawn. Based on a real place. Disjointed.

Mike Joy The fight for fresh water

Mike Joy offers a rare first-hand look at the life of a scientist whose research led him to activism. Vividly describing the environmental damage, he has witnessed in New Zealand's rivers, lakes and streams, he writes also about the political challenges he has met along the way.

Pip Williams Dictionary of lost words

Fiction but based on fact. The story of the first Oxford dictionary and how in 1901 the word Bondmaid was discovered missing . This is the story of the girl, Esme , who stole it when she sat beneath the sorting table where her father and team of lexicographers collected words for the first dictionary. Esme also collected discarded words often deemed to be unimportant relating to women’s experiences.