Bailey's/Orange Women's Fiction Group discussion

post up the books you would like to choose for the August read!

I nominate:
Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding

This is the story of a friendship between a deaf mute boy and a girl he grew up with in Romania during WWII and afterwards.

Fred & Edie

I will nominate Fred and Edie, shortlisted in 2001.

Set in Ilford in the early nineteen twenties, this dramatic story of passion, murder and a spectacular public trial takes place at a time of momentous change for women. It is based on the true story of Edith Thompson, a book-keeper in the City who had married during the war but soon found her suburban life – and husband – stifling, dreaming instead of the kind of romantic and glamorous world she found in novels and in the new cinemas springing up around her.

Attractive, confident and financially independent, Edie was excited by the new freedoms open to women and enjoyed flouting convention. When she met Freddy Bywaters, seven years her junior, dark, sexy and impetuous, an affair seemed inevitable. Never in her wildest dreams could Edie have foreseen the devastation to four young lives that was to follow.

Drawing on newspaper reports of the period as well as letters from Edie to Freddy, Jill Dawson creates an intimate, tantalising voice for Edie as the story unfolds of how she came to be on trial for her life at the Old Bailey during the snowy December of 1922. Was Edie simply ahead of her time or did she collude in her own fate? Teasing out answers to this compelling mystery, this is a novel of entrancing imagination, sensitivity and grace.

I nominate here's a bit of blurb. It's from 2005.

Three Chimney's, Virginia, resident Margaret Pricket, a single mother and
specialty cheese maker, is in danger of losing all she holds dear. Her century-old family dairy farm is falling deeper into debt. Her thirteen-year-old daughter, Polly, whom Margaret has tried to shelter from the modern world, is becoming perilously drawn toward her charismatic, subversive history teacher. Margaret's loyal farmhand, August, a Thomas Jefferson impersonator by night, is secretly in love with her. And she's been convinced by the town's pastor to re-create the original Thomas Jefferson-era, 1,234-point "Mammoth Cheese," as a gift for the president-elect. Soon the entire town is wrapped up in the endeavor, and Margaret finds herself torn between her principles and her passions. An American pastoral like no other, The Mammoth Cheese is a delicious and satisfying tour de force.

Anyone want to nominate another book?

If not I think we might put the polls up next week to give people time to vote and then get hold of the winning book for August.

i am wondering about The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver?? since it came up in discussion around here, and i see it hasn't been an official read yet, maybe it's worth considering?

'the lacuna' won the women's prize in 2010. from their website:

http://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.u...

"The Lacuna is the heartbreaking story of a man’s search for safety of a man torn beween the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s McCarthyite America. Born in the U.S. and reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salomé. Making himself useful in the household of the famed Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, young Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution. A violent upheaval sends him north to a nation newly caught up in World War II. In the mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina he remakes himself in America’s hopeful image. But political winds continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach – the lacuna – between truth and public presumption. A gripping story of identity, loyalty and the devastating power of accusations to destroy innocent people. The Lacuna is as deep and rich as the New World."

(since i am so new to the group, i feel strange about making a suggestion, and if you would prefer to keep the poll smaller, and not include kingsolver's book, i totally understand!!)

I will include it in the poll Jennifer.
We will have a choice of four very different books for next month.

Slight change of plan.
I have set up the poll for August today, please save further nominations for September.