Deluged With Books Cafe

I was introduced to Barbara Pym by chance as her books often appear side by side with Anita Brookner, Rosamond Lehmann and a handful of English women authors that I love. Her characters are most often vulnerable, albeit a bit lonely, sometimes gliding in unnoticed and yet their presence magnifies over time. In moments like this, it is when we recognize a bit of ourselves in them. In No Fond Return of Love,  we meet a heroine who seemed a bit worn around the edges, lives alone in her parents' big house at the London suburb and does the 'thankless task' of indexing for published authors. When she attends a weekend seminar, a needed break from the down spell of a broken engagement, she made new acquaintances and developed renewed interest as she began to be intertwined in their lives. Dulcie is a kindred character (though first impressions would cast her as a mild and boring type) but behind the gentle, if not faded, appearance lies a rather droll streak and curiosit...

Some books have that particular pervading smell. This book is one of them. It is what I would come to think as entering a men's club. I cannot escape the sense of being inside a masculine study filled with leather bound books, the rustling of papers in a corner oak table, a lingering smell of tobacco left on an ashtray. That is how it was reading this book. A friend lent it to me and considering her tastes (which is a bit opposite of mine), I thought it is a bit as insane as she. And I meant that in an overwhelmingly brilliant way. Written in a long monologue, like an endless stream of soliloquies, an aging David Kepesh dishes out the finer points of his life and his involvement with a young woman named Consuela Castillo while touching on other topics in between. Opinions about politics, growing old, social structure, war, etc are laid out along with the sexual revolution of the sixties, women, love and other musings.

This month's book club discussion is going to be about Dear Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay .  Its not exactly a Jane Austen book adaptation but it does take some elements from her works.  What's interesting about this novel is that its written as a series of letters (an epistolary) by the female protagonist, Samantha, addressed to her grad school benefactor. The letters are one way, Mr. Knightley never writes back to her and in effect it reads more like her journal rather than a conversation.  The book has had great reviews and some not so great ones.  This becomes a perfect jumping point for discussion.  What makes it a great book and what makes it a not so good one. Which elements work and why some don't.   Book Summary: Dear Mr. Knightley is a contemporary epistolary novel with a delightful dash of Jane Austen. Samantha Moore survived years of darkness in the foster care system by hiding behind her favorite characters in literature, even a...

At twenty-six, Emma Roberts comes to the painful realization that if she is ever to become truly independent, she must leave her comfortable London flat and venture out into the wider world. This entails not only breaking free from a claustrophobic relationship with her reclusive, widowed mother but also shedding her inherited tendency toward melancholy. Emma yearns to make friends, attend parties, and have love affairs like other women, but to her these things seem forever out of reach; that is, until her college tutors find her a scholarship to study seventeenth-century garden design in Paris. Once settled in a small Paris hotel, Emma befriends Francoise Desnoyers, a vibrant young woman who is as confident as Emma is tentative, as provocative as Emma is reserved, and as worldly as Emma is naive. On a weekend visit to Francoise's beautiful country chateau, L'Ermitage, Emma is drawn into Francoise's problematic relationship with her imperious mother, who demands that F...