FRENCH BOOK CLUB

French Book Club We began some years ago as the French Playreading Group, and we then read everything we could lay our hands on. Classics, ancient and modern - Moliere, Jean Giraudous, Alfred de Musset, Jean Anouith - we tackled them all. Then we ran out of sources from which we could borrow plays, so we turned to other forms of literature, from Madame Bovary to Camus' L'Entranger and La Peste. After enjoying AlainFournier's Le Grand Meaulnes and then Marcel Pagnol's trilogy about his childhood in Provence it occurred to us that the name of our group should change, so we became the French Book Club.

Finding new books to read has become a challenge and our choice to some extent depends on the cost of buying them, either from foreign book catalogues or as 'discoveries' by some of our group during visits to France. We read a very early Simenon, and have travelled, on the page, to the Western United States, Mexico, nineteenth century China and present day Japan. Our present project is a 'family saga' about the shipping community of St.Malo at the time of Louis XIV.

The members of the group are competent in French, but enjoy meeting unfamiliar vocabulary and expressions. The atmosphere is friendly, and I can feel free to ask my colleagues for help if the grammar or vocabulary become frightening. We can accommodate more members, so if anyone would like to find out more about us, they are welcome to telephone, and perhaps try us out in a sample class.

We meet at Minchinhampton on Thursday mornings every fortnight.

Barbara Moreton
01453872297

Click Back Arrow to Return