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 Long Island by Colm Tóibín (2024).

A man with an Irish accent knocks on Eilis Fiorello’s door on Long Island and in that moment everything changes. Eilis and Tony have built a secure, happy life here since leaving Brooklyn - perhaps a little stifled by the in-laws so close, but twenty years married and with two children looking towards a good future. And yet this stranger will reveal something that will make Eilis question the life she has created. For the first time in years she suddenly feels very far from home and the revelation will see her turn towards Ireland once again. Back to her mother. Back to the town and the people she had chosen to leave behind. Did she make the wrong choice marrying Tony all those years ago? Is it too late now to take a different path?

Colm Tóibín is the author of ten novels, including The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary, and Nora Webster, as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named as the laureate for Irish fiction for 2022-2025 by the Arts Council of Ireland. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Toibin lives in Dublin and New York.

Full calendar of the next meetings:

• Thursday 19 December, 6.30pm
  The Imposters, Tom Rachman (2023)
• Thursday 16 January, 6.30pm
  Baumgartner, Paul Auster (2024)
• Thursday 20 February, 6.30pm
  Flush, Virginia Woolf (1933) – with the participation of Wallis Wilde Menozzi
• Thursday 13 March, 6.30pm
  Passing, Nella Larsen (2021)
• Thursday 17 April, 6.30pm
  Yellowface, R.F. Kuang (2023)
• Thursday 15 May, 6.30pm
  The Optician of Lampedusa, Emma Jane Kirby (2017)
• Thursday 19 June, 6.30pm
  A Passage to India, E.M. Forster (1924)
• Thursday 3 July, 6.30pm
  Ben in the World, Doris Lessing (2001)