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For the Willoughby Book Club, summer is the ultimate reading season! For some of us (cough, Alisha, cough), we have read even more than we normally do, with the sun-speckled days of June and July providing the perfect opportunity for after-work reading sessions in the grass. It’s a wonderful time to discover new things, to give yourself over to the stretched-out days and lose yourself in the bleached pages of a paperback. Maybe you want something completely immersive for the sun lounger, with a riveting plot and relatable characters. Perhaps you would prefer something as light and fizzy as a...

Here at the Willoughby Book Club, we’re always keen to discover interesting books to take with us to our summer holiday destinations, particularly when they might be set in the European countries we’ll soon be visiting!  This year, as the sun emerges (and hopefully lingers for longer than it normally does!) we plan to relax and delve into some great page turners. We’ve been excitedly discussing the places we’ll be travelling to and are keen to read books either set in or written by authors from all these places. Maybe you’ll be going away this year and are on the...

 The Hunger of Women by Marosia Castaldi The Hunger of Women was a truly unique reading experience. Translated posthumously into English, Castaldi's narrator has moved from the chaos of Naples to the foggy lowlands of Lombardy after the death of her husband. Here she opens a restaurant, serving the local bourgeois dishes of sumptuous Neapolitan cooking, while ruminating on her relationships with the women in her life. Expect mouthwatering descriptions of food and philosophical ponderings. There's a mythic quality to the writing, with references to religion and classical literature. It's a reckoning with the self and God and her identity...

It's June already! With the mid-point of the year reached, we've been gradually ticking off our Willoughby reading goals for the year. As we all read quite different books here, we've always got plenty of interesting and diverse titles to discuss in the office. Read on to find out a little more about the books we've been reading and loving recently.   The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry Set in October, 1891, in Butte, Montana, The Heart in Winter takes us to a city rapidly becoming rich on mining, which is rampant with debauched, hard-scrabble immigrant lives. We meet Tom...