By Katrina RoeFriday 28 Oct 2022Hope Book ClubCultureReading Time: 3 minutes
To celebrate the recent wedding of Natasha Moore, the Hope Book Club is getting romantic.
Our book lovers have been reading books about “lurve”. Natasha has even been reading books about love while on honeymoon! It doesn’t get much more romantic than that.
The Giant Dark
The new bride has been reading The Giant Dark – the debut novel by Sarvat Hasin. Inspired by the ancient Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, it’s a story of love and fame.
Aida is a megastar, one of the defining artists of her age. Ehsan is the love of her youth. When they get back together, she disappears from the public eye, but her obsessive fans don’t want to let her go.
“The story is about this rock star, this incredibly famous, beloved young musician called Aida. She has achieved cult status with her fans. It’s about her and the boyfriend who broke up with her 10 years ago, and they re-kindle their romance throughout the course of the novel,” Natasha said.
“So you get the perspective of her fans, for whom she is this mythic creature. And they just think that she understands them to the depth of their souls and they get tattoos of her lyrics and she’s their guiding star.
“I really enjoyed the theme of celebrity in the novel and the power dynamics of that in their relationship, because she’s the famous one and the rich one, but also he’s the one who broke up with her 10 years ago and she’s never really gotten over it.”
The Paris Library
Katrina Clifford has been reading The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles. It’s a World War Two romance based on the true story of the heroic librarians at The American Library in Paris. Odile joins the resistance using the only weapon she has: books.
“Alongside this, she has a growing relationship with a young man called Paul and you get this sense of: What does it mean to be courting in a time of war when your city is under occupation?” Katrina Clifford said.
Years later, Odile is living in Montana. It’s 1983 and her teenage neighbour Lily, who has recently lost her mother, knocks on her door for help with a school assignment.
“The relationship that develops between them as they support each other through a period of disruption and isolation is a really beautiful part of the novel.”
In Want of a Wife
And, Katrina Roe picked up the recent winner of the Caleb Prize for Fiction, In Want of a Wife, by Meredith Resce. It’s sweet, clean, rom-com with definite “Austeny vibes”.
This is the second book in a series about Louise Brooker, a regency romance author and chronic matchmaker, who can’t help interfering in the lives of her three children. Second daughter Chloe, a capable, feminist emergency nurse, doesn’t appreciate her mother’s meddling. So, she decides to teach her mother a lesson by announcing a fake engagement to handsome young lawyer, Michael.
“As the mum is writing her regency romance, we get little snippets of that story and it mirrors or correlates with what’s going on for Chloe and Michael. So, we see the author trying to wrangle her fictional characters towards each other, but having trouble bringing them together in a way that’s convincing. That’s kind of fun,’ Katrina Roe said
Plus, our reviewers discuss the real-life romances that inspire them!
That’s all coming up in our very romantic, candlelit episode of the Hope Book Club!
Listen in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.