Reading the World, One Novel at a Time. October 2026 Meeting

This month we move to England. We will read Ulverton, by Adam Thorpe. Reading the World, One Novel at a Time Each month we choose a book from a specific country to read and discuss. We choose excellent authors and books, often in translation, that our readers may not discover on their own. 2/3s of our chosen authors are women, as women writers are often overlooked by the publishing and book selling world. ULVERTON, BY ADAM THORPE At the heart of this novel lies the fictional village of Ulverton. It is the fixed point in a book that spans three hundred years. Different voices tell the story of Ulverton: one of Cromwell's soldiers staggers home to find his wife remarried and promptly disappears, an eighteenth century farmer carries on an affair with a maid under his wife's nose, a mother writes letters to her imprisoned son, a 1980s real estate company discover a soldier's skeleton, dated to the time of Cromwell... Told through diaries, sermons, letters, drunken pub conversations and film scripts, this is a masterful novel that reconstructs the unrecorded history of England.