The Art of Falling – Book Club @ Leitrim Daily: April 2021

Leitrim Daily

The Book Club @ Leitrim Daily is in session for April 2021. Our Book Club panel met once again to share their thoughts on their latest selection, the debut novel from Cork auther Danielle McLaughlin ’The Art of Falling’.

The club’s host Mary Blake is joined by retired librarian Hilda King, Orlagh Kelly of The Reading Room Bookshop in Carrick on Shannon and this month's guest Michael Geoghegan from Aughacashel to work their way through this first full length novel from the winner of The Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award.

We also find our which book has been selected for this month to be discussed in the next episode of The Book Club @ Leitrim Daily in April.

You can get all books covered in the series from The Reading Room Bookshop in Carrick on Shannon. Although closed due to covid restrictions they are facilitating an order and collect / postal service on all purchases. Contact Orlagh at 071 9671580. You’ll even get 10% off the book when you mention the Book Club @ Leitrim Daily.

About 'The Art of Falling' by Danielle McLaughlin

Nessa McCormack's marriage is coming back together again after her husband's affair. She is excited to be in charge of a retrospective art exhibition for a beloved artist, the renowned late sculptor Robert Locke. But the arrival of two enigmatic outsiders imperils both her personal and professional worlds: A chance encounter with an old friend threatens to expose a betrayal Nessa thought she had long put behind her; and at work, an odd woman comes forward with a mysterious connection to Robert Locke's life and his most famous work, the Chalk Sculpture.

As Nessa finds the past intruding on the present, she realizes she must decide what is the truth, whether she can continue to live with a lie, and what the consequences might be were she to fully unravel the mysteries in both the life of Robert Locke and her own. In this gripping and wonderfully written debut, Danielle McLaughlin reveals profound truths about love, power, and the secrets that define us.

Book Club Selection for May 2021:

House of Glass by Hadley Brennan

After her grandmother died, Hadley Freeman travelled to her apartment to try and make sense of a woman she’d never really known. Sala Glass was a European expat in America – defiantly clinging to her French influences, famously reserved, fashionable to the end – yet to Hadley much of her life remained a mystery. Sala’s experience of surviving one of the most tumultuous periods in modern history was never spoken about.

When Hadley found a shoebox filled with her grandmother’s treasured belongings, it started a decade-long quest to find out their haunting significance and to dig deep into the extraordinary lives of Sala and her three brothers. The search takes Hadley from Picasso’s archives in Paris to a secret room in a farmhouse in Auvergne to Long Island and to Auschwitz.

By piecing together letters, photos and an unpublished memoir, Hadley brings to life the full story of the Glass siblings for the first time: Alex’s past as a fashion couturier and friend of Dior and Chagall; trusting and brave Jacques, a fierce patriot for his adopted country; and the brilliant Henri who hid in occupied France – each of them made extraordinary bids for survival during the Second World War. And alongside her great-uncles’ extraordinary acts of courage in Vichy France, Hadley discovers her grandmother’s equally heroic but more private form of female self-sacrifice.

A moving memoir following the Glass siblings throughout the course of the twentieth-century as they each make their own bid for survival, House of Glass explores assimilation, identity and home – issues that are deeply relevant today.