Archived on 6/5/2022

New LGBTQIA+ Book Group at Kirkdale Bookshop!

TheBookshop
20 Aug '19

We’re very excited to announce that on Friday 30th August at 7:30pm - we’ll be hosting our first ever LGBTQIA+ Book Group!

This Book Group is the GBF* to our Open Book Group and aims to focus on LGBTQIA+ literature and narratives. It will be running on the last Friday of every other month and absolutely anybody is welcome to join us as we discuss our chosen book over a glass of wine.

To start us off, we’ll be reading and discussing James Baldwin’s seminal and sublime second novel published in 1956; Giovanni’s Room.

Haunting, controversial and a classic of gay literature. Set in a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.

Examining the mystery of love and passion in an intensely imagined narrative, Baldwin creates a moving and complex story of death and desire that is revelatory in its insight.

*Gay Best Friend