Our book club has announced it’s next meeting dates – all are welcome if you want to join.
At August’s book club session at The Mill, we discussed Sylvia Plath’s The Bel Jar, alongside Ted Hughes’ The Birthday Letters. With The Bell Jar, It was a trip down memory lane for many of our members, who read the text when they were growing up. For others, it was a book they had heard about, but were experiencing for the first time. The novel, which charts the breakdown of an American girl, is one of Plath’s only novel and her most famous work – quite possibly because of its semi-autobiographical nature. Most who knew about Plath said it was impossible to read the text and not to compare it with her life and indeed her own decent into mental health.
We then moved onto her husband, Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters, discussing which poems stood out for us the most. The collection of poems, which had been written and published before Hughes’ death are a very dark and candid look at the poets’ lives together. Many remarked upon the fact that Hughes deliberately referenced so much of Sylvia’s poetry and the The Bell Jar in this collection. Reading this collection together with Plath’s account of her own decline offered a balanced and insightful view of the literary couple and a thoroughly enjoyable discussion.
Below are the dates and texts for the next three book club meetings. We hope that you can make it.
- Tuesday 18 September at 7pm: Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- Tuesday 16 October at 7pm: Kim by Rudyard Kipling
- Tuesday 20 November at 7pm: The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
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