This month Mrs. Twist Reads This bookclub is reading Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller.
From the attic of Lyntons, a dilapidated English country mansion, Frances Jellico sees them―Cara first: dark and beautiful, then Peter: striking and serious. The couple is spending the summer of 1969 in the rooms below hers while Frances is researching the architecture in the surrounding gardens. But she’s distracted. Beneath a floorboard in her bathroom, she finds a peephole that gives her access to her neighbors’ private lives.
To Frances’ surprise, Cara and Peter are keen to get to know her. It is the first occasion she has had anybody to call a friend, and before long they are spending every day together: eating lavish dinners, drinking bottle after bottle of wine, and smoking cigarettes until the ash piles up on the crumbling furniture. Frances is dazzled.
But as the hot summer rolls lazily on, it becomes clear that not everything is right between Cara and Peter. The stories that Cara tells don’t quite add up, and as Frances becomes increasingly entangled in the lives of the glamorous, hedonistic couple, the boundaries between truth and lies, right and wrong, begin to blur. Amid the decadence, a small crime brings on a bigger one: a crime so terrible that it will brand their lives forever.
Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, we are meeting Thursday, December 6 at 7 p.m. for appetizers, sips and discussion. If you are looking to join a bookclub, I promise you will love our group. I started this bookclub in May 2017 because I wanted to spend more time reading and less time using technology. We’ve read 20 books and have 80 members, many who live around the country and just want to be a part of a community of women who read! It’s thrilling to see this for sure. The best part is that many of the authors we read have enthusiastically joined us via FaceTime or in person to chat about their books.
So, how do you join us? Go here to Book Movement and set up a free account. It gives you members-only access to our book club page to see the latest book we are reading, receive email invitations to upcoming meetings and create your own personal queue of books you want to read on your own. Maybe you can finish 2018 reading Bitter Orange with us!
Hospitality is in my DNA. I founded Home with a Twist, a daughter’s twist on her mother’s traditions, in memory of my mother to celebrate her life and the gifts she shared with me. Mother loved to celebrate life’s occasions – big and small.
