Cornflower Book Group 2011: Volume 2

 

     I'm getting ahead of myself again, announcing next month's Cornflower Book Group title before getting my own copy, but this is a long book so I wanted to give everyone plenty of time to read it. I've chosen Winifred Holtby's novel South Riding, which was published posthumously in 1936 and won the James Tait Black Prize that year. As you'll have guessed, it came to mind just now because the BBC are shortly to broadcast a dramatisation, so I thought that as this might prompt lots of us to read it anyway, why not choose it for the group?

    At 544 pages in the edition pictured here (there is a television tie-in version, too) we shan't be whizzing through it in just a day or two, but if we set the discussion date for Saturday, 26th. February, that allows us almost seven weeks, and as it should be easy to get hold of (again, for readers outwith Britain, Amazon.com has it - albeit through third party sellers - and The Book Depository stocks it and offers free worldwide delivery), I hope that won't pose any problems.

    A young and idealistic head mistress, a brilliant student whose education must be sacrificed when her mother's health fails, a landowner, "proud, haunted, almost ruined", these are the central characters of this "rich, panoramic novel, [which brings] vividly to life a rural community on the brink of change."

    Are you game? I hope so.