Book Club

We have a thriving book club here at Jaffé & Neale, which meets at 6.30pm on the first Wednesday of every month in Chipping Norton. There’s no membership, no charge, and no obligation to come every month, so if you like the sound of a particular book, and would like to informally discuss it over a glass of wine, we’d love to see you. Do check this page for our current book titles. We also offer 10% off our book club choice in store.

We all have our own particular reading tastes, be it classical fiction, historical literature or gripping thrillers, but being a part of a book club allows us to step outside our reading comfort zone and explore other genres. Love it or hate it, there is always a discussion to be had. You never know, there may be a new favourite read among the chosen books…

If you would like to join the mailing list for our book club so you can be kept informed of dates and monthly book choices, please email info@jaffeandneale.co.uk to be added.

1st May 2024

New Finnish Grammar

By Diego Marani

Triese, 1943: an unconscious soldier is revived in hospital, but he has lost his memory and cannot even remember his own language. With no documents about his person it will be hard to identify him. The doctor who treats him is originally from Finland and, believing his patient to be a countryman, resolves to teach him Finnish.

3rd April 2024

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

By Agatha Christie

A country house. A murder. A Belgian detective. After the Great War, life can never be the same again. Captain Arthur Hastings is invited to Styles to recuperate from injuries sustained at the Front. It is the last place he expects to encounter murder.

Fortunately he knows a former detective, a Belgian refugee, who happens to be staying nearby . . .

Here, for the first time, we meet Agatha Christie’s legendary creation: Hercule Poirot

6th March 2024

A Bend in the River

By V S Naipaul

Set in an unnamed African country, V. S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River is narrated by Salim, a young man from an Indian family of traders long resident on the coast.

He believes The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it. So he has taken the initiative; left the coast; acquired his own shop in a small, growing city in the continent’s remote interior and is selling sundries – little more than this and that, really – to the natives. This spot, this ‘bend in the river’, is a microcosm of post-colonial Africa at the time of Independence: a scene of chaos, violent change, warring tribes, ignorance, isolation and poverty.

And from this rich landscape emerges one of the author’s most potent works – a truly moving story of historical upheaval and social breakdown.

7th February 2024

A Shining

By Jon Fosse

A man starts driving without knowing where he is going. He alternates between turning right and left, and finally he gets stuck at the end of a forest road. Soon it gets dark and starts to snow, but instead of going back to find help, he ventures, foolishly, into the dark forest. Inevitably, the man gets lost, and as he grows cold and tired, he encounters a glowing being amid the obscurity.

10th January 2024

Damascus Station

By David McCloskey

A CIA officer and his recruit arrive in Damascus to hunt for a killer. CIA case officer Sam Joseph is dispatched to Paris to recruit Syrian Palace official Mariam Haddad. The two fall into a forbidden relationship, which supercharges Haddad’s recruitment and creates unspeakable danger when they enter Damascus to find the man responsible for the disappearance of an American spy. But the cat and mouse chase for the killer soon leads to a trail of high-profile assassinations and the discovery of a dark secret at the heart of the Syrian regime, bringing the pair under the all-seeing eyes of Assad’s spy catcher, Ali Hassan, and his brother Rustum, the head of the feared Republican Guard.

Set against the backdrop of a Syria pulsing with fear and rebellion, Damascus Station is a gripping thriller that offers a textured portrayal of espionage, love, loyalty, and betrayal in one of the most difficult CIA assignments on the planet.

1st November 2023

The Years

By Annie Ernaux

Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist’s defining work, The Years is a narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present, cultural habits, language, photos, books, songs, radio, television, advertising and news headlines. Annie Ernaux invents a form that is subjective and impersonal, private and collective, and a new genre – the collective autobiography – in order to capture the passing of time. At the confluence of autofiction and sociology, The Years is ‘a Remembrance of Things Past for our age of media domination and consumerism’ (New York Times), a monumental account of twentieth-century French history as refracted through the life of one woman.

4th October 2023

Uncle Paul

By Celia Fremlin

The holidays have begun. In a seaside caravan resort, Isabel and her sister Meg build sandcastles with the children, navigate deckchair politics, explore the pier’s delights, gorge ice cream in the sun. But their half-sister Mildred has returned to a nearby coastal cottage where her husband – the mysterious Uncle Paul – was arrested for his first wife’s attempted murder: and family skeletons emerge.

Now, on his release from prison, is he returning for revenge, seeking who betrayed him? Or are all three women letting their nerves get the better of them? Though who really is Meg’s new lover? And whose are those footsteps …?

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