Description
Village Book Club in English: “Box Hill” by Adam Mars-Jones (2020)
Hosted by Marco Astolfi
This story of a problematic SM relationship inspired the movie “Pillion” by Harry Lighton. On the Sunday of his eighteenth birthday, in 1975, Colin takes a walk on Box Hill, a biker hang-out in Surrey. There he accidentally trips over Ray, a biker napping under a tree. From the very first moment, the natural authority of the older man in leather exerts an irresistible attraction on Colin. The consequences are his first sexual experience, his first ride on a Norton Commando and his first relationship. On the very same day, he moves in with him – the beginning of a six-year, strictly regimented coupledom in which the boundaries between submission and security dissolve. Told with a time lag of almost twenty years, “Box Hill” depitcs a male idyll of unbridled motorcycle racing, draconian power games and dirty poker rounds with nostalgia, tenderness a charming dose of British humour.
Marco Astolfi is a literary translator, writer and fairy from Italy. He lives in Berlin, is a co-organizer of the Village Heart Circle for GBTQ men and runs the Book Club evening every two months. He is a regular at Creative Writing and can occasionally be found modeling for Life Drawing classes. He attended the One Year Training in 2018 and led the Cock O’Clock workshops at Easter Stretch Festival 2019 and Private Talk at Stretch Imagina 2020.
About the Village Book Club
Book lovers and bookworms have been meeting on a bimonthly basis to discuss works of fiction and non-fiction (novels, biographies, and essays) focused on or related to GBTQ themes and personalities.
Anticipating insightful discussions, we choose the next book two months in advance.
While the evening discussions are conducted in English, participants are welcome to read the selected books in their preferred language.
** This event is part of the we are village program ‘Belonging versus Lonelines‘, with the support of LADS.
Learn more about the program here.
