Book Club at Bullhouse East
This month we will be reading Mouthing by Orla Mackey. Join us on Monday 25th November at 6pm.
A bit about this months read....
Welcome to Ballyrowan.
This sleepy corner of rural Ireland may seem tranquil, but scratch the surface and you'll find a hotbed of gossip and intrigue - endless material for mouthing - and a town full of people only too happy to oblige in spreading the bad news.
Narrated by several generations of villagers, Mouthing traces the fortunes of one small community from the mid-20th century to the early 21st, in a series of highly confessional and darkly hilarious monologues. The good people of Ballyrowan delight in twisting the knife, in tormenting one another, in perfecting the art of schadenfreude. And, it becomes clear, none of them are entirely reliable witnesses.
As each character offers their version of 'the truth', upending our assumptions at every turn, we see how feuds are passed down through the generations, how families are estranged or reunited and fortunes made or lost, how strict social expectations loosen over decades (and how some things remain stubbornly unchanged). And how secret hopes and private sorrows, triumph and humiliation, pleasure and grief are all absorbed into the merciless chorus of mouthing.
Mouthing is an acerbic, unsentimental love letter to rural Irish life, where everyone knows everyone else's business and everyone has an opinion on it - where 'community' is both a lifeboat and a life sentence.
The book club is free to attend. However if you could please kindly let us know you will be attending by securing a ticket online so we can then workout the amount of space we will require at the venue.
The club kicks off at 6pm (Monday 25th November)
The address is: Bullhouse East, 442-446 Newtownards Road, Belfast, BT4 1HJ
Thank you and see you there!