Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
When your eyes are glassy and your nose is dripping and your heart is full - you know you just finished a good book.
This is a novel of loneliness, friendship, aging, love, and loss. The writing flows as effortlessly as water in a pool. The descriptions are vivid - so vivid that you can almost smell the chlorine and taste the character's salty tears.The story takes place over twenty-four hours at Stella’s, a London café that has a style all of its own, sharing glimpses of the lives of two of its waitresses, best friends Hannah and Mona, and some of its customers. Over the course of the day we get to know these people, see what they’re going through, what matters to them and how their interactions with each other affect their lives, some in ways they don’t expect. It is a story about life, love, friendships, dreams and heartache. We see people at their best and their worst, when they are at their happiest and when their life is falling apart. The story begins when a development company that is building flats in the neighboring lots puts in a bid to buy the lido and turn it into a private facility just for it’s residents. The community council states that the lido has been losing money consistently and they intend to accept the bid. This doesn’t make too much of a ripple until our cub reporter Kate decides to write an article on it. It begins to get a lot of press, there are meetings, protests, even a sit in as it seems that everyone isn’t too happy with how their community is changing. The library was closed not that long ago and people are still upset about that. Now that I have finished The Lido, I have found that nothing happened that I hadn’t anticipated early in my reading. During the second half of the book, the impact of interpersonal emotions did feel more real and earned, as the characters slowly revealed themselves to each other. An early problem for me was that Kate, a very prominent character, dominated much of the early chapters but was too closed off, even from herself, to make those chapters feel as real as they needed to be. From the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Lido comes a story about following your dreams, set over one single day.
The early articles that Kate writes for the Brixton Chronicle are “not stories that she would show the tutors who taught her journalism master’s classes” and the fact that her mother collects them in a scrapbook “makes it even worse” (9). Describe the Kate’s articles. Why is she ashamed of them? Why do you think her mother’s saving them compounds Kate’s feelings? Do you think she is a good journalist? Explain your answer. What skills does her job require?Swimming serves a different psychological purpose in Ruth Hogan’s warm and wise second novel, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes. Hogan’s protagonist, Masha, is coming to terms with the death of her young son, 12 years earlier. She swims by way of penance: “At the lido, I swim underwater to the steps at the deep end and then I hold onto the handrail until my lungs implode and I drown. Almost… It’s self-inflicted waterboarding.” I hope that reading The Lido might make readers consider the value of places in their own community, whether it’s a local library, bookshop, or swimming pool. It’s easy to take these for granted, but I think our towns and cities would be so much sadder if such places no longer existed. They represent values of community and friendship that I believe are important to all of us as humans and are worth fighting for. Rosemary tells Kate, “When you’re my age you’ll understand. . . . You begin to miss yourself” (62). What does Rosemary mean? What parts of herself does she miss most? It took her about a year before she found an agent and she had her fair share of rejections too. She was just about to give up when she learned that there was a new agency being launched that needed new authors.
Congratulations on the publication of The Lido! What was the most rewarding part of publishing your debut novel? Was there any aspect that surprised you? Kate smells a story, and she wants to interview Rosemary. Rosemary makes a counteroffer: she’ll do the interview only after Kate has swum at the Lido. Kate es una muchacha de veintitantos que trabaja en un periódico local de Brixton, tiene algunos problemas de ansiedad y de vez en cuando el pánico la invade y el mundo se hace tan grande que ella no puedo con él, pero todo empieza a cambiar cuando lee una noticia de una persona no tan joven y el cierre de una piscina, el cual reza así “No le quitéis el tapón a nuestra piscina”. The Lido has been optioned for a film. Who would you cast as Kate? As Rosemary? How would you structure the film?
Summary
La persona detrás de la noticia es la bella y tierna Rosemary, lo que comienza con cubrir una noticia, acaba siendo una preciosa y sincera amistad que une a estas dos personas tan distantes en edad, ¿Es que acaso la edad está reñida con la amistad o el amor?
Great Deal 
New Comment