NEXT BOOKCLUB

May 7th – Niamh O’S

For review: The third policeman

See you there!

Yes Man by Danny Wallace

I, Danny Wallace, being of sound mind and body, do hereby write this manifesto for my life. I swear I will be more open to opportunity. I swear I will live my life taking every available chance. I will say Yes to every favour, request, suggestion and invitation. I will swear to say yes where once i would say no.’ Danny Wallace had been staying in. Far too much. Having been dumped by his girlfriend, he really wasn’t doing the young, free and single thing very well. Instead, he was avoiding people. Texting them instead of calling them. Calling them instead of meeting them. That is until that one fateful date when a mystery man on a late-night bus told him to ‘Say Yes more’. These three simple words changed Danny’s life forever. “Yes Man” is the story of what happened when Danny decided to say yes to everything, in order to make his life more interesting.

Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey

Narrated by the twin voices of the artist Butcher Bones, and his ‘damaged two-hundred-and-twenty-pound brother’ Hugh, “Theft: A Love Story” once again displays Peter Carey’s extraordinary flair for language. Ranging from the rural wilds of Australia to Manhattan via Tokyo, it is a brilliant and moving exploration of art, fraud, responsibility and redemption.

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien

A masterpiece of black humour from the renown comic and acclaimed author of ‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ — Flann O’Brien. A thriller, a hilarious comic satire about an archetypal village police force, a surrealistic vision of eternity, the story of a tender, brief, unrequited love affair between a man and his bicycle, and a chilling fable of unending guilt, ‘The Third Policeman’ is comparable only to ‘Alice in Wonderland’ as an allegory of the absurd. Distinguished by endless comic invention and its delicate balancing of logic and fantasy, ‘The Third Policeman’ is unique in the English language.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

It is a summer’s night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks. The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them. Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects. The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes – scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing – arouses fear and a kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment.

The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty

Smithson Ide’s life so far has led him nowhere. He’s 43 years old, weighs 279 pounds, and keeps himself numb with food and alcohol. His only emotional ties are to his parents and to the memory of his older sister, Bethany, who has been missing for 20 years. Then his parents die in a car crash and he learns of Bethany’s death in LA County. Suddenly there isn’t enough beer in the world to keep Smithy from his feelings. Drunk and bereft, he takes his old Raleigh bicycle and starts cycling. Once he starts, he can’t stop and then he’s riding across America to recover his sister. Along the way he meets all sorts of people who help or hinder him. He hears the confession of a priest, he rescues a boy from a snow storm, he has a gun pointed in his face, he’s hit by a truck and helps a man dying of AIDS. Smithy’s ride is an extraordinary quest, to rediscover the past and memories of Bethany, but it’s also his journey back to life.

A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry

Told in Sebastian Barry’s characteristically beautiful prose, A Long Long Way evokes the camaraderie and humour of Willie and his regiment, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, but also the cruelty and sadness of war, and the divided loyalties that many Irish soldiers felt. Tracing their experiences through the course of the war, the narrative brilliantly explores and dramatises the events of the Easter Rising within Ireland, and how such a seminal political moment came to affect those boys off fighting for the King of England on foreign fields – the paralysing doubts and divisions it caused them.

The Girls by Lori Lansens

 In twenty-nine years, Rose Darlen has never spent a moment apart from her twin sister, Ruby. She has never gone for a solitary walk or had a private conversation. Yet, in all that time, she has never once looked into Ruby’s eyes. Joined at the head, ‘The Girls’ (as they are known in their small town) attempt to lead a normal life, but can’t help being extraordinary. Now almost thirty, Rose and Ruby are on the verge of becoming the oldest living craniopagus twins in history, but they are remarkable for a lot more than their unusual sisterly bond.

The Wallace by Nigel Tranter

At the end of the 13th century Scotland was suffering under the tyranny of the English and Edward Plantagenet. The eponymous hero swears to rid his land of their cruelty and to restore Robert the Bruce to the throne.

What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn

It is the 1980s and Kate Meaney is acting out the role of junior detective. She notes goings-on at Green Oaks and in her street, where she is friends with Adrian. When this curious young girl disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion and is hounded by the press… It is 2004, and thirty-something Lisa is at work in a cut-price record store. While having a sandwich with Kurt the security guard, they both become entranced by the lost little girl they keep glimpsing on CCTV. How is she connected to the strange history of Green Oaks itself?