Strange Flowers – Book Club @ Leitrim Daily: March 2021

Leitrim Daily

The Book Club @ Leitrim Daily is in session for February 2021. Our Book Club panel met once again to share their thoughts on the latest selection, number one best seller and Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year ’Strange Flowers’, from Booker nominated Irish writer Donal Ryan.

The club’s host Mary Blake is joined by retired librarian Hilda King, Orlagh Kelly of The Reading Room Bookshop in Carrick on Shannon and special guest Rosemarie Donnelly of Blaney Bookworms in Castleblaney, Monaghan to work their way through this poetic and lyrical bitter sweet multi-generational family drama set in Tipperary in the 1970's.

We also find our which book has been selected for this month to be discussed in the next episode of The Book Club @ Leitrim Daily in April.

You can get all books covered in the series from The Reading Room Bookshop in Carrick on Shannon. Although closed due to covid restrictions they are facilitating an order and collect / postal service on all purchases. Contact Orlagh at 071 9671580. You’ll even get 10% off the book when you mention the Book Club @ Leitrim Daily.

About ’Strange Flowers’ by Donal Ryan

In 1973 Moll Gladney goes missing from the Tipperary hillside where she was born. Slowly her parents, Paddy and Kit, begin to accept that she’s gone forever. But she returns, changed, and with a few surprises for her family and neighbours.

Nothing is ever the same again for the Gladneys, who learn that fate cares little for duty, that life rarely conforms to expectation, that God can’t be relied upon to heed any prayer.

A story of exile and return, of loss and discovery, of retreat from grief and the saving power of love.

Book Club Selection for April 2021:

'The Art of Falling' by Danielle McLaughlin

Nessa McCormack's marriage is coming back together again after her husband's affair. She is excited to be in charge of a retrospective art exhibition for a beloved artist, the renowned late sculptor Robert Locke. But the arrival of two enigmatic outsiders imperils both her personal and professional worlds: A chance encounter with an old friend threatens to expose a betrayal Nessa thought she had long put behind her; and at work, an odd woman comes forward with a mysterious connection to Robert Locke's life and his most famous work, the Chalk Sculpture.

As Nessa finds the past intruding on the present, she realizes she must decide what is the truth, whether she can continue to live with a lie, and what the consequences might be were she to fully unravel the mysteries in both the life of Robert Locke and her own. In this gripping and wonderfully written debut, Danielle McLaughlin reveals profound truths about love, power, and the secrets that define us.