Bibliofemme Bookclub An Irish Bookclub

Demian is the story of Emil Sinclair told in the first person. Emil comes from a religious (Christian) family and is essentially a good child. The novel opens with the awakening of Emil to life outside the bubble of childhood and family to individuality, good, evil and the grey area in between. This can be seen as a coming-of-age tale, a meditation

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Two best friends grow up together in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early 1900s. As young boys, they were inseparable in the military academy. The boy from the privileged background was destined to become Army General and the other, well, he was always destined to be different, and never did quite fit the military mould. The rich lad pleasured

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Benjamin Sachs’ story is conveyed through the eyes of his friend Peter Aaron, a novelist who discovers in the book’s opening pages that Sachs has died in a mysterious bomb explosion. Aaron sets out to write the definitive version of Sachs’ story before the FBI can formulate theirs. Sachs is a writer, a philosopher, a man with loyalties

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This book sold itself to me on the first line: “Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person…” Who hasn’t felt like that at times in their life? The central character Rebecca is 53 and wakes up one day to wonder if her choice of man all those years ago brought her to a life and a personality

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There is a constant chill running through this short, complex narrative. It never lets up and it has led some to think of The Body Artist as a ghost story; I prefer to see it as an uncannily taut evocation of loss.

When the death of her husband leaves Lauren in a trance-like state she shuts herself away from the world. Thus begins a tentative relationship

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