Purple Coo Summer Read 2016

To vote for your favourite, please make your 1st and 2nd choices in the comments box below then, after a count up, I'll post the title of our most popular book on the Purple Coo main site. It then becomes our Purple Coo Book Club Summer Read 2016

A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor

In the faded coastal village of Newby, everyone looks out for - and in on - each other, and beneath the deceptively sleepy exterior, passions run high. Beautiful divorcee Tory is painfully involved with her neighbour, Robert, while his wife Beth, Tory's best friend, is consumed by the worlds she creates in her novels, oblivious to the relationship developing next door. Their daughter Prudence is aware, however, and is appalled by the treachery she observes. Mrs Bracey, an invalid whose grasp on life is slipping, forever peers from her window, constantly prodding her daughters for news of the outside world. And Lily Wilson, a lonely young widow, is frightened of her own home. Into their lives steps Bertram, a retired naval officer with the unfortunate capacity to inflict lasting damage while trying to do good. ( A Virago Modern Classic)

How to Measure a Cow by Margaret Forster

Tara Fraser leaves London to start a new life in a Cumbrian town selected at random. She plans to obliterate her past, which contains a shocking event that had serious consequences, by becoming a completely different personality from her previous volatile self. She is going to be quiet, even dull, and very private. 

But one of her new neighbours, Nancy, is intrigued by her. She wants to become her friend. Equally determined not to be discarded are three old friends who Tara feels let her down when she most needed them. 

Tara fights to keep herself to herself, but can she do it? And does she really want to? Slowly, reluctantly, she discovers the dangers of trying to suppress the past and reject other people.

My Brilliant Friend by Elana Ferrante  

Much acclaimed when it came out and likely to be a real antidote to our miserable summer, My Brilliant Friend is the first book of the trilogy, The Neapolitan Novels and apparently is an addictive epic about two girls in Naples and the pathways they take into life.

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

Famous for his bestselling travel book, Notes from a Small Island, The Road to Little Dribbling is Bill Bryson’s latest book about Britain and covers his journey from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, so that just about covers us all in I would think. Given the changes about about  to come because of the Brexit result, this could be a timely read.

The colourful painting is by Wassily Kandinsky