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A highly topical read for the months of April/May. We’ll be reading A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka. Why not read along with us and then join us in the library to discuss?
We’ll meet between 1030 and 1130 in the library on Sunday 15 May.
Spaces still available in our book group. See here for details on joining.
The April meeting will meet on Sunday 3 April at the library, from 1030-1130. The book for this month is The Forty Rules of Love, by Turkish author Elif Shafak.
“A novel within a novel, The Forty Rules of Love tells two parallel stories (The technique placing two story together is called juxtaposition in literature) that mirror each other across two very different cultures and seven intervening centuries.” It starts when a housewife, Ella, gets a book called Sweet Blasphemy for an appraisal.. This book is about a thirteenth century poet, Rumi, and his spiritual teacher, Shams. The book presents Shams’s Forty Love Rules at different intervals. The story presented in the novel is basically on “love and spirituality that explains what it means to follow your heart”.
Every chapter of the book starts with letter “b”. It is because the secret of Quran lies in Surah Al-Fatiha and its spirit is contained in the phrase Bismillah ir Rehman ir Rahim (In the name of Allah, the most Beneficent and the most Merciful). The first Arabic letter of the Bismillah has a dot below it that symbolizes the Universe as per Sufism thoughts.
If you’d like to join in, drop us a line to info@cricklewoodlibrary.org.uk, or just read along with us and let us know what you think!
The February meeting will take place on Sunday at the library, from 1030-1130. The book for this month is American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummings.
Teeming with life and crackling with energy – a love song to modern Britain and black womanhood.
Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.
Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.
The January meeting will take place on Sunday 9 January at the library, from 1030-1130. The book for this month is American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummings.
An incendiary novel of desperate love and pulse-quickening danger, American Dirt confronts the lawless frontier of the US-Mexico border in a narrative possessing whip-smart pacing and an ability to make the seemingly incredible both authentic and intimate.
Lydia Perez owns a bookshop in Acapulco, Mexico, and is married to a fearless journalist. Luca, their eight-year-old son, completes the picture. But it only takes a bullet to rip them apart.
In a city in the grip of a drug cartel, friends become enemies overnight, and Lydia has no choice but to flee with Luca at her side. North for the border… whatever it takes to stay alive. The journey is dangerous – not only for them, but for those they encounter along the way. Who can be trusted? And what sacrifices is Lydia prepared to make.
This month Cricklereaders will be enjoying Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Born in East Africa, Yusuf has few qualms about the journey he is to make. It never occurs to him to ask why he is accompanying Uncle Aziz or why the trip has been organised so suddenly, and he does not think to ask when he will be returning. But the truth is that his ‘uncle’ is a rich and powerful merchant and Yusuf has been pawned to him to pay his father’s debts. Paradise is a rich tapestry of myth, dreams and Biblical and Koranic tradition, the story of a young boy’s coming of age against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.
The November group will meet at the library at 1030 on Sunday 21 November. Do join in.
The book chosen for October’s meeting is Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954, Kazuo Ishiguro moved to Britain at the age of five. He is a multi-award-winning author, including the Nobel and Booker Prizes. The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go were both made into successful feature films, bringing his work to an even wider audience. Despite his lofty position as a literary author, his works are accessible and very human. Klara and the Sun was described by The Sunday Times as “A masterpiece of great beauty, meticulous control and, as ever, clear, simple prose.”
We will be meeting at the library before this next meeting to view the space and decide collectively whether to hold the next meeting there or continue on Zoom. If you would like to join, please email cricklereaders@cricklewoodlibrary.org.uk.