Overnight the 2016 winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction was announced.
The WINNER IS Lisa McInerney for her debut novel The Glorious Heresies.
For more information and to check out all the other books on the shortlist go to http://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk
Welcome to our Escape Winter Competition page.
Solve our puzzles & escape the cold this winter.
Each Wednesday, starting from 1 June 2016 a visual puzzle called a Rebus, will be posted here and on display at all Parramatta Library branches.
Solve the 14 puzzles by sounding out the pictures from left to right to create a book, movie or TV show title. It could even be a book and movie title! Guess all 14 puzzles or 1, it’s up to you.
All puzzles will have a common theme of escaping the cold…think tropical locations, deserts and all things warm.
Drop your answer to any Parramatta Library branch, email or enter online below.
Please include your name, library card number and phone number.
You can only enter once per puzzle but the more puzzles you answer, the more entries you’ll get!
Click on the links below each Wednesday and guess the book, movie or TV series each week! One new puzzle each week starting from Wednesday 1 June 2016.
Week 1 Puzzle Week 2 Puzzle Week 3 Puzzle Week 4 Puzzle
Week 5 Puzzle Week 6 Puzzle Week 7 Puzzle Week 8 Puzzle
Week 9 Puzzle Week 10 Puzzle Week 11 Puzzle Week 12 Puzzle Week 13 Puzzle Week 14 Puzzle
Each correct puzzle answer will be placed into a draw to win one of three $50 Booktopia gift certificates.
PS
How did you go with our sample puzzle? Did you get it right?
I Came to Say Goodbye by Caroline Overington
A young woman pushed through the hospital doors. She walked into the nursery, where a baby girl lay sleeping. The infant didn’t wake when the woman placed her gently in the shopping bag she had brought with her. There is CCTV footage of what happened next, and most Australians would have seen it, either on the internet or the news. The woman walked out to the car park, towards an old Corolla. For a moment, she held the child gently against her breast and, with her eyes closed, she smelled her. She then clipped the infant into the car, got in and drove off. That is where the footage ends. It isn’t where the story ends, however. It’s not even where the story starts.
Comments
A disturbing and at times, harrowing read, that was heart-breaking because of its reality. A very well written story that had us turning the pages quicker than an Aldi catalogue wanting to know what else could possibly happen or go wrong for this family.
While we liked the way the writer told the story, in letter form to a judge, some struggled to sympathise with him and other characters. We all felt like they all could have done more or should have done more for each other. This is the first book in a little while that has generated a lot of discussion within our group. Over who did and why they did it. And who was at fault. And if the grandfather had intervened earlier, like he had always intended too, would any of this have ever happened. We wondered where the mother went and why she seemed to have had no contact with anyone after she left. Did some of the blame lay with her for simply disappearing from her children’s lives.
We found it a difficult to rate this book. While we all agreed that while the writing was well done, we found the subject a little heavy and depressing and not something we wanted to scale too highly as to mislead other readers.
Read by – Cultcha Club
Rated – 6/10
The One Who Got Away by Caroline Overington
Caroline Overington’s latest book The One Who Got Away was released a couple of days ago; and I was so excited. Caroline is one my favourite authors and after reading a sample I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this one.
I must admit to being the tiniest bit biased in my opinion where Caroline’s books are concerned after having been lucky enough to have met her here at Parramatta Library a couple of years ago for an author talk. (Click HERE to listen to the podcast). I became an even bigger fan. Caroline is a very talented writer and a nice person.
I think it’s fair to say I expected a lot from The One Who Got Away and I wasn’t disappointed.
The One Who Got Away tells the gripping tale Loren and David; the perfect couple? When Loren meets David, she falls hard. Although they’re from the same Californian town they come from very different backgrounds … but Loren is not about to let that stop her from winning over her perfect man.
There is suspense with twists and turns all the way through and you wont know what to believe. I loved the way it was told from different perspectives; it really allowed the story to build up gradually to a point where you are practically screaming “I need to know what happens NOW”!
I resisted the urge to skip ahead to the end of the book so I could find out what happened, but let me tell you it was very hard. When I finally read the last page, I was in total shock and went straight back and reread the last chapter to make sure I hadn’t read it wrong. The way the story kept revealing secrets all the way to the very last line was masterful.
Do yourself a favour and read this one, I LOVED IT and can’t wait to talk about it with my reading obsessed colleagues here at the library.
Jody
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
Book Summary
It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a gentell Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as improvished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.
Review
Sarah Waters novels are always eagerly anticipated by her many fans and “Paying Guests” doesn’t disappoint. All the familiar elements are there, a fastidious re-creation of English society and the value of times and an impeccable rendering of the historical period, in this case 1920’s London. Add to that the usual twists and turns of the plot, where nothing is as it seems. The main characters are France Wray and her mother, who are of the genteel class, but have fallen upon hard times as the saying goes. They take in “paying guests” or lodgers from the new Clerk class, a young couple named Lillian and Leonard Barlow. This signals the beginning of a friendship between the spinsterish Frances who is only 26 years old and the slightly younger but glamorous Lillian.
The marriage of Lillian & Leonard seems loving one minute and ambivalent the next , and then a brutal murder occurs in the salubrious suburb of Camberwell. It turns out that Leonard has been hiding something and Lillian has her own secrets, meanwhile the smitten Frances becomes embroiled in this web of deceit. The Police start investigating the murder and it becomes a game of cat and mouse. The tension is palpable and Waters cleverly manipulates the plot, so that the story becomes a page turner that grips the reader to the end.
Enjoy!
Reviewed by: Katherine