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Man Book Club January 2012

If you haven’t already experienced The Slap…

Summer is finally upon us and smoke from backyard barbecues fills the sky. With this in mind, we’ve chosen the The Slap as this month’s book club choice. The novel has caused plenty of debate and become a massive international bestseller.

‘Strikingly tender…a perfect summer book.’ Sydney Morning Herald.

About the book
At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own. 

This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event. 

In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires.

What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of loyalty and happiness, compromise and truth.

About the author
Christos Tsiolkas is the author of four novels: Loaded, which was made into the feature film Head-On, The Jesus Man and Dead Europe, which won the 2006 Age Fiction Prize and the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award. He won Overall Best Book the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2009, was shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award and won the Australian Literary Society Gold Medal for his latest novel, The Slap. He is also a playwright, essayist and screenwriter. He lives in Melbourne.

The Slap was recently adapted for television, and the 8 – part drama series screened on the ABC in 2011. Starring Melissa George, Jonaton LaPaglia and Alex Dimitriades, the series was received with critical acclaim and ratings success.

Watch an interview with Christos Tsiolkas

Did you watch the ABC adaption of The Slap? If so, how did it compare to your interpretation of the novel?

Which of the characters most irked you?

What do you think The Slap says about contemporary Australian life?

"Discomfort is sometimes what is most precious to me about great art,” Tsiolkas has told an interviewer. To what extent did you find The Slap an uncomfortable read?

Let us know your thoughts below.

 

 
 


The days are longer and the nights are balmy - it’s a great time of year to pack a picnic blanket, venture outdoors and indulge in some thrilling reads.

To chill out this summer we recommend Dame Stella Rimington’s intense spy tale Rip Tide. Directly inspired by her career of 27 years in MI5 and influenced by current threats to National Security, Stella Rimington has devised a plot that is fast paced and gripping. 

About the Novel

 When pirates attack a cargo ship off the Somalian coast and one of them is found to be a British-born Pakistani, alarm bells start ringing at London's Thames House. MI5 Intelligence Officer Liz Carlyle is brought in to establish how and why a young British Muslim could go missing from his well-to-do family in Birmingham and end up onboard a pirate skiff in the Indian Ocean, armed with a Kalashnikov. After an undercover operative connected to the case turns up dead in the shipping office of an NGO in Athens it looks like piracy may be the least of the Service's problems. Liz and her team must unravel the connections between Pakistan, Greece and Somalia, relying on their wits - and the judicious use of force - to get to the truth. And they don't have long, as trouble is brewing closer to home: the kind of explosive trouble that MI5 could do without ...

About the Author 

Dame Stella Rimington joined the Security Service (MI5) in 1968. During her career she worked in all the main fields of the Service: counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism. She was appointed Director General in 1992, the first woman to hold the post. She has written her autobiography and five Liz Carlyle novels. 

Stella Rimington was the Chair of the Man Booker Prize 2011 judging panel and former MI5 director general.  She made headlines when announcing that the Judges would be looking for ‘Readability’ amongst their Man Booker prize shortlisted books. Read more about this fascinating author here.

Courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing

Watch Stella Rimington discuss the Rip Tide here. 


Did you find Rip Tide a chilling thriller? Or were you left cold? We'd love to hear what you thought of this novel. Please comment below. 


 
 
Welcome to the home of the Man Book Club

We love books and we know that you do too but with so many fine tomes how do you choose what to read next?

Join the Man Book Club. Each month the SWF Artistic Director will select a new book to read, debate and discuss. At key points in the year, the monthly book will be selected from the Man Booker long list and short list and its other related prizes and lists. Each month we'll feature information, news, interviews, and articles on the selected book. And at every step, we want to hear from you. What do you think of this month's selected book? What do you think of the most recent Man Booker longlist? Did the right book win the Man Booker?

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Each page has a comment box so you can share with others your highlights and criticisms of the book. Don't forget to rate them out of five!

 
Man Book Club November 2011


picture 5As you might have heard our last Man Book Club book was a winner! Julian Barnes was awarded the Man Booker Prize for his book (and last month’s Man Book Club book) The Sense of an Ending. 

For this month’s Man Book Club we’ve chosen another book from Man Booker Prize shortlist – this time from newcomer Stephen Kelman. Pigeon English is Stephen Kelman’s debut novel about a boy balancing on the edge of manhood and of the forces around him. 

 

Synopsis

Newly arrived from Ghana with his mother and older sister, eleven-year-old Harrison Opoku lives on the ninth floor of a block of flats on an inner-city housing estate. The second best runner in the whole of Year 7, Harri races through his new life in his personalised trainers - the Adidas stripes drawn on with marker pen - blissfully unaware of the very real threat all around him. With equal fascination for the local gang - the Dell Farm Crew - and the pigeon who visits his balcony, Harri absorbs the many strange elements of his new life in England: watching, listening, and learning the tricks of urban survival. But when a boy is knifed to death on the high street and a police appeal for witnesses draws only silence, Harri decides to start a murder investigation of his own. In doing so, he unwittingly endangers the fragile web his mother has spun around her family to try and keep them safe. A story of innocence and experience, hope and harsh reality, Pigeon English is a spellbinding portrayal of a boy balancing on the edge of manhood and of the forces around him that try to shape the way he falls.

 

About the author 

Stephen Kelman was born in Luton in 1976. After finishing his degree he worked variously as a warehouse operative, a careworker, and in marketing and local government administration. He decided to pursue his writing seriously in 2005, and has completed several feature screenplays since then. Pigeon English is his first novel.

Courtesy of the Man Booker Prize website. 

What the critics are saying

‘Filled with energy, humour and compassion, Pigeon English is a gut-wrenchingly sad novel that makes you laugh out loud’ Alex Clark, The Guardian. Full review can be found here.

 

Your thoughts

We’d love to know what you think of the book. Are there differences you feel from the writing of a debut novelist such as Stephen Kelman and the seasoned authors like Julian Barnes?

 

Please post your comments below. 

 
 


 

 

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