Purple Coo Book Group Autumn Read 2016

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

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Acclaimed as a tragic and brilliant book that exposes the unimaginable gulf between the traumas of what happened in WW1 and the present day. A story of love and heartbreak spanning three generations, dark, romantic and surreal. Described as a cross between Farewell to Arms and The English Patient, a rewarding but not easy read.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

Not to be confused with the rather sanitised version made into a film starring Audrey Hepburn. Set in 1943, the real Holly Golightly is a fragilely glamorous teenage New York café society girl who makes her way in the world by socializing with wealthy men. Although she survives by accepting their money and presents, she’s not quite a prostitute, more an American geisha with  quirky view of life.

His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet

A tricksy, yet gripping crime novel giving an evocative insight into the tough, brutal existence of Highland crofters. It tells of the trial of a 17year old boy living in 1896 Ross-shire, who beat the local constable and two other people to death.  Yes, that’s right, a crime novel good enough to be shortlisted for the recent Booker Prize.

The Girl on a Train by Paula Hawkins

Rachael, the slightly overweight, divorced alcoholic heroine, is sacked from her job and staying with a long suffering friend. Obsessive and bitter, she fantasises about other people’s lives, while keeping up the pretence she is still working and coping well. In reality she is in total pieces. This book is flavour of the month, but be warned, its masterful deployment of unwitting unreliable narration evokes the aftershocks of abuse and trauma, making it neither an easy nor comfortable read.

Slaughterhouse 5 by Curt Vonnegut

An absurdist classic and satirical anti-war novel about the world experiences and journeys through time of Billy Pilgrim, American WW2 soldier/ alien abductee.

The Painted Lady by Maeve Haran

A well written romp through 17^th century England. A vulnerable young lady arrives at the restoration court to find her innocence and beauty highly attractive to King Charles II, who will stop at nothing to make her his mistress. But she’s not a girl who gives in easily, if at all… Topical in that it covers not only the Great Plague, but also the Fire of London.

The painting is a cottage on Iona, by Cadell