OUR BOOK CLUBS
Hello book lovers! Welcome to your local book club.
Matilda Bookshop now hosts three book clubs for adult readers.
(We also have three book clubs for kids - find out more here.)
All book clubbers receive a 20% discount on the book of the month.
To be involved, please join one of the book clubs mailing lists and you’ll be emailed when our upcoming dates are announced. Hope to see you soon!
WHEN: Tuesday evening, monthly at 6pm or 730pm
VENUE: Stirling Hotel Library Room
COST: $10
CONVENOR: Molly
OUR NEXT BOOK CLUB DATE: Date has moved to Tuesday July 29th, 2025 (SOLD OUT - please be in touch about our waitlist: 8339 3931)
Our Matilda Bookshop Book Club is now 10 years old and is a lively, informal and informative meeting where we chat over the best in Australian fiction, new-release fiction, classics and international fiction. The sessions are convened by Molly (who is an author and manager of the bookshop), who has experience teaching literature and creative writing at a tertiary level. But most importantly, the evenings are fun and engaging.
If you are interested in receiving regular information about the book club, please sign up to the newsletter below.
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In August, at Matilda Bookshop Book Club we read the enigmatic and melancholic Cure by Katherine Brabon. The discussion was framed by Virgina Woolf's, On Being Ill and Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor as scaffolds to talk about illness/illness in literature.
The novel follows a mother and daughter who suffer from the same chronic disease as they travel to Lake Como in Italy in pursuit of a mystical healer. The novel raises many questions about our desire for agency, for cures, for the following of false prophets whether they be internet gurus or faith healers. There is something about the allure of wellness sites/sites of pilgrimage that is universal.
As readers we were interested in the many doublings and reflections in this narrative, as perspective shifts between and across mother and daughter, who not only share the same illness, but also similar sensual awakenings in Lake Como at age sixteen.
There is a porousness also between reality/identity and constructed/curated identity via the daughter's journal entries and the mother's blogging. Some readers found Cure frustrating, or even tedious, while others felt the writing of the experience of chronic illness was illuminating. There were also mixed reactions to the mother's inconsistency between possessiveness and control, and care and devotion for her daughter. This characterisation, all a way of opening up a dynamic conversation about the privilege of the well. Fascinating discussion. MOLLY
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2025
We Do Not Part by Han Kang
Flesh by David Szalay
Elegy, Southwest Madeleine Watts
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser
2024
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin
Clear by Carys Davies
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
Take What You Need by Idra Novey
Until August Gabriel García Márquez
We All Lived in Bondi Then by Georgia Blain
The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt
Days of Innocence and Wonder by Lucy Treloar
2023
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright
Chai Time at the Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran
In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
Small Things Like These & Foster by Claire Keegan
August Blue by Deborah Levy
The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams
Out of Africa by Karen Blixen
Euphoria by Elin Cullhed
The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane
2022
Limberlost by Robbie Arnott
This Devastating Fever by Sophie Cunningham
Faithless by Alice Nelson
Horse by Geraldine Brooks
Bedtime Story by Chloe Hooper
Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes
Loveland by Robert Lukins
The Colony by Audrey Magee
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
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2021
Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
Real Estate by Deborah Levy
Still Life by Sarah Winman
Stranger Care by Sarah Sentilles
From Where I Fell by Susan Johnson
The Performance by Claire Thomas
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart
Song of the Crocodile by Nardi Simpson
2020
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Greenwood by Michael Christie
The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott
The Things She Owned by Katherine Tamiko Arguile
A Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry
The Scent of Eucalyptus by Barbara Hanrahan
Betty by Tiffany McDaniel
The Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey
In Search of the Woman Who Sailed the World by Danielle Clode
2019
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Walking on the Ceiling by Aysegul Savas
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi
The White Girl by Tony Birch
Lanny by Max Porter
The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie
Islands by Peggy Frew
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
Heart of the Grass Tree by Molly Murn
2018The Children’s House by Alice Nelson
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton
Flames by Robbie Arnott
Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
In the Garden of the Fugitives by Ceridwen Dovey
The Only Story by Julian Barnes
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
The Choke by Sofie Laguna
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2017
The Passage of Love by Alex Miller
Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
Tin Man by Sarah Winman
The Last Garden by Eva Hornung
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
House of Names by Colm Tóibín
Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
Barking Dogs by Rebekah Clarkson
My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
2016
The Good People by Hannah Kent
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
LaRose by Louise Erdrich
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes
Between a Wolf and a Dog by Georgia Blain
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar
2015The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Nora Webster by Colm Toibin
The Golden Age by Joan London
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick de Witt
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood
Sweet Caress by William Boyd
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Sign up here to the Matilda Book Club newsletter
WHEN: Wednesday evening, monthly, either 6.00pm OR 7.10pm
VENUE: Matilda Bookshop
COST: $12 (includes a glass of red or white wine or sparkling water on arrival)
CONVENOR: Rose
OUR NEXT BOOK CLUB DATE: Wednesday October 15, 2025
The sessions are convened by Rose, an avid reader, published author and bookseller at Matilda Bookshop.
If you are interested in receiving book club updates, please sign up to the newsletter below.
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Happiness and Love by Zoe Dubno
‘’Relentless’’ was a word thrown around a few times at the August session of Red Door book club. We were discussing Zoe Dubno’s debut novel Happiness and Love, a somewhat stream-of-consciousness diatribe consisting of a single, 260-page paragraph. Our unnamed narrator, a writer recently returned to New York after five years in London, discovers her former best friend has killed herself. In a moment of weakness she accepts a dinner invitation from an artist-curator couple, former friends she now despises. The dinner is held on the day of the funeral, ostensibly to honour their mutual dead friend, but really to show off to a famous actress who is very late to arrive. The protagonist remains nearly mute the entire novel but her inner monologue is a stream of rage and hatred, directed sometimes at the other guests and sometimes at herself.
Despite the experimental structure, most of us didn’t find it a difficult read, though some were frustrated when trying to find a place to put the book down. Opinions towards the protagonist varied: some enjoyed her snarky, funny take-down of the narcissistic, wealthy “benefactors” who in fact regularly engaged in creative theft and exploitation of less privileged artists and writers, while others found her frustrating in her passivity and ambivalence. Dubno is highly skilled at social satire, but personally, I felt the novel was at its best when its energy was directed towards exploring her regrets towards her now-deceased former friend Rebecca, who was the only really authentic person she knew. ROSE
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2025
The Antidote by Karen Russell
The Leopard by Guiseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa
The Most by Jessica Anthony
It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anna de Marcken
2024
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
All Fours by Miranda July
Breakdown by Cathy Sweeney
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
Vladivostok Circus by Elisa Shua Dusapin
The Variations by Patrick Langley
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Held by Anne Michaels
2023
The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto
North Woods by Daniel Mason
Strangers at the Portby Lauren Aimee Curtis
Cousins by Aurora Venturini
Ghost Music by An Yu
Shy by Max Porter
When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
A Sunday in Ville d’Avray by Dominique Barberis
Delphi by Clare Pollard
2022
Limberlost by Robbie Arnott
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
The Lovers by Paolo Cognetti
Pure Colour by Sheila Heti
Sign up here to join the Red Door Book Club newsletter
WHEN: Thursday evening, monthly, either 6.00pm OR 7.15pm
VENUE: Matilda Bookshop
COST: $12 (includes a glass of red or white wine or sparkling water provided)
CONVENORS: Heather & Nadia
OUR NEXT BOOK CLUB DATE: Thursday September 4, 2025 - 6pm and 7.15pm SOLD OUT - contact us to join the waitlist 8339 3931
Matilda, Translated is our newest club! The sessions are convened by Heather and Nadia, both booksellers at Matilda Bookshop.
If you are interested in receiving book club updates, please sign up to the newsletter below.
