If September was a Goldilocks and the Three Bears reading month, October veered more towards Little Red Riding Hood. The Innocent Reader and the lurking Big Bad Wolf both played their part this month.
It all started innocently enough with Fannie Flagg's The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion. Set in Alabama, Southern Belle Sookie (and her equally weirdly named daughters), seems set for a peaceful retirement. Then, out of the blue, she is hit by a life crisis of epic proportions. It's not scary, more Sookie skipping through the forest with a basket of sweet nothings while WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) planes pirouette overhead. If you are after a happy-ending holiday read, this may be the tickety-boo (as Sookie might say).
Black Rabbit Hall, on the other hand, is all about the setting. Not a forest in this case, but a building. The story starts ominously and just ratchets the tension up from there on in. Could a building possess a more dysfunctional presence is the big question? And why would anyone want to get married there? But Lorna does. And she wasn't the only one to be lured in by this brooding ruin. Tragedy, ghosts, hidden secrets and an ominous atmosphere ticked all the boxes for one of my book groups this month.
But my best book group read of the month - in fact now one of my best books of the year - is Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami. If you have so far run screaming through the woods away from Murakami, this book (along with his novel Norwegian Wood) makes for a very accessible starting point. Imagine this - your four best friends suddenly dump you with no explanation when you are in your early twenties. Eventually, in order to save your sanity, you decide to track them down to find out why this happened. It is a subtly tense read - absolutely gripping.
It was a month in which false identities "What big eyes you have grandma", dark foreboding surroundings and lurking unease made up a terrific trio of book group reads. Whatever will November bring?
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