The Sisterhood Book Club

The Sisterhood Book Club is a friendly book club for adults discovering and rediscovering female protagonists in classic, modern classic and contemporary world fiction written by women.

We meet monthly to informally discuss a book read in advance, over refreshments at the emporium.

The cost of taking part is the purchase of the book to be discussed per month and books are available to collect a couple of months in advance. Inspired by Penguin books' Sisterhood Collection, previous books have included Anne of Green Gables, Little Women and Pride and Prejudice. More recently we have read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Out by Natsuo Kirino and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

It is 1974 on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chilli peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows. In the centre of the tavern, growing through a cavity in the roof, is a fig tree. This tree will witness their hushed, happy meetings, their silent, surreptitious departures; and the tree will be there when the war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to rubble, when the teenagers vanish and break apart. Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis has never visited the island where her parents were born. Desperate for answers, she seeks to untangle years of secrets, separation and silence. The only connection she has to the land of her ancestors is a Ficus Carica growing in the back garden of their home.