Bibliofemme Bookclub An Irish Bookclub

The author re-imagines her own childhood in this witty, often troubling autobiographical novel that follows the lives of members of the Aubrey family from the perspective of Rose, one of four siblings. Original.

After a lot of research including scouring the recommendations in the Sunday papers and reviewing the ‘top’ lists in the Guardian

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Jessamy "Jess" Harrison, a racially-mixed child, is growing up feeling that she is caught between two different worlds, until she is sent to visit relatives in Nigeria, where she comes face to face with a mysterious new friend.

Meeting: 6th May 2006

 Without much time to look for this month’s bookclub book, I was relying on the Irish Times Saturday

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When one of my favourite writers, Virginia Woolf said: “I was jealous of her writing. The only writing I have ever been jealous of”, I couldn’t help my curiosity about Katherine Mansfield. She has long occupied a place on my ‘to read’ list and her weighty reputation rests on her short stories. She never wrote a novel

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Meeting: 22nd August 2007

I didn’t realise it was my turn to pick the book this month until the Connoisseur sent out a reminder email the week of bookclub. So in a panic I asked a girl in work for a recommendation, knowing that she is a complete ‘bookhead’.

Her first suggestion she described as a book that

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I chose this book for two particular reasons. I liked the idea of reading a Polish author (the majority of our authors being, Irish, English or American) and the book itself was recommended to me.

The Shadow of the Sun is a hard book to categorise. It’s not quite a biography and it isn’t really a travel book, so the only way I can describe

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The Weight of Water is beautifully written but leaves many frustrating questions unanswered. A contemporary story about two couples and a child in a sailboat off the coast of New Hampshire is intertwined with the tale of a 19th century double murder which took place on a nearby island.

Told from two perspectives – a photographer investigating

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When Siddalee Walker, eldest daughter of Vivi Abbott Walker (Ya-Ya extraordinaire – part Scarlett, part Katharine Hepburn, part Tallulah) is interviewed about a hit play she has directed, her mother is described as a ‘tap-dancing child abuser’. Enraged, Vivi disowns Sidda – devastating her daughter who postpones her wedding

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Every once in a while I am lucky enough to read a book that is amazing. Earlier this year I read We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, and it was one of ‘those’ books. While simultaneously loving every minute of reading it and kicking myself for not picking it for bookclub the idea to pick a Shriver book for the club to read

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The protagonists of this tale are billed as an aged homosexual composer, his dog and a “mysterious Bosnian”.

Cockroft, a retired composer and socialite, moves in Umbria, rural Italy following ostracism in his native England. Surviving on royalties he lives lonely and secluded life filled with flings, affairs and his dogs. Tomoleon Vieta

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The pitch sounds so good: “An e-writer called Ali or Alix will write to order anything you like, provided that you are prepared to enter the story as yourself and take the risk of leaving it as someone else.”

Set everywhere and nowhere (London, Paris, Capri and cyberspace) The PowerBook does contain some powerful images and concepts that

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