Books in focus - mid April
Mouth Full of Blood Essays, Speeches, Meditations by Toni Morrison
Including eulogies on Martin Luther King and James Baldwin, this collection of essays, speeches and meditations spans 40 years of recent history. Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison's novels 'Beloved ' and 'The Song of Solomon' have become touchstones for generations of readers.
Vintage, 2020
Barkskins by Annie Proulx
In the late seventeenth century two young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive
in New France. Bound to a feudal lord for three years in exchange for land, they become
wood-cutters--barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is
charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a native woman and their descendants live
trapped between two cultures. But Duquet runs away, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a
timber business. Annie Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over
three hundred years--their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New
Zealand--the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural
annihilation. Over and over, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource,
leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.
Fourth Estate, 2016
Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of Pornography in Eighteenth Century England,
Julie Peakman
Female flagellants, submissive lords, depraved monks, rascals and innocents inhabited the erotic pages and satirical prints that were fondled and furtively exchanged in London’s eighteenth century coffee houses and bookshops.
Peakman’s research explores this rich salacious history of English print culture from a feminist perspective. She reveals an audience, across gender and class, far wider than the presupposed ‘gentleman’ elite and challenges a traditional view of female passivity in this bawdy realm.
Palgrave Macmillan, 2003
