OTHER FRUIT - LOTE (ONLINE ONLY)

Please note - ONLINE only (via Zoom)

The Other Fruit Bookclub centres LGBTQ+ books, authors and readers and is hosted by Grey (they/them) - for June (& Pride month) we are reading LOTE by Shola von Reinhold.

LOTE has been out for five years now but is still frequently requested and recommended by customers and colleagues alike. We're partnering with Jacaranda Books to celebrate this book for Independent Bookshop Week and Pride month!

All are welcome to attend and take part in our discussions, however we ask that if you do not identify at LGBTQ+ you approach the book club as an opportunity for listening and support and give precedence to others in discussion.

We read and discuss one book each month - although there is a core group of regulars, new faces join each discussion and some people dip in and out depending on whether the book grabs their attention.

Use the code OTHERFRUIT at checkout to get 10% off bookclub books :)

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The Book:

WINNER of the James Tait Black Prize 2021 and The Republic of Consciousness Prize 2021.

Lush and frothy, incisive and witty, Shola von Reinhold's decadent queer literary debut immerses readers in the pursuit of aesthetics and beauty, while interrogating the removal and obscurement of Black figures from history.

Solitary Mathilda has long been enamored with the 'Bright Young Things' of the 20s, and throughout her life, her attempts at reinvention have mirrored their extravagance and artfulness. After discovering a photograph of the forgotten Black modernist poet Hermia Druitt, who ran in the same circles as the Bright Young Things that she adores, Mathilda becomes transfixed and resolves to learn as much as she can about the mysterious figure. Her search brings her to a peculiar artists' residency in Dun, a small European town Hermia was known to have lived in during the 30s. The artists' residency throws her deeper into a lattice of secrets and secret societies that takes hold of her aesthetic imagination, but will she be able to break the thrall of her Transfixions?

From champagne theft and Black Modernisms, to art sabotage, alchemy and lotus-eating proto-luxury communist cults, Mathilda's journey through modes of aesthetic expression guides her to truth and the convoluted ways it is made and obscured.