Books & Chat
By Christina Young
The Bitesize Book Review: Maurice and Maralyn by Sophie Elmhirst
Bored of 1970s suburban life, Maurice and Maralyn plan their escape: sell the house, build a boat, set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway around the world, their beloved boat is struck by a whale and the pair are cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Alone on a tiny raft, their love is put to the test.
This is a book about human connection and the human condition; about how we survive â not just at sea, but in life.
Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan
Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month for June 2021
Shortlisted for the Portico Prize 2022
Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life.
In the summer of 1986, James and Tully ignite a friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over, they rush towards a magical weekend of youthful excess in Manchester played out against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded. And there a vow is made: to go at life differently.
Thirty years on, the phone rings. Tully has news.
The Bitesize Book Review: We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman
Who knows you better than your best friend? Who knows your secrets, your fears, your desires, your strange imperfect self?
Edi and Ash have been best friends for over forty years. Since childhood they have seen each other through life's milestones: stealing vodka from their parents, the Madonna phase, REM concerts, unexpected wakes, marriages, infertility, children. As Ash notes, 'Edi's memory is like the back-up hard drive for mine.'
So when Edi is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Ash's world reshapes around the rhythms of Edi's care, from chipped ice and watermelon cubes to music therapy; from snack smuggling to impromptu excursions into the frozen winter night. Because life is about squeezing the joy out of every moment, about building a powerhouse of memories, about learning when to hold on, and when to let go.
For fans of Nora Ephron and Sorrow & Bliss, We All Want Impossible Things is a deeply moving, jubilant celebration of life and friendship at its imperfect, radiant, and irreverent best.
Go As A River by Shelley Read
When a moment changes everything, how do you live the rest of your life?
1940s Colorado: Teenage Victoria Nash is the only woman in a family of troubled men.
When she meets Wilson Moon, a young drifter with a mysterious past, on a street corner, their connection is immediate. And dangerous.
But then tragedy strikes, and Victoria is forced to leave her home and face a decision that will change her life forever.
Loved deeply by readers, this is the epic coming-of-age adventure of Victoria Nash, determined to save her familyâs generational peach farm from destruction, as she falls in love, faces devastating tragedy, and finally faces what she must do to survive.
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
an affair between a young Catholic woman and a married Protestant barrister drives this brilliant novel set in 1975 Belfast.
Christopher Bland Prize winner The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
The Salt Path is a 2024 British biographical drama film directed by Marianne Elliott based on the book of the same name and one read in book club a few years ago. We revisit it here in our podcast.
The book was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award 2018 and won the Royal Society of Literature Christopher Bland Prize.Just days before Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years is terminally ill, their home is taken away and they lose their livelihood. With nothing left and little time they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the South West Coastal Path.
Gloucester Book Club's Top 3 Books of 2024
This episode by host, Christina Young, talks about the top 3 books Gloucester Book Club read together in 2024, as voted for by book club members.
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
In Memorian by Alice Winn
In Memoriam by Alice Winn
Waterstones Novel of the Year 2023
A gripping, heart-shattering love story between two soldiers in the First World War.
It's 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the dreamy, poetic Ellwood - not having a clue that Ellwood is in love with him, always has been. When Gaunt's German mother asks him to enlist as an officer in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, Gaunt signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood.
The front is horrific, of course, and though Gaunt tries to dissuade Ellwood from joining him on the battlefield, Ellwood soon rushes to join him, spurred on by his love of Greek heroes and romantic poetry. Before long, their classmates have followed suit. Once in the trenches, Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, but their friends are all dying, right in front of them, and at any moment they could be next.
An epic tale of both the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, but Logan Mountstuart's - lived from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century - contains more than its fair share of both.
As a writer who finds inspiration with Hemingway in Paris and Virginia Woolf in London, as a spy recruited by Ian Fleming and betrayed in the war and as an art-dealer in '60s New York, Logan mixes with the movers and shakers of his times. But as a son, friend, lover and husband, he makes the same mistakes we all do in our search for happiness.
Here, then, is the story of a life lived to the full - and a journey deep into a very human heart.
'Astonishing, touching, extremely funny. A brilliant evocation of a past era and an immensely readable story' - Sunday Telegraph
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
The Morrison siblings have been haunted by tragedy since the sudden death of their parents in an accident when they were young.
Kate found an escape from the legacy of their dark past in her passion for the natural world. Now a zoologist far away from the small farming community where she grew up, she thinks she's outgrown her three brothers, who were once her entire world.
But Kate can't seem to escape her childhood or lighten the weight of their mutual past.
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
Our Missing Hearts is the third novel by the American author Celeste Ng. It was published in 2022 by Penguin Press. The novel follows Noah Gardner (known as Bird) on a bus trip from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lives with his father, to New York City in search for his mother. The novel takes place in a dystopian future under PACT (The Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act)
A Chat with Rachel Sargeant author of the Gloucestershire Crime Series
Rachel Sargeant is the author of The Roommates, The Good Teacher, and The Perfect Neighbours. She also writes the Gloucestershire Crime Series, which includes Her Deadly Friend and Her Charming Man.
She won Writing Magazineâs Crime Short Story competition and has been shortlisted in various competitions including the Bristol Short Story Prize. Her stories have appeared in My Weekly and the Saucy Shorts series by Accent Press.
She is a graduate of Aberystwyth University and holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham. She provides bespoke critiques for Henshaw Press short story competition entrants and is a judge in the quarterly competitions. After many years in Germany, she now lives in Gloucestershire with her family. Her hobbies are visiting country houses and coffee shops, and going to the theatre.
Hard By a Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili
Shortlisted for the Wilbur & Niso Smith Adventure Prize for Fiction - could this be the winner?
An extraordinary tale of family, scarifice and our never-ceasing battle with the past, Vardiashvili's mesmerising and unique novel about a boy looking for his father who's returned to his native Georgia for the first time since the war blends gripping mystery with questions about how we remember and why we forget.
Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang
Athena Liu is a literary darling.
June Hayward is literally nobody.
But when June just happens to witness Athena die in a freak accident, she realises now is her chance to find fame.So what if that means stealing her friendâs work?
So what if that means creating a new, racially ambiguous identity?
So what if a social media scandal is about to blow her cover?
As her lies mount up and threaten her stolen success, how far will June go to keep what she thinks she deservesâŠ
This is one hell of a story. Itâs just not hers to tell.
Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
The Dust That Falls From Dreams by Louis de Bernieres
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak
Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life - an emptiness once filled by love. So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, her world is turned upside down. She embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author of this work.
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie OâFarrell
Heaven My Home by Attica Locke
9-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; now he's alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him - and all goes dark.
Darren Matthews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; after the events of his previous investigation, his marriage is in a precarious state of re-building, and his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she's not above a little maternal blackmail to press her advantage.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Top 4 books from 2023
âTwas the Night Before Christmas by Kate Nivison
Ticket for a Carol Concert by Audrey Burton
French Braid by Anne Tyler
A Visitor by Holly Crawford from Spooky Ambiguous
Prohibido El Paso by Patrick Booth - a short story for Halloween đđ»đ
The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles
The Five - Hallie Rubenhold. How do I know if this book is for me - just listen in!
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Stoner by John Williams
Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie
This year, 1988, anything seems possible for the girls; and for Pakistan, emerging from the darkness of dictatorship into a bright future under another young woman, Benazir Bhutto. But a snap decision at a party celebrating the return of democracy brings the girlsâ childhoods abruptly to an end. Its consequences will shape their futures in ways they cannot imagine.
Three decades later, in London, Zahra and Maryam are still best friends despite living very different lives. But when unwelcome ghosts from their shared past re-enter their world, both women find themselves driven to act in ways that will stretch and twist their bond beyond all recognition.
Best of Friends is a novel about Britain today, about power and how we use it, and about what we owe to those whoâve loved us the longest.
Flamingo by Rachel Elliott
Gloucester Book Clubâs top 3 novels of 2022
Lessons by Ian McEwan
Small Mercies - a Christmas short story by Kate Atkinson
The Girl who Killed Santa Claus by Val McDermid. Narrated by Christina Young
A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe
A Sweet Obscurity by Patrick Gale
Mirror Mirror by Michael Bartlett read by Christina Young
For Halloween đđ§Blood Moon by Amaris Chase
In conversation with Christine Jordan, author of her debut crime novel âMisperâ
But the man is released and Kat quickly finds herself back on Twitter, navigating through the abusive messages sheâs received and initiating an angry exchange with the anonymous man sheâs convinced has escaped justice. Unfortunately, though, she failed to hide her real identityâand soon she starts feeling paranoid about every man she encounters. As her drinking escalates and her life begins to fall apart, itâs unclear whether someone is really out to destroy herâor if she is destroying herself . . .
A Halloween spooky story! đđ». The Strange Tale of the Hobnail Boots by Margaret Royall
Violeta by Isabel Allende
"An immersive saga about a passion-filled life."--People
Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.
Through her father's prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses everything and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling.
She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting times of devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life is shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and ultimately not one, but two pandemics.
Through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humor carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.
Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
'HELL YES. This is one of those books that has the potential to change things - a monumental piece of research' Caitlin Moran
Imagine a world where...
· Your phone is too big for your hand
· Your doctor prescribes a drug that is wrong for your body
· In a car accident you are 47% more likely to be injured.
If any of that sounds familiar, chances are you're a woman.
The British Book Awards Book of the Year Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens - podcast updated July 2022
Abandoned as a girl, Kya raised herself in the dangerous marshlands of North Carolina. For years, rumors of the marsh girl haunted Barkley Cove, isolating the sharp and resilient Kya from her community. Drawn to two young men from town, she opens herself to a new and startling world.