Fiction
So Much for That – Lionel Shriver
Shepherd Knacker is bored with his humdrum existence. He’s sold his successful handy-man business for a million dollars and is now ready to embark on his ‘Afterlife’ – a one way ticket to a small island off the coast of Africa.
He tries to convince his wife Glynis to come with him, but she laughs off the idea as preposterous.There’s no way she’ll let Shepherd uproot the family to some far-flung African island. When Glynis is diagnosed with an extremely rare and aggressive form of cancer, Shepherd’s dreams of an exotic adventure are firmly put on hold. He devotes himself to caring for his sick wife, watching her fade before his eyes.
Shepherd’s best friend Jackson knows all too well about illness. His sixteen year old daughter has spent her life dosed up on every treatment going while he and his wife Carol feed their youngest daughter sugar pills so she won’t feel left out. But then Jackson undergoes a medical procedure of his own which has devastating consequences !
Point Omega Don DeLillo
Richard Elster, seventy-three, was a scholar – an outsider – when he was called to a meeting with government war planners. They asked him to conceptualise their efforts. He was to map the reality these men were trying to create.At the end of his service, Elster retreats to the desert, where he is joined by a young filmmaker intent on documenting his experience. Jim Finley wants to make a one-take film, Elster its single character – ‘Just a man against a wall’.
The two men sit on the deck, drinking and talking. Finley makes the case for his film. Weeks go by. And then Elster’s daughter Jessie visits – an ‘otherworldly’ woman from New York – who dramatically alters the dynamic of the story. When a devastating event follows, all the men’s talk, the accumulated meaning of conversation and isolation, is thrown into question. What is left is loss, fierce and incomprehensible.
The Ice Cream Girls Dorothy Koomson
At only eighteen years of age, Poppy and Serena were the only witnesses to a tragic event. Amid heated public debate and scrutiny, the two glamorous teens were dubbed ‘The Ice Cream Girls’ by the press and forced to go their separate ways and to lead very different lives. Twenty years later, Poppy is keen to set the record straight about what really happened, while married mother-of-two Serena wants no one in her present to find out about her past.
Foursome Jane Fallon
