The Book Club: Wednesday 30th July *EVENING*

This session of The Book Club will take place on Wednesday 30th July, 6pm-7pm, in person. This month, we are reading Your Neighbour’s Table by Gu Byeong-mo,  a thought-provoking story of community and the cultural expectations of motherhood. £10.99 is the price of the book and a ticket to the session. 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 the group will be split up into smaller groups in breakout rooms to discuss the questions. A Zoom link will be emailed to ticketholders prior to the event starting.

We always ask that you be respectful and kind whilst discussing the book and others’ opinions of it.

About the book:

When Yojin moves with her husband and daughter into the Dream Future Pilot Communal Apartments, she’s ready for a fresh start. Located on the outskirts of Seoul, the experimental community is a government initiative designed to boost the national birth rate. Like her neighbours, Yojin has agreed to have at least two more children over the next ten years.

Yet, from the day she arrives, Yojin feels uneasy about the community spirit thrust upon her. Her concerns grow as communal child care begins and the other parents show their true colours. Your Neighbour’s Tabletraces the lives of four women in the apartments, all with different aspirations and beliefs.

Will they find a way to live peacefully? Or are society’s expectations stacked against them from the start?

A trenchant social novel from an award-winning author, Your Neighbour’s Table incisively illuminates the unspoken imbalance of women’s parenting labour and the challenges of working towards a better life.

About the Author:

Gu Byeong-mo was born in 1976 in Seoul. She studied Korean language and literature at Kyung Hee University, and worked as an editor. She made her literary debut with the novel Wizard Bakery (2009), which won the Changbi Prize. It became bestseller in Korea and was translated into many different languages. Her short story collection Hoping That It Wasn’t Only Me (2015) received Writer of the Year Award and Hwang Sun-won Literary Award for New Writers.