Every month a group of willing and hungry readers gather to discuss a new book, have a nice chat and practice their English. New members are welcome!

This month's book of choice is Ben in the world by Doris Lessing (2001).

Ben Lovatt can never fit in. To those he meets, he seems awkward - too big, too strong, inhumanly made. He baffles and he terrifies: those who do not understand him want him locked up.
His own mother locked him up; then, guilty, she liberated him. But her unyielding love for him corroded their family; the fifth child broke the home into bits. And now he is come of age, and again finds himself bewildered and alone. He searches in the faces of those he meets, to see the hostility there, or the fear, or, more rarely, the kindness. Occasionally, a gentler, less fearful person understands his need, how hard he is trying to fit in. Mostly, people make use of him, and he finds himself in the south of France, in Brazil, and in the mountains of the Andes, where at last he finds out where he has come from, who are his people.

Doris May Lessing was a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–69), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983). Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Lessing was the eleventh woman and the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.