November’s book – The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Twins

The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers’ demonstration. Inside the car sit two-egg twins Rahel and Esthappen, and so begins their tale. . . .

Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family—their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist’s moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river “graygreen.” With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.

The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

Also on the list this month:

• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
• I’m Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait
• Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

October 2026

October was Amanda’s last book club.

What better way to celebrate her departure than with a game of “guess the mystery aliment” (ranged from a nose job, to a third nipple, to a gall bladder problem) and “what’s your favourite comfort watch”

• West Wing
• Real Housewives (any franchise)
• Heartstopper
• Fraiser (but not if you’re a Real Housewives fan)
• Love is Blind
• Gossip Girl
• True Blood
• The Good Wife and…
• Buffy ( of course)

So this month, we read Land by Maggie O’Farrell. Out of the group, three people didn’t finish it (no judgement here, see the rules) The average score was a middle-of-the-road 6.6. This puts it alongside The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Reviews mixed. They ranged from:

They lost me at the talking fish

to

I loved it, it was soothing

Surprisingly (for me) we had a lot to talk about this book club and I had a lot of notes. Unsurprisingly, my brain isn’t functioning well enough to pull those notes into any semblance of order. Read the following and then you can then make up your own story about what happened. Won’t that be fun for you all?

Many felt that the writing style was difficult – you were either looking for something to lull you, or not. If not, it would be a frustrating read.

The book tried to explore the culture of myth in Ireland but was poorly executed. The “ring” section turned a lot of people off the book but made others think of nordic myths (there was also something here about Wagner. Because I’m a good person I looked it up.) Did the ring belong to the earth and therefore couldn’t belong one person? Who knows? We talked about how the land remembers. That there’s something permanent about the earth that doesn’t (or can’t) belong to humans. A map is just a single moment in time.

We debated what it means to own land? We’re only temporarily in possession. (If you’re interested in the philosophical debate here, I’d suggest you look up John Locke, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the Bundle of Rights)

Was the book peaceful or unsettling? Sure, there was one disaster after another but it was peaceful in the fact that the world will control (no, I’m not sure what that means either – and yet there it is, in my notes)

We all felt the ending was rushed (“yes”, said one, “that’ because the rest was so damn slow”)

There are two words underlined in my notes:

And the other was “cupidity” (although maybe it was “stupidity” and they were talking about me?)

Until next time y’all.