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April Discussion Selection List

30 replies

Freddiecat · 02/04/2004 15:24

(This is April as in following on from March - we won't neccessarily finish in April!).

This next selection list is drawn from the Granta Top 20 young novelists published in 2003. (Granta publish such a list every 10 years). I have selected a cross section of 4 books buy 4 different authors. All are available in paperback (many of these authors have new books coming out this year).

I have given some short synopses - taken from various places. I suggest for more in depth reviews you check these out yourself (rather than having really long posts on here).

How about we try and decide by the end of next week then start a discussion going on Monday 26th April (this gives people time to buy the book and read to a roughly half-way point.

Books to follow:

OP posts:
jmb1964 · 06/04/2004 00:25

Not sure if this is open to anyone, but I like the idea of Fingersmith too - have been thinking of buying it to take on holiday at Easter anyway.

SenoraPostrophe · 05/04/2004 20:28

I like the sound of the dark room

Ouisie · 05/04/2004 20:24

I'd love to read Fingersmith - I've been eyeing it off in Waterstones but keep thinking I won't have time!!! Before I came to London from Oz, her other book ?Tipping the Velvet was on telly; didn't see it but it looked good.

Freddiecat · 05/04/2004 17:16

Bumping this up in case people missed it.

OP posts:
Freddiecat · 02/04/2004 15:29

Hari Kunzru
The Impressionist
In India, at the birth of the last century, an infant is brought howling into the world, his remarkable paleness marking him out from his brown-skinned fellows. Revered at first, he is later cast out form his wealthy home when his true parentage is revealed. So begins Pran Nath's odyssey of self-discovery - a journey that will take him from the streets of Agra, via the red light district of Bombay, to the green lawns of England and beyond - as he struggles to understand who he really is.

David Mitchell
Ghostwritten
Oblivious to the bizarre ways in which their lives intersect, nine characters — a terrorist in Okinawa, a record-shop clerk in Tokyo, a money-laundering British financier in Hong Kong, an old woman running a tea shack in China, a transmigrating "noncorpum" entity seeking a human host in Mongolia, a gallery-attendant-cum-art-thief in Petersburg, a drummer in London, a female physicist in Ireland, and a radio deejay in New York — hurtle toward a shared destiny of astonishing impact.

Rachel Sieffert
The Dark Room
The Dark Room tells the stories of three ordinary Germans: Helmut, a young photographer in Berlin in the 1930s who uses his craft to express his patriotic fervour; Lore, a twelve-year-old girl who in 1945 guides her young siblings across a devastated Germany after her Nazi parents are seized by the Allies; and, fifty years later, Micha, a young teacher obsessed with what his loving grandfather did in the war, struggling to deal with the past of his family and his country.

Sarah Waters
Fingersmith
The third slice of engrossing lesbian Victoriana from Sarah Waters. Divided into three parts, the tale is narrated by two orphaned girls whose lives are inextricably linked. It begins in a grimy thieves kitchen in Borough, South London with 17-year-old orphan Susan Trinder. She has been raised by Mrs Sucksby, a cockney Ma Baker, in a household of fingersmiths (pickpockets), coiners and burglars.

Good places for reviews are:
Amazon or Powells in the States.

OP posts:
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