Literary Right Back Where We Started From • May 2021

[sun surfer]

Happy May Day!

Help select what we'll read and discuss for our last go round.


The topic is Right Back Where We Started From

Do you remember the day
When this group first came our way
It had a lovely place in the sun
But a club like ours
Can never fade away
You know it's only just begun


This final month of the Lit Club is an open topic for any nominations of literary proportions.


Detailed nominating and voting guidelines can be found here. Basically, nominations are open for about four days and each person may nominate up to three literary selections which will go automatically to the vote. Voting by post then opens for four days, and a voter may give each nomination either one or two votes but only has a limited number of votes to use which is equal to the number of nominations minus one. Any questions, feel free to ask.

We hope that you will read the selection with us and join in the discussion.

*

Nominations are now complete. Initial voting is complete. Run-off voting is complete. Final results-

• Small Island by Andrea Levy
  Post . Goodreads . Preview . 448 Pages . Votes 2 . Run-off 0 . 2004 . England
  
  
• Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
  Post . Goodreads . Preview . 310 Pages . Votes 2 . Run-off 2 . 2020 . Northern Ireland
  
  
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
  Post . Goodreads . Preview . 370 Pages . Votes 2 . Run-off 0 . 2001 . England
  
  
• Theatrical Novel by Mikhail Bulgakov
  Post . Goodreads . Preview . 176 Pages . Votes 0 . Run-off – . 1936 . Ukraine & Russia
  
  
• The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
  Post . Goodreads . Preview . 206 Pages . Votes 2 . Run-off 2 . 1929 . Ireland & England
  
  
• Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
  Post . Goodreads . Preview . 160 Pages . Votes 2 . Run-off 2 . 1985 . Antigua and Barbuda & U.S.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I’m working on my nominations tonight. I will post something a little later.

[Bookworm_Girl]

My first nomination is Small Island by Andrea Levy which won several awards in 2004 and 2005 and is also a BBC miniseries. It has been on my TBR for a while.

Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmer's daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve.

Told in these four voices, Small Island is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers---in short, an encapsulation of the immigrant's life.

[Bookworm_Girl]

My second nomination is Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, another award-winning author that I’ve been wanting to read.

From Amazon:

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
*A New York Times Best Seller*

“Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare’s life… here is a novel … so gorgeously written that it transports you." —The Boston Globe

In 1580’s England, during the Black Plague a young Latin tutor falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman in this “exceptional historical novel” (The New Yorker) and best-selling winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a tender and unforgettable re-imagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, and whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down—a magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists

[Bookworm_Girl]

My third nominations is Atonement by Ian McEwan, another author that I’ve been wanting to read.

From Goodreads:

Ian McEwan’s symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from this master of English prose.

On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.

[sun surfer]

Just a little update- my nominations are decided but I won’t have a chance to get the info, post them, update the first post and start the final monthly vote until a little later so per the usual, nominations will stay open until then if anyone has any last minute books to throw in the ring.

[sun surfer]

All right, I'll be getting everything updated and started slowly over the next little while. B_G, your (final!) nominations are great! It's a coincidence since the topic was open to anything, but I also had Hamnet on my longlist of considerations for this month. I loved the film of Atonement and have been wanting to read it for a long time. And Small Island looks intriguing; what is another interesting coincidence is that I've had my nominations picked out for some days now and one of my books is also concerning the Caribbean.

ETA- I may sense a possible reason or theme that could explain some of the coincidental nature.

[sun surfer]

My last first nomination is Theatrical Novel (aka A Dead Man's Memoir aka Black Snow) by Mikhail Bulgakov. This nomination harkens back to our very first month, when Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita won. I also like that this novel is about a ten-year period which complements our club's length nicely.

Goodreads . Preview . 176 Pages . 1936 . Russia & Ukraine

A masterpiece of black comedy by the author of The Master and Margarita.

When Maxudov's novel fails, he attempts suicide. When that fails, he dramatizes his novel. To Maxudov's surprise - and the resentment of literary Moscow - the play is accepted by the legendary Independent Theater, and Maxudov plunges into a vortex of inflated egos. Each rehearsal sees more and more sparks flying higher and higher, and less and less chance of poor Maxudov's play ever being performed. Black Snow is the ultimate backstage novel, and a masterly satire on Mikhail Bulgakov's ten-year love-hate relationship with Stanislavsky, Method acting, and the Moscow Arts Theater.

[sun surfer]

My penultimate nomination is The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen. I thought it sounded like a good book for this month and I'd love to read it.

Goodreads . Preview . 206 Pages . 1929 . Ireland & England

The Last September is Elizabeth Bowen's portrait of a young woman's coming of age in a brutalized time and place, where the ordinariness of life floats like music over the impending doom of history.

In 1920, at their country home in County Cork, Sir Richard Naylor and his wife, Lady Myra, and their friends maintain a skeptical attitude toward the events going on around them, but behind the facade of tennis parties and army camp dances, all know that the end is approaching—the end of British rule in the south of Ireland and the demise of a way of life that had survived for centuries. Their niece, Lois Farquar, attempts to live her own life and gain her own freedoms from the very class that her elders are vainly defending. The Last September depicts the tensions between love and the longing for freedom, between tradition and the terrifying prospect of independence, both political and spiritual.

[sun surfer]

And my concluding nomination is Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid. This one looks compelling and there's a lot of good reasons I chose it.

Goodreads . Preview . 160 Pages . 1985 . Antigua and Barbuda & U.S.

Annie John is a haunting and provocative story of a young girl growing up on the island of Antigua. A classic coming-of-age story in the tradition of The Catcher in the Rye and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Kincaid's novel focuses on a universal, tragic, and often comic theme: the loss of childhood.

The island of Antigua is a magical place: growing up there should be a sojourn in paradise for young Annie John. But, as in the basket of green figs carried on her mother's head, there is a snake hidden somewhere within. An adored only child, Annie has until recently lived an idyllic life. She is inseparable from her beautiful mother, a powerful presence, who is the very center of the little girl's existence. Loved and cherished, Annie grows and thrives within her mother's benign shadow. Looking back on her childhood, she reflects, "It was in such a paradise that I lived." When she turns twelve, however, Annie's life changes, in ways that are often mysterious to her. She begins to question the cultural assumptions of her island world; at school she instinctively rebels against authority; and most frighteningly, her mother, seeing Annie as a "young lady," ceases to be the source of unconditional adoration and takes on the new and unfamiliar guise of adversary. At the end of her school years, Annie decides to leave Antigua and her family, but not without a measure of sorrow, especially for the mother she once knew and never ceases to mourn. "For I could not be sure," she reflects, "whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world."

[sun surfer]

Nominations are complete and voting is now open!

Voting will close exactly four days from this post.

Each person has FIVE votes to use.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Great nominations, sun surfer!

[Bookworm_Girl]

Here are my votes. Looking forward to any of these!

One vote each to the following:

Small Island by Andrea Levy
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid

[sun surfer]

I will give one vote each to

Small Island
Hamnet
Atonement
The Last September
Annie John

[sun surfer]

I’m gone right now and on a mobile so if there is a tie, I won’t be able to start the run off for a day or two. Should be an interesting finale!