Emily's Hampstead Heath Walking Book Club - October - Assembly
We will walk and talk on Hampstead Heath discussing this essential and elegant contemporary novel about the Black British experience.
Date and time
Location
Daunt Books Hampstead
51 South End Road London NW3 2QB United KingdomRefund Policy
About this event
In this slim, scalpel-sharp debut by Black British writer Natasha Brown, we spend just over a day with an unnamed woman narrator, who has pursued a brilliant education and career in the City, and who has just received some devastating news. In a series of fleeting vignettes, Brown is both poetic and provocative in her exposure of society’s structural inequality and showcasing of privilege and prejudice - elegant and essential reading for our times.
Find out masses more about all our books on our substack: https://emilyswalkingbookclub.substack.com
N.B. Please ensure that you have read the book BEFORE coming on the walk - or it risks spoiling the event for other walkers. If you've don't quite have time to read the book, please consider instead joining the Monday evening Zoom, for which reading the book isn't a prerequisite.
Frequently asked questions
The event lasts for an hour and a half, but only about half of that is taken up with walking. There are plenty of stops to enable group discussion.
I don't think so! We go at a very gentle pace, and there are plenty of stops - almost always beside a bench. There IS one steep ascent up to the top of Parliament Hill, but otherwise it's easygoing and taken very slowly.
Yes. When we walk and talk, we naturally split into small groups of two/three/four people chatting. If you haven't read the book, you can't discuss it with your companion thereby impacting their experience. If you'd rather just listen to the discussion, please do join our zoom meeting instead.
Sorry you didn't like this one! But please definitely do still come along. I would love to hear your critique of the book, and, after our discussion, you might just change your mind about it.
Please dress appropriately for Hampstead Heath. We stick mostly to the paths, but there is often a muddy moment. In the winter, it can be freezing and in the summer it can be refreshingly cool, or broilingly hot. Think hats (for insulation or for shade), sensible shoes, sun lotion...
Just bring yourself, sensibly attired (see above), and perhaps a bottle of water. You don't need to bring your copy of the book, but you are welcome to in case you'd like to follow along with any passages that I read out.
Daunt Books kindly gives members of Emily's Walking Book Club 10% off our books. (N.B. I don't get a commission on this!) You can pick them up in store, or online from them, or from other good bookshops and libraries.
I am committed to keeping this book club open to everybody. In my mind, the tickets are £15 each, but if you can't afford to pay, don't worry about it - come along anyway. If you can afford to pay, then please pay what you can - if you can afford to be generous, you allow me to be generous too.
It is a really imprecise science, but I aim for a mix of 'hidden gems' - books you wouldn't otherwise read, or perhaps even know of. They are never new books, they are usually by underrepresented writers, they are always great (in my opinion!).
Please check out (and sign up to) our substack. It's a website and also a weekly newsletter full of info about our walks and a chance to discover much more about our books: https://emilyswalkingbookclub.substack.com/
Hello! I'm Emily Rhodes - a writer & freelance journalist (for publications including the FT Weekend, Spectator, and Guardian) and founder of Bookbanks. I believe passionately in the power of books to bring people together. I invented the walking book club in 2012, when I was a bookseller.
Please drop me a line using the contact function on Eventbrite, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
Yes, please do! So long as you keep your dog under control for the walk, bearing in mind that I may well have my whippet too.