The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter — Carson McCullers

XXX title="South Manchester, Chorlton, Cheadle, Fallowfield, Burnage, Levenshulme, Heaton Moor, Heaton Mersey, Heaton Norris, Heaton Chapel, Northenden, and Didsbury book group: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers" alt="Book cover for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers in the South Manchester, Chorlton, Cheadle, Fallowfield, Burnage, Levenshulme, Heaton Moor, Heaton Mersey, Heaton Norris, Heaton Chapel, Northenden, and Didsbury book group" width="20%" /> “How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind ?”

In a small town in the middle of the deep South, a disparate group of people are drawn towards John Singer, a lonely deaf-mute, and his kind, sympathetic nature. The owner of the café where Singer eats every day, a young girl desperate to grow up, an angry socialist drunkard, a frustrated black doctor: each pours their heart out to Singer, their silent confidant.

We'll be reading The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers on 12 November 2026.

though we won't be at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury.

The Fall of the House of Usher — Poe

“And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.”

A visitor arrives at the decaying mansion of his childhood friend, Roderick Usher. As time passes, Roderick's belief in the malignant influence of the house on their family’s fate becomes more pronounced.

We'll be reading The Fall of the House of Usher by Poe on 29 October 2026.

though we won't be at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury.

Girl — Edna O'Brien

“I was a girl once, but not any more.”

Captured, abducted and married into Boko Haram, Maryam witnesses and suffers the horrors of a community of men governed by a brutal code of violence.

Barely more than a girl herself, she must soon learn how to survive as a woman with a child of her own. Just as the world around her seems entirely consumed by madness, bound for hell, she is offered an escape of sorts — but only into another landscape of trials and terrors amidst the unforgiving wilds of northeastern Nigeria, through the forest and beyond; a place where her traumas are met with the blinkered judgement of a society in denial.

We'll be reading Girl by Edna O'Brien though we won't be at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury on 15 October 2026.

Just Kids — Patti Smith

“We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world. There were temptations and witches and demons we never dreamed of and there was splendor we only partially imagined.”

Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. Beautifully written, this is a profound portrait of two young artists, often hungry, sated only by art and experience. And an unforgettable portrait of New York, her rich and poor, hustlers and hellions, those who made it and those whose memory lingers near.

We'll be reading Just Kids by Patti Smith though we won't be at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury on 01 October 2026.

The Invention of Morel — Adolfo Bioy Casares

“We can always find a cause for suspicion if we look for it.”

A fugitive man arrives to a mysterious island around Polynesia, and deeply falls in love at first sight with a beautiful lovely lady, Faustine. But there’s something wrong, she doesn’t seem to notice or care about anything he does or says; in fact, everyone on the island completely ignores him. They all seem to be in some sort of trance. How can that be ? Is everyone bewitched, or is he ?

We'll be reading The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares though we won't be at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury on 17 September 2026.

The Trial — Franz Kafka

“It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

Joseph K wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him.

We'll be reading The Trial by Franz Kafka though we won't be at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury on 03 September 2026.

Enduring Love — Ian McEwan

“Who you get, and how it works out — there's so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your conscious choice of a mate, that no one and no amount of talking can untangle it if it turns out unhappily.”

This week's book is Enduring Love by Ian McEwan and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

The Collector — John Fowles

“I hate the uneducated and the ignorant. I hate the pompous and the phoney. I hate the jealous and the resentful. I hate the crabbed and mean and the petty. I hate all ordinary dull little people who aren't ashamed of being dull and little.”

This week's book is The Collector by John Fowles and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

As we're coming to the end of our reading list, we'll be pitching books at the meeting. You may like to consider the unread books list and the unreadable books list.

Blood Meridian — Cormac McCarthy

“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.”

This week's book is Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

As we're coming to the end of our reading list, we'll be pitching books at the meeting. You may like to consider the unread books list and the unreadable books list.

For continuity purposes we'll also be discussing Nigel Kneale's Quatermass and the Pit, the utility of time travel in addressing the problems of inchoate totalitarianism, and the wisdom of superimbibation. 

Heart of Darkness & The Man Who Would be King — Joseph Conrad & Rudyard Kipling

“No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence—that which makes its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream—alone.”

“The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again. Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed again.”

This week's books are Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad The Man Who Would be King by Rudyard Kipling and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir

“Good. Proud. I am scary space monster. You are leaky space blob.”

This week's book is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Please note change of book caused by the Great Diary Shortage.  Wuthering Heights can be read in April, if you're quick.

 

The God of Small Things — Arundhati Roy

“... the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.

That is their mystery and their magic.”

This week's book is The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

It Can't Happen Here — Sinclair Lewis

“The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his ‘ideas’ almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store. Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill.”

This week's book is It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

As I Lay Dying — William Faulkner

“People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

“How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls.”

This week's book is As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

North and South — Elizabeth Gaskell

“I take it that ‘gentleman’ is a term that only describes a person in his relation to others; but when we speak of him as ‘a man’ , we consider him not merely with regard to his fellow men, but in relation to himself, — to life — to time — to eternity. A cast-away lonely as Robinson Crusoe — a prisoner immured in a dungeon for life — nay, even a saint in Patmos, has his endurance, his strength, his faith, best described by being spoken of as ‘a man’. I am rather weary of this word ‘gentlemanly’ which seems to me to be often inappropriately used, and often too with such exaggerated distortion of meaning, while the full simplicity of the noun ‘man’, and the adjective ‘manly’ are unacknowledged.”

This week's book is North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Homage to Catalonia — George Orwell

“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it” wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War, and chronicled in Homage to Catalonia. Here he brings to bear all the force of his humanity, passion, and clarity, describing with bitter intensity the bright hopes and cynical betrayals of that chaotic episode: the revolutionary euphoria of Barcelona, the courage of ordinary Spanish men and women he fought alongside, the terror and confusion of the front, his near-fatal bullet wound and the vicious treachery of his supposed allies.

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

This week's book is Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë

“I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. And this is one: I'm going to tell it — but take care not to smile at any part of it.”

This week's book is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details. 

Please note change of book caused by the Great Diary Shortage.  Project Hail Mary can be read in June.