Literature

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Group Co-ordinator: Elise Collins – 01799 540 316 – emcollins1@hotmail.co.uk

Location: Fairycroft House.

Time: 2.30 to 3.30pm on the last Wednesday of each month during the Autumn and Spring terms (not Summer term).

The Literature Group is tutored and as such provides an opportunity for study. Our tutor is  Alan McLean who has led the group for fifteen years. Some members have been part of the group from the beginning! We read and discuss books, mostly fiction. It is a class rather than a book group, so we examine the way a novel works, teasing out its themes and structures, often with a ‘prompt’ sheet from Alan which encourages lively, in-depth explorations of the texts.  The discussion might include reasons for the author having chosen a first-person narrative or how characters relate to each other and what these relationships might mean in the context of the novel as a whole. An overall theme is chosen for the season with past ones including ‘What if?’ and ‘1984’ and Robert Harris’s ‘Fatherland’ while ‘In the Shadow of War’  gave us the opportunity to explore Hemingway’s writing. The themes cover a lot of ground, mixing the familiar and the out- of -the -way. Even books we know well provide the opportunity for  interesting discussions!  
 
The study texts for the 2023/24 season are on the subject of ‘Childhood’:  
 
Dickens: ‘Oliver Twist’ 
LM Montgomery: ‘Anne of Green Gables’
N. Ammariti: ‘I am not Scared’
J.D.Salinger: ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ 
Per Petterson: ‘Out Stealing Horses’
Susan Hill: ‘I’m the King of the Castle’