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Discuss art, life, culture and creativity at the monthly Members Book Club. After a break in December, the titles on the reading list for January to May 2024 connect to ideas in the exhibition ‘Fairy Tales’.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (2018) by Holly Ringland

After her family suffers a tragedy when she is nine years old, Alice Hart is sent to live with her estranged grandmother June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers – a way to say the things that are too hard to speak. Under the watchful eye of June and The Flowers, women who run the farm, Alice grows up. But an unexpected betrayal sends her reeling, and she flees to the central Australian desert, where Alice thinks she has found solace, until she falls in love with Dylan, a charismatic and ultimately dangerous man. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a story about stories: those we inherit, those we select to define us, and those we decide to hide. It is a novel about the secrets we keep and how they haunt us, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. Spanning twenty years, set between the lush sugar cane fields by the sea, a native Australian flower farm, and a celestial crater in the central desert, Alice must go on a journey to discover that the most powerful story she will ever possess is her own.

Ticket includes light refreshments. Members receive 20% off current and past Book Club titles from the QAGOMA Store.

January – May 2024 reading list

• The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (2018) by Holly Ringland
• The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979) by Angela Carter
• Gingerbread (2019) by Helen Oyeyemi
• The Bear and the Nightingale (2017) by Katherine Arden
• The Snow Child (2012) by Eowyn Ivey

Cancellation & Refund Policy

Ticket holders must provide 2 days notice of cancellation to be eligible for a refund. Within 24 hours of the event date, ticket holders may request to transfer their payment to another Members event. No-shows cannot be refunded or transferred.