The latest book ahead of our trip next week is Gorilla Dawn by Gill Lewis. Miss Corbishley found this quite a tough read, emotionally speaking. "It's because there are elements of non-fiction here - some of these atrocities really do happen and it makes it quite difficult to read as fiction."
Despite this, it is one of the most popular books yet.
Poppy wasn't keen on the look of it, commenting, after having read the blurb, that it "looked like it was going to be a romance or something". But having now finished it (in super speedy time!) she has this to say:
"I loved it. If I was the girl, the spirit girl, I would have gone with the lady" and this prompted discussion about whether the spirit girl really did have magical, supernatural powers. "I think she did" said Eleanor. "The demon inside her was real. And people knew she had power because she survived the attack by the Black Mamba and that's what gives her the powers".
We also all agreed that the description of the setting was really well done. It's not a landscape any of us were familiar with (never having been to the jungles and mountains of Congo) so this was no mean feat on the part of the author. Eleanor said that if she closed her eyes, "I could imagine being there, breathing that air, feeling the leaves of the jungle. I could even feel the rain dripping down my arms and off my elbows".
Recommended reading age was agreed on 12 years and over - certainly not for the faint-hearted this one!
A big thumbs up from Fearnhill BOOKClub.
