A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

The introduction on the back cover reads:
‘Sixteen-year -old Nomi Nickel longs to hang out with Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull in New York City’s East Village. Instead she’s trapped in East Village, Manitoba: a town with no train station, no bar, and where job prospects consist of slaughtering chickens at the Happy Family Farms abbatoir.

Since her mother and sister have left home, Nomi lives with her father, Ray, a sweet yet hapless schoolteacher. Fighting against the restraints of the town, Nomi’s longing for a future of opportunity and hope sets her on a course towards a climax at once startling and inevitable.’

Music played:
Excerpts from:

Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks

Love Hurts by Nazareth

Crying by Roy Orbison

Redemption Song by Bob Marley

This month’s book recommendations from our Reading Circle members:

• ‘Peggy Sue’ by Maria Kandolph Kühn. A series of essays about Peggy Sue and her life. (Maria will be reading from her book at Völs on Wednesday 18th October)
• ‘How to Live – A Life of Montaigne in One Question and 20 Attempts At An Answer’ by Sarah Bakewell
• ‘The Girl from Donegal’ by Carmel Harrington. Can you ever forget your first love?
• ‘Lessons in Chemistry’ by Bonnie Garmus, about the self-empowerment of a chemist.
• ‘Luck’ by Joan Barfoot – ‘Luck’ tells us that we are all at the mercy of chance……..
• ‘South and West: From a Notebook’ by Joan Didion – a non-fiction book about journeys through the Southern States of the USA
• ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Diplomacy’ by Leigh Turner, former British Ambassador in Vienna – in German – not yet available in English.
• ‘Harlem Shuffle’ by Colson Whitehead – a work of crime fiction and a family saga that takes place in Harlem between 1959 and 1964.
• ‘Another Now – Dispatches from an Alternative Present’ by Yanis Varoufakis – his vision of what a new post-Capitalist society might look like.
• ‘Fortuna Fortibus Favet:’ by Arianne Belzer and Isabella Pelegrin – in Latin – Vesuvius 79AD