Red:Books Feb/March 2010

In January, we were reading A Thousand Years of Good Prayers - a collection of short stories by Yiyun Li. Not everyone had the chance to finish the book, so here's the plan.

The next two meetings of Red:Books are:

Tuesday 16 February 2010, 7pm, Roast Coffee Shop, Lisburn Rd, Belfast

Tuesday 16 March 2010, 7pm, Eat Etc, Belmont Rd, Belfast

Those who would like to are going to continue with the short story collection, and we’ll discuss it again at the February meeting. But we’ve also picked a new book, which we’ll probably discuss at both meetings - gives us all a chance to catch up with the speedy readers!

So the new book is ‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian’ by Marina Lewycka. Here’s the blurb…

‘Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was 84 and she was 36. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.’

Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth.

But the sisters’ campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe’s darkest history and sends them back to roots they’d much rather forget…

Should be a fun read. If you want to know more about Red:Books, drop me an email at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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