Daytime Book Club - Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

Our evening book groups are hugely popular, but not everyone can commit to the same time each month or wants to go out in the evening. So we've launched a daytime book group during bookshop opening hours. They're a chance for local people to get together, talk about books and to read outside of their typical reading lists and genres. Our booksellers will facilitate a discussion and ensure everyone gets a say. In October, we'll be reading Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico. Millennial expat couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin, in a bright, affordable, plant-filled apartment. Their life as young digital creatives revolves around slow cooking, Danish furniture, sexual experimentation and the city’s twenty-four-hour party scene – an ideal existence shared by an entire generation and tantalizingly lived out on social media. But beyond the images, dissatisfaction and ennui burgeon. Work becomes repetitive. Friends move back home, have children, grow up. Frustrated that their progressive politics amount to little more in practice than boycotting Uber, tipping in cash, or never eating tuna, Anna and Tom make a fruitless attempt at political activism. Feeling increasingly trapped in their picture-perfect life, the couple takes ever more radical steps in the pursuit of an authenticity and a sense of purpose perennially beyond their grasp. Superbly translated by Sophie Hughes, Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection is a taut, spare sociological novel about the emptiness of contemporary existence, scathing and brilliantly affecting. You can purchase the book separately at the bookshop if you wish to do so. NB: We apologise for the inconvenience but our bookshop is currently not wheelchair accessible. The toilets are located on the ground floor. The event space/bookroom café is located at the top of a staircase (17 steps). Please do get in touch if you’d like to know more details to plan your visit ahead. Email is: [email protected]