Tuesday, July 21, 7:30 PM
Offsite Event: Greene Grape Annex
Fiction book group discusses The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje

Led by Greenlight bookseller Alexis, this book group discusses paperback fiction on the third Tuesday of each month. The theme for this season is Shortlisted. For July, the group reads Michael Ondaatje’s novel The Cat’s Table, shortlisted for the Giller Prize in 2011. In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the “cat’s table”—as far from the Captain’s Table as can be—with a ragtag group of “insignificant” adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship crosses the Indian Ocean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: they are first exposed to the magical worlds of jazz, women, and literature by their eccentric fellow travelers, and together they spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever. By turns poignant and electrifying, The Cat’s Table is a spellbinding story about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood, and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage.

Please note: the fiction book group will be on hiatus in August.

Greenlight book group meetings take place at Greene Grape Annex, across the street from the bookstore at 753 Fulton Street. Current book group picks are always 15% off at Greenlight, in the store or online.