Tag: growing up

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

GilbertLeave a comment

About the book

Twelve-year-old Harriet is doing her best to grow up, which is not easy as her mother is permanently on medication, her father has silently moved to another city, and her serene sister rarely notices anything. All of them are still suffering from the shocking and mysterious death of her brother Robin twelve years earlier, and it seems to Harriet that the family may never recover. So, inspired by Captain Scott, Houdini, and Robert Louis Stevenson, she sets out with her only friend Hely to find Robin’s murderer and punish him. But what starts out as a child’s game soon becomes a dark and dangerous journey into the menacing underworld of a small Mississippi town.

Reviewed by Everton

A multi-layered story with brilliant characterisation. Excellent use of language and description created pictures in the mind. A little disappointed that we never discovered Robin’s killer”

star rating ***

 

Read this book

Request to borrow a reading book set

http://www3.hants.gov.uk/borrow-book-sets.htm

 

One Day by David Nicholls

Gilbert2 Comments

About the book

Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows?

Reiewed by ArleReading Group:

A good book for the younger generation and yet, one for any age as we watch the characters mature. Well constructed, but a slow start as we get to know the characters. Worth persevering to the end.

Star rating: ***

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

Gilbert2 Comments
book cover

About the book

‘Obsessed with sex!’ said Jassy, ‘there’s nobody so obsessed as you, Linda. Why if I so much as look at a picture you say I’m a pygmalionist.’
In the end we got more information out of a book called Ducks and Duck Breeding.
‘Ducks can only copulate,’ said Linda, after studying this for a while, ‘in running water. Good luck to them.’
Oh, the tedium of waiting to grow up! Longing for love, obsessed with weddings and sex, Linda and her sisters and cousin Fanny are on the lookout for the perfect lover. But finding Mr Right is much harder than any of the sisters had thought. Linda must suffer marriage first to a stuffy Tory MP and then to a handsome and humourless communist, before finding real love in war-torn Paris. . .
Nancy Mitford was the eldest of the infamous Mitford sisters, known for her membership in ‘The Bright Young Things’ clique of the 1920s and an intimate of Evelyn Waugh; she produced witty, satirical novels with a cast of characters taken directly from the aristocratic social scene of which she was a part

Reviewed by CC Readers:

Was great fun to read and enjoyed by the whole group. The description of characters in a domestic humorous stetting brought the story to life. In discussion the autobiographical and the fictional past became apparent. The war years were well noted and saw the family adapt to new situations. Ending rather abrupt.
Star rating: ****

Read the book

Request to borrow a reading group set