This month’s book is not a recent publication. In fact it was first published in 2001, but the themes it tackles are still very relevant today. It’s Erasure, by Percival Everett.

Percival Everett is a prolific author of more than 30 books, whose most recent book, James, was a finalist for the recently-announced 2024 Booker Prize. Erasure won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction, and was filmed as American Fiction. According to Wikipedia: « His books are often satirical, aimed at exploring race and identity issues in the United States. »

The publisher’s description of Erasure says: « With your book sales at an all-time low, your family falling apart and your agent telling you you’re not black enough, what’s an author to do? Thelonius ‘Monk’ Ellison has the answer.   Or does he….? »

This experimental novel describes what happens when, while coping with a crisis in his family, an author, who doesn’t want to be categorized as ‘black’, hits back at the lack of success of his novels by writing a parody of a recently successful ‘black’ novel.

This book sparked a really lively discussion at the last meeting of our Reading Circle.

Book recommendations from Reading Circle members:

• The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett (2020). How the lives of identical twins in a Southern black community develop differently.
• The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018). The importance of trees for generations of an American family, with important ecological insights.
• Doppelganger by Naomi Klein (2023). Examines the current climate of political polarisation and conspiracy thinking, by contrasting Klein’s worldview with that of Naomi Wolf, with whom Klein is often confused.
• Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (2016).
• James by Percival Everett (2024). Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn seen from the point of view of Jim, the runaway slave.
• Connie by Connie Chung (2024). Autobiography of a TV presenter, the youngest child of Chinese immigrants to the USA.
• Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (2021). Winner of the International Booker Prize. In German but also available in English translation. A chaotic affair between 19-year-old Katherine and Hans, a 53-year-old writer in East Berlin just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Music played:

• DNA by Kendrick Lamaar
• In the Ghetto by Elvis Presley

Next month when we will be introducing Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips(2019).

About Disappearing Earth
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the north-eastern edge of Russia, two sisters are abducted. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women.
Set on the remote Siberian peninsula of Kamchatka, a region that is as complex as it is alluring, Disappearing Earth draws us into the world of an astonishing cast of characters, all connected by an unfathomable crime.