Perth’s Queer Book Club has announced that their April title is Boulder by Eva Baltasar.
Published in 2020, it’s the second novel by the Catalan poet and writer. The 2023 English translation by Julia Sanches was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.
Boulder is the nickname given to a woman by another woman called Samsa while the former works as a cook on a merchant ship. The novel follows the eponymous main character as the couple moves to Reykjavík in Iceland, Samsa has a child, and Boulder navigates how the resulting changes in their relationship clash with her desire for freedom.
The International Booker Prize judges said the novel was an “incisive story of queer love and motherhood that slices open the dilemmas of exchanging independence for intimacy.”
Perth’s Queer Book Club is an initiative of GRAI: GLBTI Rights in Ageing, and was established after years of members of Perth’s LGBTIQA+ communities expressing a desire for a book club.
Each month a group of people turns up to the discussion, and it’s a welcoming space where people aren’t compelled to speak if they don’t want to.
It starts off with everyone introducing themselves and sharing their pronouns, and everyone is asked to describe the book in just one word. Then a moderator starts the discussion with a few provocations, and you can chime in with your thoughts, or just listen to what everyone else has to say.
At the end of the session everyone rates the book using a unicorn scoring system, one unicorn means you weren’t a fan, while five unicorns shows some serious love.
The Queer Book Club will meet on Wednesday 29 April from 6.00pm at the Pride Centre in the Northbridge Piazza at 142 James Street, Northbridge.
Find out more about the group at their Facebook page.
