Barbara’s Book Club (9)

It’s a small club, and you’re in it!

Every month, Barbara Rafer and Jo Guise invite you on a literary journey through two captivating books—one classic masterpiece and one contemporary gem.

Barbara’s Book Club- Edition 9

July 2026

‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ by Raymond Carver

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love- review by Jo Guise

I have a fondness for short stories; my father was a fan but his were generally of the Edgar Allen Poe or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle variety.

My preference is for those of Raymond Carver who brings alive the lives of ordinary people in the Pacific Northwest.
His focus is on the mundane, his style minimalist. So this month I am suggesting a dip into what we talk about when we talk about love – his collection from 1981. He died young – at 50 – a life characterised by alcohol – he once said he had given up writing and taken up full time drinking  – but he did however choose to become sober in the late
seventies.

The stories are short – letting us look through windows into other people’s lives just for a few moments. They hold our attention because sometimes it feels like us – and as it’s 28 degrees when I am writing this anything which can do that is worth a second look.

‘The Wasp Factory’ by Iain Banks

The Wasp Factory- review by Barbara Rafer

In the forty years since The Wasp Factory was published it has garnered both critical acclaim and widespread condemnation as a novel of ‘unparalleled depravity’. It is certainly no lazy summer read and yet, revisiting it after many years it struck me how much this novel resonates with issues of today.

The central character Frank Cauldhane is a 16 year old boy, living on an isolated island with his psuedo scientist father. He has a penchant for murder guided by the titular wasp factory he has built. With a brother who has escaped from a psychiatric unit this novel is a gothic horror for the modern world, a Frankenstein for it’s era, anarchic, bleak, satirical, dark yet illuminating on ideas of politics, religion, gender, violence, toxic masculinity and anto war.

It, still, to my mind has the ultimate cliff hanger ending, one you cannot predict…and which I shall not spoil for you at this point.

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