The Book Club Online – September

Join us on Monday 21st September from 7pm online. For this month’s Book Club, we are reading The Girls by John Bowen.

Purchase the book and a ticket to the event for £9.99. The book can be delivered directly to you (please add your shipping address and tick the box for shipping) or you can collect it in store free of charge.

You can buy a book and ticket here.

If you already own a copy of the book, you can purchase a ticket alone for £3.

You can purchase a ticket only here.

For those unable to afford a book or ticket at present, we have a limited amount of complementary books/tickets. Please contact the bookshop via bookworms@houseofbooksandfriends.com or call 07597365380.

One of our booksellers will lead the book club, and we will split into smaller groups to discuss the questions. We always ask that you be respectful and kind whilst discussing the book and others’ opinions of it.

About the book: 

In summer, and particularly when the wind blows south-west across the lawn, the sceptic tank gives out a strong stench… ‘Oh, it is a body,’ the girls say. ‘We have a body in there. No one you know. It decomposes, of course, but so slowly one quite despairs.’

In their lovely, quiet Cotswolds village, Janet and Susan are known to the villagers simply as ‘the girls’. Partners in love and work, co-proprietors of a picturesque shop, they lead an enviable, enviably settled life.

But when a moment of small, surprising passion intrudes into the equilibrium of their world, the girls’ lives take a deeply unsettling turn. First comes motherhood. Then comes murder.

Part-macabre comedy, part-crime thriller, part-cosy romance, John Bowen’s The Girls is a novel like none other. Told with warmth, affection and fun, yet laced with darkness and unease, ‘the girls’ will ensure you never look on Middle England quite so quaintly again.