After a very successful 2024 Book Club here at Farrells, we are thrilled to announce our line up for February, March & April 2025! 

Our Book Clubs will focus on new release fiction, with two session times available each month. Participation in a session is $50 per month, with each month needing to be booked separately, scroll down to book individually. Or you may choose to book all three months in advance with our 3 Month Bundles for evenings or mornings below.

Each session includes:

  • copy of the new release book
  • moderated discussion
  • drink on arrival, light refreshments (evening sessions) or takeaway coffee / tea, biscuits (daytime sessions)
    (Please note: as drink orders for the day sessions will be taken prior to each session via email to be prepared at a local café, late-arriving participants will not be included.)

Places in each session are limited. A participant may only attend one session per month.

Books will be made available well in advance of session dates to ensure plenty of reading time. We have selected three very different books for a varied experience across the three months for those who wish to attend across the year. Bookings for all sessions are open and selling fast. A waitlist function will activate on the booking link if all sessions sell out.

We can’t wait to welcome everyone for some great discussions and extension of our reading experience.

Farrells-Book-Club

FARRELLS BOOK CLUB: 3 MONTH BUNDLE – EVENINGS

February – March – April

FARRELLS BOOK CLUB: 3 MONTH BUNDLE – MORNINGS

February – March – April

FEBRUARY: More or Less Maddy (Lisa Genova) (release date 14 January)
Joy Moody is Out of Time by Kerryn Mayne ISBN:9781761343285

Maddy Banks is just like any other stressed-out freshman at NYU. Between schoolwork, exams, navigating life in the city, and a recent breakup, it’s normal to be feeling overwhelmed. It doesn’t help that she’s always felt like the odd one out in her picture-perfect Connecticut family. But Maddy’s latest low is devastatingly low, and she goes on antidepressants. She begins to feel good, dazzling in fact, and she soon spirals high into a wild and terrifying mania that culminates in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

As she struggles to find her way in this new reality, navigating the complex effects bipolar has on her identity, her relationships, and her life dreams, Maddy will have to figure out how to manage being both too much and not enough.

With her signature ‘deep empathy and insight’ (Booklist), Harvard-trained neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author Lisa Genova has crafted another profoundly moving novel that makes complicated mental health issues accessible and human. More or Less Maddy is destined to become another classic like Still Alice.

A breathless, riveting novel about a young woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder who rejects the stability and approval found in a traditionally ‘normal’ life for a career in stand-up comedy, from the bestselling author of Still Alice and Inside the O’Briens.

Book Club Session Times:
  • Tuesday 25 February 6pm – 7pm
  • Friday 28 February 10:30am – 11:30am

 

MARCH: The Boy From the Sea (Garrett Carr) (release date 11 February)
Farrells-Book-Club

1973. In a close-knit community on Ireland’s west coast, a baby is found abandoned on the beach. Named Brendan Bonnar by Ambrose, the fisherman who adopts him, Brendan will become a source of fascination and hope for a town caught in the storm of a rapidly changing world.

Ambrose, a man more comfortable at sea than on land, brings Brendan into his home out of love. But it’s a decision that will fracture his family and force him to try to understand himself and those he cares for.

Bookended by the arrival and departure of a single mesmerizing boy, Garrett Carr’s The Boy From the Sea is an exploration of the ties that make us and bind us, as a family and community move irresistibly towards the future.

Book Club Session Times:
  • Tuesday 18 March 6pm – 7pm
  • Friday 21 March 10:30am – 11:30am

 

APRIL: The Persians (Sanam Mahloudji) (release date 5 March)
Farrells-book-Shop

Meet the women of the Valiat family. In Iran, they were somebodies. In America, they’re nobodies.

First there is Elizabeth, the regal matriarch with the famously large nose, who remained in Tehran despite the revolution. She lives alone in a shabby apartment except when she is visited by Niaz, her young, Islamic-law-breaking granddaughter, who takes her partying with a side of purpose, and somehow manages to survive. Across the ocean in America, Elizabeth’s daughters have built new lives for themselves. There’s Shirin, a charismatic and flamboyantly high-flying event planner in Houston, who considers herself the family’s future; and Seema, a dreamy idealist turned bored housewife languishing in the privileged hills of Los Angeles. And then there’s the other granddaughter, Bita, a disillusioned law student spending her days in New York trying to find deeper meaning by giving away her worldly belongings.

When an annual vacation in Aspen goes wildly awry and Shirin ends up being bailed out of jail by Bita, the family’s brittle upper class veneer is cracked wide open. Soon, Shirin must embark upon a grand quest to restore the family name to its former glory. But what does that mean in a country where the Valiats never even mattered? Can they bring their old inheritance into a new tomorrow together?

Spanning from 1940s Iran into a splintered 2000s, these five women are pulled apart and brought together by revolutions personal and political. The Persians is a darkly funny, deeply moving and profoundly searching portrait of a unique family in crisis. Here is their past, their present and a possible new future for them all.

Book Club Session Times:
  • Tuesday 8 April 6pm – 7pm
  • Friday 11 April 10.30 am -11.30am