MEET THE ALDEBURGH BOOKSHOP TEAM
Continuing our project to showcase our colleagues over the summer months, next up is Serenity Sanders. Serenity is with us for a week's work experience and currently in her first year of A-Levels, studying English Literature, Media Studies and Film Studies. Once completed she hopes to attend university and major in screenwriting. She's been a great help in the shop, working on the till, unpacking boxes and shelving books, ordering stationery and generally being very useful.
Patricia Highsmith
Carol
Paperback, £9.99
A clandestine love affair transcending societal conventions and grappling with the complexities of desire
Within a society which threatens to suffocate individual pleasure with its rigid assemblage of expectations, Carol explores the concept of when one's sexual identity fails to align with societal expectations. Highsmith's artful prose and nuanced characterization transport readers to a heavily traditional New York disallowing the connection between a pair of opposing women who represent the complexities of human connection. Despite being dominated by rigidity, the overt passion between protagonists is elegantly illustrated, creating a literary gem. With its thought provoking narrative and its profound manifestation of forbidden desire, Carol exists as a timeless testament to the potency and depth of love.
Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale
Paperback, £9.99
A harrowing novel with unwavering patriarchal tension against subjugated women
Using inspiration from real events, Atwood presents a deeply confined, controlled, copiously patriarchal dominated society. Navigated through a first person account which reveals the repercussions of being fertile in a exceedingly misogynistic, contemporary America. With the unsettling and imaginable events which seem increasingly relevant in modern day society, each chapter forefronts prominent inequalities which constantly reminds readers of the struggle for autonomy.
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Hardback, £10.99
Explores the consequences of immorality and deviating from societal conventions
Wilde conveys yielding to one's desires through a fin-de-sièce aristocratic Britain juxtaposed with a uncanny gothic setting. The novel effectively weaves a cautionary tale of a young man's Faustian pact where physical manifestations display the burden of his immoral actions. The Picture of Dorian Gray displays the ramification of unchecked hedonism and, for readers, prompts introspection.
Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca
Paperback, £8.99
A chillingly gothic setting examines the immense influence a enigmatic, deceased women can hold over another.
With du Maurier's atmospheric writing evoking a sense of foreboding and unease readers become equally entangled in the unnamed protagonists life just as she becomes suffocated in a labyrinthine web of secrets. Whilst reading the novel the lingering presence of the past seemed to almost overpower the principal narrative with its potent characters. Nonetheless, it is a captivating yet eerie blend of psychological suspense and romance based in an uncanny country estate which blurs the boundaries between reality and perception.
Bram Stoker
Dracula
Hardback, £16.99
Dracula plays upon fears of 19th century Victorian society with its overt consequences of reverse colonization
Within his haunting narrative, Stoker's seminal work unveils the dark allure of the immortal antagonist through an exploration of primal fears. The evocative atmosphere and intricate character development offer a gripping exemplification of fundamental human morality between the living and the deceased.