Full details of the Bookclub are available on the Our Clubs page and details of our latest and previous books are available here.

 


‘Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine’ by Gail Honeyman

17 December 2018 – 7.30pm

—–> Flamin Mangal – 126 Rye Lane, Peckham, SE15 4RZ <—–

From Amazon

Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive – but not how to live.

Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend.

Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.

One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life.

Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely any change is better than fine?

From Goodreads

No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .

The only way to survive is to open your heart

About the Author

Gail Honeyman’s debut novel, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, won the Costa First Novel Award 2017, and has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Desmond Elliott Prize.

As a work in progress, it was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. Since publication, translation rights have sold to over thirty territories worldwide, Reese Witherspoon has optioned it for film and it was chosen as one of the Observer’s Debuts of the Year for 2017. Gail was also awarded the Scottish Book Trust’s Next Chapter Award in 2014, and has been longlisted for BBC Radio 4’s Opening Lines and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.

Gail lives in Glasgow.


400 pages (Print Edition)

Published August May 2017

Available in local bookshops, on Kindle, from Audible and from Southwark Libraries


Don’t forget our next event in the meantime….

‘Falling Leaves’ by Adeline Yen Mah

Wednesday 28 November 2018 – 7.30pm **Please note the date change**

Jaflong Tandoori, 42 East Dulwich Road

Born in 1937 in a port city a thousand miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the youngest child of an affluent Chinese family who enjoyed rare privileges during a time of political and cultural upheaval. But wealth and position could not shield Adeline from a childhood of appalling emotional abuse at the hands of a cruel and manipulative Eurasian stepmother. Determined to survive through her enduring faith in family unity, Adeline struggled for independence as she moved from Hong Kong to England and eventually to the United States to become a physician and writer.

A compelling, painful, and ultimately triumphant story of a girl’s journey into adulthood, Adeline’s story is a testament to the most basic of human needs: acceptance, love, and understanding. With a powerful voice that speaks of the harsh realities of growing up female in a family and society that kept girls in emotional chains, Falling Leaves is a work of heartfelt intimacy and a rare authentic portrait of twentieth-century China.


278 pages (Print Edition)

Published August 1997

Available in local bookshops, on Kindle and from Southwark Libraries


About Bookclub

To find out more including how to become a member , please visit the Our Clubs page. Details of our latest and previous books are available here.

Importantly we’re not a scary intellectual Bookclub!

We read a wide range of different books including chick lit, biographies and other non-fiction, thrillers and the occasional classic. We do obviously chat about the books; what we liked, what we didn’t and sometimes segway into issues raised in the book. We don’t generally come armed with lists of high-brow questions! We also share recommendations of other books we’ve read and occasionally gather at someone’s house to watch a film or TV adaptation of something we’ve liked.

Overall we have a great time socialising and a bit of a discussion about the book. We all occasionally fail to actually read or finish the book but that’s no problem either, we still tend to turn up and find out what we’ve missed (or not as the case may be!) Most of all Book Club is a great opportunity to get to know a smaller, more intimate group of the East Dulwich WI.

How It Works

Each month one member brings a shortlist of books. We narrow down the books democratically using two round of voting. We generally select books at least 2 months in advance to give us ample opportunity to read them around our schedules.

Venue

Jaflong Tandoori
42 East Dulwich Road, London, SE22 9AX

There is absolutely no requirement to buy food or drink although most of us find we can’t resist the temptation! They do however cater easily for veggie, vegan and gluten free diets.

Membership

New Readers Welcome

For details please email Kirsten or Chloe. 

 

EDWI Bookclub 17 December 2018 – “Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine” by Gail Honeyman

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