Tooting Book Club - current book list
Here is the list of books on the current list - if you would like to add a book to the list please bring your suggestion to the next meeting.
Shy Creature by Clare Chambers (400 pages)
Kindle £11.49 Amazon Paperback £6.76
Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with Gil: a charismatic, married doctor.
One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen's home. A thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.
The Last Murder at the End of the World - Stuart Turton (352 pages)
Kindle £9.38: Amazon paperback £7.99 (pre-order price for Jan 2025))
Outside the island there is nothing: the world destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched. On the island it is idyllic. 122 villagers and 3 scientists, living in peaceful harmony.The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew and do what they are told by the scientists. Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder is not solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island - and everyone on it. But the security system has also wiped everyone’s memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer - and they don’t even know
Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt (384 pages)
Kindle £4.53: Amazon Paperback £5
Remarkably Bright Creatures is about a widow and her unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus. After her husband’s death, Tova Sullivan took up night shifts mopping floors and tidying up at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Keeping busy has always been her way of coping, especially after her 18-year-old son Erik mysteriously disappeared on a boat in Puget Sound over 30 years ago. She becomes acquainted with Marcellus – a curmudgeonly giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. He knows more than anyone could imagine, but he wouldn’t lift any of his 8 arms for his human captors until he starts a friendship with Tova. Marcellus, ever the detective, deduces what happened the night of Erik’s vanishing, and he must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster in order to discover the truth before it’s too late.
Careless People - Sarah Wynn-Williams (400 pages) - NON-FICTION
Kindle £11.99: Amazon Paperback £18.47: ebay £6.51
Sarah Wynn-Williams, a young diplomat from New Zealand, pitched for her dream job. She saw Facebook’s potential and knew it could change the world for the better. But, when she got there and rose to its top ranks, things turned out a little different.
From wild schemes cooked up on private jets to risking prison abroad, Careless People exposes both the personal and political fallout when boundless power and a rotten culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative, Wynn-Williams rubs shoulders with Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and world leaders, revealing what really goes on among the global elite – and the consequences this has for all of us.
It’s all in your head - Suzanne O’Sullivan (336 pages) - NON-FICTION
Kindle £3.99: Amazon Paperback £8.99
A non-fiction book by neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan, in which she shares her past experiences in diagnosing patients with psychosomatic illnesses. In this book, O’Sullivan recounts her most memorable interactions of patients with severe physical symptoms that she found to come from their mental state in a total of twelve chapters. The story is not sequential, instead each chapter depicts a different memory of her interactions with her patients. Each patient displays different symptoms varying in severity, but O’Sullivan comes to the same diagnosis and conclusion that these physical symptoms are actually psychosomatic disorders.
Fifteen Dogs - Andrei Alexis (176 pages)
Kindle £4.99:: Amazon Paperback £9.09
It begins in a bar, like so many strange stories. The gods Hermes and Apollo argue about what would happen if animals had human intelligence, so they make a bet that leads them to grant consciousness and language to a group of dogs staying overnight at a veterinary clinic.
Suddenly capable of complex thought, the dogs escape and become a pack. They are torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old 'dog' ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into unfamiliar territory, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings. Wily Benjy moves from home to home, Prince becomes a poet, and Majnoun forges a relationship with a kind couple that stops even the Fates in their tracks.
Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Attwood (324 pages)
Kindle £5.99: Amazon Paperback £6.92
The Handmaid's Tale is a futuristic dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England in a patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. Offred is the central character and narrator and one of the "Handmaids": women who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "Commanders", who are the ruling class in Gilead.
The novel explores themes of powerless women in a patriarchal society, loss of female agency and individuality, suppression of reproductive rights, and the various means by which women resist and try to gain individuality and independence.
Martyr! Kaveh Akbar (360 pages)
Kindle £5.99: Amazon Paperback £7.05
A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family.
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother's plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father's life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past--toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
OVER 450 PAGES
The Women - Kristin Hannah (480 pages)
Kindle £5.99: Amazon Paperback £4.99
‘Women can be heroes, too'. When twenty-year-old nursing student, Frances "Frankie" McGrath, hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on California's idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different path for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurses Corps and follows his path.
As green and inexperienced as the young men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war, as well as the unexpected trauma of coming home to a changed America. Frankie will also discover the true value of female friendship and the heartbreak that love can cause.
The Starless Sea - Erin Morgenstern (512 pages)
Kindle £5.99; Amazon Paperback £9.19
Far beneath the surface of the earth, upon the shores of the starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. The entryways that lead to this sanctuary are often hidden, sometimes on forest floors or in private homes or in plain sight.
Zachary Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of loverlorn prisoners, key collectors and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood impossibly written in a book which is older than he is
The Bee Sting - Paul Murray (656 pages)
Kindle £5.99: Amazon paperback £8.49
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under- but rather than face the music he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse -proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewellery on e-bay while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her easy to her final exams. And 12 year old PJ is putting the rinal touches to his grand plan to run away from home.
Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac; a casual favour to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil? Can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life. And if the story has already been written, is there still time to find a happy ending?
All the Colours of the Dark - Chris Whitaker (592 pages)
Kindle £5.49: Amazon paperback £4.99
A sweeping coming-of-age tale, an epic love story and a searing thriller. There is a moment when childhood ends. For Joseph 'Patch' Macauley and Saint Brown, it comes late one summer as Patch is abducted from their hometown. Devastated, Saint devotes her days to finding her best friend.
