Purple Coo Book Club Spring Read 2012

Hi Everyone
please read the list below and make your 1st and 2nd choices in the comments box below. As soon as everyone has voted, I'll collate the votes and announce the most popular choice for the Purple Coo Spring Read on the Purple Coo main site.

Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk

Classic New York City drama - passion, love and desire - written in the 1950s. An idealistic young woman, with dreams of becoming an actress, pursues this dream but finally is forced to give it up and become a suburban ‘good wife and mother.’

Pillion Riders by Elizabeth Russel

A battle between heart and head, passion and morality. A sensitive young woman, married to an older successful business man, lives an encapsulated life of luxury in London. But this all changes when she visits Paris and falls in love with a young French composer of scant means and morals.

Room by Emma Donoghue

It's Jack's 5th birthday and he's excited ... he lives with his ma in Room, which has a locked door and skylight and measures 11' by 11'. He loves watching TV and the cartoon characters are his friends, but he knows nothing on screen is truly real- only him, ma and things in Room. Until the day Ma tells him there is a world outside. Very moving account from child's point of view of a very harrowing existence. 

Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Man Booker prize winner 201. A middle aged man coming to terms with inconsistent memories about the past. A novel about secrets withheld or suppressed. An unexpected bequest that leads to a search through a past times, a place where things are unexpectedly murky. 

The Soldier’s Wife by Joanna Trollop

Does marrying a soldier mean marrying the Army? The usual Trollop knack of capturing the snags and frustrations of family life, the tensions and the dangerous pressure points of a relationship in difficulties.

Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd

His latest book. It begins in Vienna, 1913. A young English actor starts a passionate love affair with an unusual woman he meets in the waiting room of his psychiatrist.
He moves to a world of sex, scandal and spies, where truth and deception blur and Britain is in Danger ...  If you loved Any Human Heart (I did) then this is the book for you.

(The painting is by James Nairn)