Book Salad

Book Salad meets on the last Tuesday of every month. To make a salad you put together lots of different things you'd like to eat, and we do the same. Every month, instead of reading one kind of book, we mix genres. We tend to read mostly imaginative fiction but occasionally we pick non-fiction, even more occasionally a graphic novel, by authors from different ages and backgrounds.

For our October book, we will read 'The Chemistry of Tears' by Peter Carey, who won the Booker Prize in 1988 with 'Oscar and Lucinda' and again in 2001 with 'True History of the Kelly Gang'. He's the only writer to have won it twice. I chose the book after reading 'My Life As A Fake' and getting curious. I looked at the backs of all the other Peter Careys, and this is what I read:

"London 2011. Catherine Gehrig, conservator at the Swinburne museum, learns of the unexpected death of her lover of thirteen years – but as the mistress of a married man, she has to grieve in private. Her employer at the museum, aware of Catherine’s grief, gives her a special project – to piece together both the mechanics and the story of an extraordinary automaton, commissioned in the nineteenth century by Henry Brandling to amuse his dying son. Linked by the mysterious automaton, Catherine and Henry’s stories intertwine across time to explore the mysteries of life and death, the miracle and catastrophe of human invention and the body’s astonishing chemistry of love and feeling."

If you want to join us on the last Tuesday of October you'll be very welcome.