We recently finished this year’s reading with a fantastic discussion on Iain Reid’s Foe, a novel only published in 2019, which I am certain will grow in stature as the years go by. The pupils who enjoyed this genre-bending head scratcher included Pietro FassinaPablo TufnellJeanne PrieuretFreya MillsLucy MountainDorothy PretzlikMaddie RussellEmily Howcroft and Esme Packman. This is a lovely reading group to lead, composed of pupils 100% committed to reading high-quality fiction and confident in discussion and argument. Other group regulars who could not make it on the day include Ben Frost and Molly Geater-Milton.

The group is aimed at pupils in Year 9 and above. For anyone interested in joining for next September our holiday read is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which is very topical as a long-awaited sequel is published in September. We have lots of copies available in the library for anyone who wishes to borrow the novel for the summer. Everyone has really enjoyed this year’s selection which has featured zombies in Reapers are the Angels, a teenage serial-killer in The Wasp Factory and the apocalyptic horror novel famous for its Netflix blindfolds Birdbox.

We would like to send our best wishes to Pietro Fassina who heads to university in the autumn and has been a regular member of the group for five years. Even though his A levels were done and dusted, Pietro came in especially for the meeting on Foe and the group were delighted to present him with a farewell gift, The House of Leaves (by Mark Z. Danielewski), which is widely regarded as one of the most complex and challenging horror novels ever written. Pietro will love it!

Tony Jones (Senior Librarian and Archivist)