Hamm Court Book Club – Page 23 – For the enjoyment of friends, books and wine …

Tightrope by Simon Mawer

Marian Sutro has survived Ravensbruck and is back in dreary 1950s London trying to pick up the pieces of her pre-war life.

Returned to an England she barely knows and a post-war world she doesn’t understand Marian searches for something on which to ground the rest of her life. Family and friends surround her and a young RAF officer attempts to bring her the normalities of love and affection but she is haunted by her experiences and by the guilt of knowing that her contribution to the war effort helped lead to the development of the Atom Bomb. Where, in the complexities of peacetime, does her loyalty lie? When a mysterious Russian diplomat emerges from the shadows to draw her into the ambiguities and uncertainties of the Cold War she sees a way to make amends for the past and to renew the excitement of her double life.

Elaine 5
Jane 5
Sally 8
Christine 9
June 5
Janet 7
Rebecca 6
Pauline 6

The Widow by Fiona Barton

A loving husband or a heartless killer…she’d know, wouldn’t she?

Elaine 6
Trude 5
Rebecca 8
Janet 5
Jane 6
Pauline 6
Sally 6
Cai 5
June 7
Christine 7

The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair

August 30, 1975. The day of the disappearance. The day Somerset, New Hampshire, lost its innocence.

That summer, struggling author Harry Quebert fell in love with fifteen-year-old Nola Kellergan. Thirty-three years later, her body is dug up from his yard, along with a manuscript copy of the novel that made him a household name. Quebert is the only suspect.

Marcus Goldman – Quebert’s most gifted protégé – throws off his writer’s block to clear his mentor’s name. Solving the case and penning a new bestseller soon merge into one. As his book begins to take on a life of its own, the nation is gripped by the mystery of ‘The Girl Who Touched the Heart of America’.

But with Nola, in death as in life, nothing is ever as it seems

Elaine 8
Trude 7
Jane 9
Christine 6
Rebecca 6
Janet 8
June 8
Sally 7
Cai 7

A Man called Ove by Frederik Backman

The international phenomenon: quirky and bittersweet, heartbreaking yet outrageously funny. Perfect for fans of Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Jonas Jonasson’s The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared.

The Author Fredrik Backman is a Swedish blogger, columnist and author. His debut novel A MAN CALLED OVE has been a number 1 bestseller across Scandinavia where it has sold over half-a-million copies. Fredrik’s second novel, MY GRANDMOTHER SENDS HER REGARDS AND APOLOGISES, and his third novel, BRITT-MARIE WAS HERE, also went straight to number 1 in Sweden on publication.

Jane 7

Rebecca 6
Sally 7
Pauline 9
trude 8
Janet 8
June 9
Cai 9
Christine 9

Half a yellow Sun

WINNER OF THE BAILEYS PRIZE BEST OF THE BEST

Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007, this is a heartbreaking, exquisitely written literary masterpiece

Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover, the professor. And Richard, a shy English writer, is in thrall to Olanna’s enigmatic twin sister. As the horrific Biafran War engulfs them, they are thrown together and pulled apart in ways they had never imagined.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s masterpiece, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, is a novel about Africa in a wider sense: about the end of colonialism, ethnic allegiances, class and race – and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.

Rebecca 7
Jane 7
Pauline 8
Trude 8
Cai 7
Elaine 8
Christine 9
June 7