Author	Comments
Curtis Sittenfeld – Show Don’t Tell USA Daisy – I loved this one – campus novel in miniature
Rudyard Kipling – The Gardener UK Anthony – post WW1 visit to graves – tragic – very dry but stark

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  Most of the stories (not the ones in the penguin book) we have as pdfs or docs – so if you want any of them they are available – ask Daisy or Andrew 
  
  
  I sent round a survey a few weeks ago – so we have rated some of them according to this, but the fun is when they engender good repartee, not whether they are good or bad as such. But I will leave that for now so you can see this just as content not comment. 
  
  
  Author /  Title
  
  
  
  
  Ratings and comments (please add) and the instigator if there was one – mostly group choices
  
  
  2020 – 2021 – emerging from the Dantistas Group…
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Clarice Lispector Mystery in São Cristóvão
  
  
  
  
  Andrew
  
  
  
  
  
  Curtis Sittenfeld – Show Don’t Tell
  USA
  Daisy – I loved this one – campus novel in miniature
  
  
  Rudyard Kipling – The Gardener
  UK
  Anthony – post WW1 visit to graves – tragic – very dry but stark
  
  
  Anton Chekov – The Lady and the Dog
  Russia
  Fascinating – did we do The Kiss as well?
  
  
  Flannery O’Connor – Everything that rises must converge
  USA
  Andrew – good about the bus journey – race in America
  
  
  PG Wodehouse  – The Man Upstairs
  UK
  Bedsit land
  
  
  Graham Greene – The Destructors
  UK
  Boys in gang demolish house
  
  
  Katharine Mansfield – Bliss
  New Zealand
  david
  
  
  
  
  Richard Brautigan – I was trying to describe you and Coffee
  
  
  USA
  pia
  
  
  
  
  Tess Hadley  – Little Snake
  UK
  in penguin book
  Forlorn neglected girl in Chelsea artist’s studio
  
  
  
  Irvine Welsh Catholic Guilt
  Scottish
  in penguin book
  
  
  
  
  Lucy Caldwell – Poison
  UK
  in penguin book
  I think this was good?
  
  
  Raymond Carver – Nobody said Anything and They’re not your husband
  USA david
  Dry but fun to read
  
  
  Helen Dunmore North Sea Crossing
  UK in penguin book
  
  
  
  
  
  William Trevor – The Piano teacher
  UK Very good –
  Boy remembering old piano teacher from whom he stole something
  
  
  HG Wells – The Door in the Wall
  UK Bizarre but good
  Going into a different dimension
  
  
  China Mieville Entry taken from a Medical Encyclopedia
  in penguin book
  Bit underwhelming
  
  
  Graham Swift – Remember This
  UK in penguin book
  Don’t remember this!
  
  
  Afghan Stories (via Lucy Hannah) – two women writers from Kabul –
  Fresta Ghani – Daughter Number Eight
  Sharifa Pasun – The Decision
  Afghanistan
  Lucy – 
  good lively and individualistic
  One was about a news-reader whose broadcast is interrupted by a violent attack
  
  
  
  Ernest Hemingway – A clean well-lighted place
  USA
  V.G.
  
  
  Marjorie Ann Watts. – Are they funny, Are they dead
  Edward
  
  
  
  
  Olive Senior – Do Angels wear Brassieres
  Andrew
  
  
  
  
  Jay MacInerney – How it Ended and Smoke
  USA
  Daisy – strong fatalism
  Great style and quite dark
  
  
  John Keats The Eve of St Agnes
  UK
  Andrew? – so glad we studied this
  Read in candlelight in the middle of darkest lock-down – so brilliant
  
  
  James Joyce Mothers
  Ireland
  peter
  Political speech in big Hall
  
  
  Truman Capote – Master Misery
  USA
  sophie
  
  
  
  
  
  Sophie Sarin: Bamoye’s Guitar
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Pia Ostlund – a ghost story
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Daisy – Faulty Gene
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Two by Sylvia Plath: 
   ‘Sunday at the Mintons’ and 
  ‘Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams.’
  
  
  USA
  Not sure when these came
  Bitter satire
  
  
  
  
  2021
  Rabindranath Tagore, Kabuliwala
  
  
  
  India
  
  
  
  
  Edgar Allan Poe, The Masque of the Red Death
  
  
  USA
  
  
  
  
  Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
  
  
  
  Germany
  So good, so sad
  Strawberries on the Lido during the cholera epidemic, our hero wanders the streets looking for fulfilment in Tadzio
  
  
  Saki, The Lumber Room and Tobermory
  
  
  US
  
  
  
  
  László Krasznahorkai, The World Goes On
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Tobias Wolff, Bullet in the Brain
  
  
  USA
  
  
  
  
  Isak Dinesen, Babette’s Feast
  
  
  Denmark
  Wonderful
  We should watch the film of this
  (We did)
  
  
  Patricia Highsmith, The Terrapin
  
  
  
  USA
  Stark but too grim
  
  
  
  
  Primo Levi, Argon
  Italy
  Perfection
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  2022
  George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant
  
  
  UK
  The British Empire encapsulated – brilliant devastating story
  
  
  Italo Calvino, The Distance of the Moon
  
  
  Italy
  
  
  
  
  Stefan Zweig, Chess Story
  
  
  
  Good – surreal?
  Peter thought it was an allegory of war or something…
  
  
  Horacio Quiroga, The Giant Tortoise’s Golden Rule and The Feather Pillow
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gimpel the Fool
  
  
  Poland
  great
  
  
  Ian McEwan, Solid Geometry
  UK
  
  
  
  
  James Joyce, opening of Ulysses
  
  
  Ireland
  
  
  
  
  Denis Johnson – Emergency
  USA
  Great – protagonist works in Emergency room in hospital goes off 
  
  
  Lewis Carroll, bits from Alice Through the Looking Glass
  
  
  UK
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  49
  Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Café
  
  
  USA
  Very good story
  
  
  Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes
  
  
  
  Japan
  I only like Wind-up BIrd Chronicle 
  
  
  Nadine Gordimer, Is There Nowhere Else Where We Can Meet?
  
  
  
  South Africa
  
  
  
  
  Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and In a Bamboo Grove
  
  
  Japan
  
  
  
  
  Peter Stamm, Expectations and Years Later
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Euripedes, Medea
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Leo Tolstoy, The Captive in the Caucasus
  
  
  Russia
  
  
  
  
  Virginia Woolf, Time Passes
  
  
  UK
  
  
  
  
  2023
  Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
  
  
  US writer
  Terror in the woods – no redemption
  
  
  Helen Garner, Postcards from Surfers
  Australian author – daisy choice
  Great discussion on this one – mostly all loved this -set on Oz Gold Coast
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Nikolai Gogol, The Nose
  Russian
  
  
  
  
  E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Sandman
  German
  Highly original!
  
  
  
  
  Ivan Turgenev, The District Doctor
  
  
  
  Russian
  Brilliant – we all loved this and had long discussion as to whether the deed had been done.
  
  
  Frank O’Connor, Guests of the Nation
  
  
  Irish – 
  Peter? Great – guilt, war reparation blame, set in Ireland early 20th Century
  
  
  Sylvia Plath, The Day Mr Prescott Died
  
  
  
  USA
  Good, bleak suburban misery exposed
  
  
  Silvina Ocampo, The Two Houses of Olivos and The Linio Milagro Family
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Alice Munro, Runaway
  
  
  Canadian
  
  
  
  
  Cormac McCarthy, Wake for Susan
  
  
  US
  Tombstone blues
  
  
  Charles Dickens, The Signal-Man
  
  
  UK
  Very odd
  
  
  Ursula Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
  
  
  US
  Violent dystopia
  
  
  Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
  
  
  US
  Following on from the one above in theme
  
  
  Sean O’Faolain, A Touch of Autumn in the Air
  
  
  Ireland
  Atmospheric
  
  
  Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber
  
  
  UK
  
  
  
  
  Annie Proulx, Family Man
  
  
  Canada
  
  
  
  
  P.G. Wodehouse, Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court
  
  
  UK
  Comic genius
  
  
  John Cheever, The Swimmer
  
  
  US
  We admired it but not loved it. But it did mean that we all met up for a film viewing evening which was great. 
  
  
  Merce Rodoreda, RAIN
  Spain
  Silvina?
  Tragic post-feminist day in the life -woman awaiting a lover
  
  
  William Boyd – On the Yankee Station –
  UK
  Daisy choice
  We mostly all liked this – set on US Aircraft Carrier in Vietnam
  
  
  Chaucer – Prologue Wyfe of Bath’s tale
  Olde England
  Not many people turned up for this one!
  
  
  Sunday the 5th of November 2023
  
  
  Film Club – watched “The Swimmer” at Gransden Avenue, E8
  
  
  Daphne de Maurier – Don’t Look Now
  UK
  Group choice
  All stimulated by this strange gothic fable – set in Venice in November
  We should watch the FILM
  
  
  
  2024 – FIRST GROUP OF NEW YEAR
  J.D. Salinger, For Esmé—With Love and Squalor
  USA
  Daisy suggestion
  Very popular – made for great discussion – about Salinger the writer – the originality, lucid wry almost bitter writing style – full of ambiguities. 
  
  
  Julian Barnes- Hermitage
  UK
  Andrew?
  Two birds move to Bordeaux for adventures in the wine business
  82
  Tim O’Brien – The Things They Carried
  Andrew
  Very much enjoyed by majority of the group. Good discussion ensued on effects of war and role of fantasy/imagination. 
  
  
  Up next – film outing to Babette’s Feast at BFI- and then week after probably Iren Nemirovsky
  83
  Iren Nemirovsky
  Le Bal
  Small group – mostly liked the story but not the characters. Possibly an ambiguous ending
  84
  Naguid Mafouz
  Half a Day
  All loved this genius – perfect apercu on human perception and the mysterious passage of time. 
  
  
  Giorgio Bassani
  Apologue
  I didn’t get round to reading this yet
  
  
  Machado de Assis
  Midnight Mass
  Seduction on Christmas Eve – but who is seducing whom?
  
  
  Henry James
  The Turn of the Screw
  Daisy absent
  
  
  Meet up for Helen Garner Talk at Daunt’s Bookshop
  
  
  Saki
  The Storyteller
  Chosen by Steven
  
  
  Alice Munro
  The Children Stay
  Good but irritating style – overly self-conscious
  
  
  Joseph Roth
  The Blind Mirror
  Only Rafe, Daisy, Steven, Silvina but all loved it 
  June 2024
  Mary Gaistskill
  Connections
  Daisy absent – 
  July 2024
  Chekhov
  Concerning Love
  A Hard Case
  Chosen by Steven G
  August
  Rodolfo Walsh – That Woman
  Borges – The Mountebank
  
  
  Angels
  August
  Raymond Carver
  Put yourself in my shoes
  D on holidays / away
  August
  Edgar Allan Poe
  The Cask
  
  
  September
  Kafka
  Metamorphosis
  D still on sabbatical
  September
  Vladimir Nabokov
  First Love
  Unanimously adored this slice of life – coming of age – we included a confessions of first love go-around
  October
  Zweig
  Buchmendel
  Chosen by DE – loved by some, dismissed by others – a bit of argy/bargy -memories of a poor bookseller in Pre and Post-WW1 Vienna
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  November 6th
  Maupassant
  Clair de Lune
  Couple in love  – on Sardinia… all loved this story
  Met for cosy evening with fire at Lucy’s  – AKJ, TW, DE LH
  December
  DH Lawrence
  The Rocking Horse
  Rather tragic tale – of neglect of small boy
  December
  James Joyce
  The Dead
  Readers divided – all thought it was a work of total genius except SS and DE – but then later DE relented as it sort of sprang to life a few days after reading it. But the beginning was still quite turgid
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  December 2024
  Montaigne: 
  Drunkeness
  
  
  2025
  
  
  
  
  
  
  January
  Richard Wright
  Bright and Morning Star
  DE absent – please add note: 
  19th JAN
  FILM CLUB
  Rocco and His Brothers
  By Luchino Visconti
  AKJ, DE, TW, LH, plus Pia and Farzi, plus Eduarda. All knocked sideways by this gale of a film. All in love with Alain Delon even more than we were before. Brutal and degrading acts elevated to the very roof of Milan Duomo. 
  January
  Kaberi Choudhury
  Getting Physical
  Overworked but under-done – not quite hitting the target – but SG, DE and a few others enjoyed it. 
  February 5th
  Jack London, 
  To Build a Fire
  
  
  All loved this tale – told in real time – with dog’s consciousness as real as the consciousness of the unnamed man. You didn’t like the man but you were happy he met his death slumbering on a snowdrift. 
  Pipeline
  John Updike
  
  
  Wife-wooing
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Nikolai Gogol, The Nose Russian E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Sandman German Highly original! Ivan Turgenev, The District Doctor Russian Brilliant – we all loved this and had long discussion as to whether the deed had been done. Frank O’Connor, Guests of the Nation Irish –  Peter? Great – guilt, war reparation blame, set in Ireland early 20th Century Sylvia Plath, The Day Mr Prescott Died USA Good, bleak suburban misery exposed Silvina Ocampo, The Two Houses of Olivos and The Linio Milagro Family Alice Munro, Runaway Canadian Cormac McCarthy, Wake for Susan US Tombstone blues Charles Dickens, The Signal-Man UK Very odd Ursula Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas US Violent dystopia Shirley Jackson, The Lottery US Following on from the one above in theme Sean O’Faolain, A Touch of Autumn in the Air Ireland Atmospheric Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber UK Annie Proulx, Family Man Canada P.G. Wodehouse, Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court UK Comic genius John Cheever, The Swimmer US We admired it but not loved it. But it did mean that we all met up for a film viewing evening which was great.  Merce Rodoreda, RAIN Spain Silvina? Tragic post-feminist day in the life -woman awaiting a lover William Boyd – On the Yankee Station – UK Daisy choice We mostly all liked this – set on US Aircraft Carrier in Vietnam Chaucer – Prologue Wyfe of Bath’s tale Olde England Not many people turned up for this one! Sunday the 5th of November 2023 Film Club – watched “The Swimmer” at Gransden Avenue, E8 Daphne de Maurier – Don’t Look Now UK Group choice All stimulated by this strange gothic fable – set in Venice in November We should watch the FILM 2024 – FIRST GROUP OF NEW YEAR J.D. Salinger, For Esmé—With Love and Squalor USA Daisy suggestion Very popular – made for great discussion – about Salinger the writer – the originality, lucid wry almost bitter writing style – full of ambiguities.  Julian Barnes- Hermitage UK Andrew? Two birds move to Bordeaux for adventures in the wine business 82 Tim O’Brien – The Things They Carried Andrew Very much enjoyed by majority of the group. Good discussion ensued on effects of war and role of fantasy/imagination.  Up next – film outing to Babette’s Feast at BFI- and then week after probably Iren Nemirovsky 83 Iren Nemirovsky Le Bal Small group – mostly liked the story but not the characters. Possibly an ambiguous ending 84 Naguid Mafouz Half a Day All loved this genius – perfect apercu on human perception and the mysterious passage of time.  Giorgio Bassani Apologue I didn’t get round to reading this yet Machado de Assis Midnight Mass Seduction on Christmas Eve – but who is seducing whom? Henry James The Turn of the Screw Daisy absent Meet up for Helen Garner Talk at Daunt’s Bookshop Saki The Storyteller Chosen by Steven Alice Munro The Children Stay Good but irritating style – overly self-conscious Joseph Roth The Blind Mirror Only Rafe, Daisy, Steven, Silvina but all loved it  June 2024 Mary Gaistskill Connections Daisy absent –  July 2024 Chekhov Concerning Love A Hard Case Chosen by Steven G August Rodolfo Walsh – That Woman Borges – The Mountebank Angels August Raymond Carver Put yourself in my shoes D on holidays / away August Edgar Allan Poe The Cask September Kafka Metamorphosis D still on sabbatical September Vladimir Nabokov First Love Unanimously adored this slice of life – coming of age – we included a confessions of first love go-around October Zweig Buchmendel Chosen by DE – loved by some, dismissed by others – a bit of argy/bargy -memories of a poor bookseller in Pre and Post-WW1 Vienna November 6th Maupassant Clair de Lune Couple in love  – on Sardinia… all loved this story Met for cosy evening with fire at Lucy’s  – AKJ, TW, DE LH December DH Lawrence The Rocking Horse Rather tragic tale – of neglect of small boy December James Joyce The Dead Readers divided – all thought it was a work of total genius except SS and DE – but then later DE relented as it sort of sprang to life a few days after reading it. But the beginning was still quite turgid December 2024 Montaigne:  Drunkeness 2025 January Richard Wright Bright and Morning Star DE absent – please add note:  19th JAN FILM CLUB Rocco and His Brothers By Luchino Visconti AKJ, DE, TW, LH, plus Pia and Farzi, plus Eduarda. All knocked sideways by this gale of a film. All in love with Alain Delon even more than we were before. Brutal and degrading acts elevated to the very roof of Milan Duomo.  January Kaberi Choudhury Getting Physical Overworked but under-done – not quite hitting the target – but SG, DE and a few others enjoyed it.  February 5th Jack London,  To Build a Fire All loved this tale – told in real time – with dog’s consciousness as real as the consciousness of the unnamed man. You didn’t like the man but you were happy he met his death slumbering on a snowdrift.  Pipeline John Updike Wife-wooing