Booklovers Archive
Here you will find the notes taken at previous meetings.
Notes from the Booklovers’ Meeting held on 10th September 2024
Present: Christine, Denise, Dominic
Dominic read: Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (1989) by William Styron. Written by the author of celebrated novel ‘Sophie’s Choice, this is a book that Dominic has long been impressed by and despite its subject matter believes it to be life affirming, ending as it does, with Styron’s recovery from an acute mental illness. It is an account his trip to Paris in 1985 to receive a literary prize during which his mental state deteriorates rapidly. The depressive symptoms he has been experiencing for some months become acute. Styron mentions as possible triggers his father’s battle with depression and his mother’s premature death from breast cancer. He reaches a point where he contemplates suicide and is actively preparing for that. However, listening to a passage from Brahms’ ‘Alto Rhapsody’ he becomes suddenly repelled by the notion of suicide and determines to eliminate his depression once and for all. The following day, Styron checks himself into a hospital, where he eventually achieves a full recovery.
As well as exploring his own life, symptoms and reactions, Styron also discusses the effects of depression on the lives of creative people generally, discussing, for example, writers such as Romain Gary, Randall Jarrell, Albert Camus and Primo Levi and also President Abraham Lincoln, and the acdtress Jean Seberg. Styron deduces that people with creative tendencies are ultimately more vulnerable to this disorder. Darkness Visible is renowned for drawing attention to the treatment of clinical depression. and helping to eliminate a lot of the stigma surrounding the disease as it encouraged individuals with the illness to share their experiences and seek help. Dominic describes Styron as a wonderful memoirist and novelist.
Dominic also read: Ulverton (1992)by Adam Thorpe. This book which eventually became a Vintage Classic although it never won a prize, began life unpromisingly being described on publication as ‘mediocre’. However, it quickly became a ‘cult’ novel. It is the story of an English village down the centuries told by various of its inhabitants from a shepherd in the time of Cromwell to a property developer in the time of Thatcher. It's a book of many different voices which lead the reader, according to Dominic, to feel almost as if you are intruding into their lives. It has been said that it feels, often, as though Thorpe has somehow raised the dead. " And Thorpe himself said "At university, I'd dabbled in past life regression under hypnosis, and I remember thinking: I'd love to give a reader that experience, to help them enter somebody else's soul. I picked up the story that eventually became Ulverton's first chapter in my family's village in Derbyshire, and I typed it out, not a word changed. It was almost as if the shepherd was dictating it to me. At first, I put it away. I didn't know what to do with it; it was the time of Amis, of the urban. But then on a walk one day, I had a revelation: the idea that my book's hero would be the place itself. It came up to me from the earth, it really did. The energy was coming up through my legs." The book is told through diaries, sermons, letters, drunken pub conversations and film scripts. This is a masterful novel that reconstructs the unrecorded history of England and is a book that Dominic remains very attached to.
Christine read: Célestine (1996) by Gillian Tindall. Talking of the village voices of a fictitious Ulverton led nicely into Christine’s choice. This is a history book written by a well-established British writer who has also lived in France. She is described as a master of miniaturist history well known for the quality of her writing and the scrupulousness of her research. Tindall one day finds a cache of letters dating from the 1860s in the house she has bought in the centre of France in the Berry region. All but two are letters proposing marriage from various men to the receiver, Célestine, daughter of the village innkeeper (1844-1933). Although she rejected each of the suitors, she preserved the letters throughout her long life. The author uses this source material to look at the society of that time in the village of Chassignolles and moves from the personal and private life of this young woman to look at wider contemporary changes in the society as France moved from an almost wholly rural state to an industrialised one. She studied ancient archives, census records, old newspapers, and prised loose the memories of long-gone ancestors from elderly villages. Although willing to be helpful they saw little point in examining the past. However, Tindall shines a bright light onto the age in which Célestine lived and tells a wonderful story. Christine remembering her own attempts and frustrations to find out the history of a house her family owned in France could understand the author’s difficulties and very much admires the finished work. She believes it is well worth reading if you enjoy writing that can move easily between the public and the private, the detail and the broader picture.
Denise read: The Women (2024) by Kristin Hannah. Hannah is an American author who has written this best-selling novel (soon to be made into a movie) about one woman in particular and several women in general who went to Vietnam to nurse in the 1960s. Hearing the words “Women can be heroes” nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath, sheltered by her ultra-conservative parents in the idyllic world of Southern California, realises that the world is changing and dares to imagine a different future for herself. She joins the Army Nurse Corps, following her brother out to serve in Vietnam. Once there she is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of the war, with each day a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal. She finds herself working under fire, on bases and in field hospitals, to patch soldiers back together. Or not. And, of course, dealing with her own conflicting responses to that. But it is not just the experience of being out in Vietnam that changes her: the real battle is coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protestors and to a country that wants to forget the war. Critics have admired the way Hannah retells the story of the Vietnam war to include everything that women did during that dreadful time and how their experiences were silenced after the war. For example, they suffered from PTSD and they didn’t even get medals for their service though that has now changed. Denise, who had heard the book being recommended by Bill Gates, found the book extremely powerful.
Dominic read: Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (1989) by William Styron. Written by the author of celebrated novel ‘Sophie’s Choice, this is a book that Dominic has long been impressed by and despite its subject matter believes it to be life affirming, ending as it does, with Styron’s recovery from an acute mental illness. It is an account his trip to Paris in 1985 to receive a literary prize during which his mental state deteriorates rapidly. The depressive symptoms he has been experiencing for some months become acute. Styron mentions as possible triggers his father’s battle with depression and his mother’s premature death from breast cancer. He reaches a point where he contemplates suicide and is actively preparing for that. However, listening to a passage from Brahms’ ‘Alto Rhapsody’ he becomes suddenly repelled by the notion of suicide and determines to eliminate his depression once and for all. The following day, Styron checks himself into a hospital, where he eventually achieves a full recovery.
As well as exploring his own life, symptoms and reactions, Styron also discusses the effects of depression on the lives of creative people generally, discussing, for example, writers such as Romain Gary, Randall Jarrell, Albert Camus and Primo Levi and also President Abraham Lincoln, and the acdtress Jean Seberg. Styron deduces that people with creative tendencies are ultimately more vulnerable to this disorder. Darkness Visible is renowned for drawing attention to the treatment of clinical depression. and helping to eliminate a lot of the stigma surrounding the disease as it encouraged individuals with the illness to share their experiences and seek help. Dominic describes Styron as a wonderful memoirist and novelist.
Dominic also read: Ulverton (1992)by Adam Thorpe. This book which eventually became a Vintage Classic although it never won a prize, began life unpromisingly being described on publication as ‘mediocre’. However, it quickly became a ‘cult’ novel. It is the story of an English village down the centuries told by various of its inhabitants from a shepherd in the time of Cromwell to a property developer in the time of Thatcher. It's a book of many different voices which lead the reader, according to Dominic, to feel almost as if you are intruding into their lives. It has been said that it feels, often, as though Thorpe has somehow raised the dead. " And Thorpe himself said "At university, I'd dabbled in past life regression under hypnosis, and I remember thinking: I'd love to give a reader that experience, to help them enter somebody else's soul. I picked up the story that eventually became Ulverton's first chapter in my family's village in Derbyshire, and I typed it out, not a word changed. It was almost as if the shepherd was dictating it to me. At first, I put it away. I didn't know what to do with it; it was the time of Amis, of the urban. But then on a walk one day, I had a revelation: the idea that my book's hero would be the place itself. It came up to me from the earth, it really did. The energy was coming up through my legs." The book is told through diaries, sermons, letters, drunken pub conversations and film scripts. This is a masterful novel that reconstructs the unrecorded history of England and is a book that Dominic remains very attached to.
Christine read: Célestine (1996) by Gillian Tindall. Talking of the village voices of a fictitious Ulverton led nicely into Christine’s choice. This is a history book written by a well-established British writer who has also lived in France. She is described as a master of miniaturist history well known for the quality of her writing and the scrupulousness of her research. Tindall one day finds a cache of letters dating from the 1860s in the house she has bought in the centre of France in the Berry region. All but two are letters proposing marriage from various men to the receiver, Célestine, daughter of the village innkeeper (1844-1933). Although she rejected each of the suitors, she preserved the letters throughout her long life. The author uses this source material to look at the society of that time in the village of Chassignolles and moves from the personal and private life of this young woman to look at wider contemporary changes in the society as France moved from an almost wholly rural state to an industrialised one. She studied ancient archives, census records, old newspapers, and prised loose the memories of long-gone ancestors from elderly villages. Although willing to be helpful they saw little point in examining the past. However, Tindall shines a bright light onto the age in which Célestine lived and tells a wonderful story. Christine remembering her own attempts and frustrations to find out the history of a house her family owned in France could understand the author’s difficulties and very much admires the finished work. She believes it is well worth reading if you enjoy writing that can move easily between the public and the private, the detail and the broader picture.
Denise read: The Women (2024) by Kristin Hannah. Hannah is an American author who has written this best-selling novel (soon to be made into a movie) about one woman in particular and several women in general who went to Vietnam to nurse in the 1960s. Hearing the words “Women can be heroes” nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath, sheltered by her ultra-conservative parents in the idyllic world of Southern California, realises that the world is changing and dares to imagine a different future for herself. She joins the Army Nurse Corps, following her brother out to serve in Vietnam. Once there she is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of the war, with each day a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal. She finds herself working under fire, on bases and in field hospitals, to patch soldiers back together. Or not. And, of course, dealing with her own conflicting responses to that. But it is not just the experience of being out in Vietnam that changes her: the real battle is coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protestors and to a country that wants to forget the war. Critics have admired the way Hannah retells the story of the Vietnam war to include everything that women did during that dreadful time and how their experiences were silenced after the war. For example, they suffered from PTSD and they didn’t even get medals for their service though that has now changed. Denise, who had heard the book being recommended by Bill Gates, found the book extremely powerful.
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS’ MEETING
HELD ON 6th August 2024
Present: Denise, Nick, Sue, Di, Christine
Christine read: Politics At The Edge (2023) by Rory Stewart. Christine had read Rory Stewart’s book about his walk across Afghanistan The Places In Between and was keen to read his latest book which was published at the end of last year. It marks his time as an MP/Minister and Secretary of State with the Conservative party, a period marked by multiple changes of Prime Minister.
She was struck by his writing skills and his ability to be a balanced, reflective and articulate political commentator who writes as effectively and sensitively about his constituency (Penrith and Borders) as he does about those members of his party who supported him through an extremely difficult period of British political history. His bid for leadership as a centrist, pro-EU Tory (which won him enormous support at the time) was then lost by the system for the Party leadership election which saw him pitted against the populist Boris Johnson. He makes no bones in the book about calling out those Tories who he feels have destroyed the Party, and Johnson in particular. To describe them, he finds language which is both satirical and bitter but always eloquent. Throughout he remains dedicated to his constituents and to his Cabinet roles. Perhaps the centre of the book for Christine is his careful analysis of a seriously damaged system. It is incisive, thoughtful, and far more concerned with the business of good government than with the small-time idiocies of party politics
Nick read: Dark Horse (1972) by Fletcher Knebel. An appropriate read some fifty-two years on as we gear up for another US Presidential election. Nick had first read this book twenty years ago and had enjoyed it very much. He still finds it relevant today, with an excellent plot, albeit one which it must be said is at times somewhat far-fetched. Three weeks before the general election, the Republican nominee for President dies suddenly. Party leaders select an obscure Turnpike Commissioner from NJ by the name of Eddie Quinn to replace him. Their rational is that even though Quinn has no chance of winning, his blue collar, populist appeal will help the Republican party. However, Quinn exhibits an unexpected independent streak and starts running a campaign that repudiates his "fat cat" benefactors and promises the working class a fair share. Voters find Eddie Quinn's candour and independence refreshing and the polls show his rapid ascension from dark horse to genuine contender. Much of Dark Horse's take on Republican politics at the national level rings very true today. One internet reviewer suggests that Knebel’s Quinn is, policy-wise, more Trumpian than, say, the very left-wing Bernie Sanders, but has several redeeming points: he values intellectual input and thoughtful policy-making, he instinctively grasps the importance of reaching much wider than the white male demographic and challenges his own party on race and gender issues (even if he doesn’t end up where we might want him to), and he doesn’t tell lies. Immigration is a second or third generation issue, and the terrorists are domestic insurgents neutralised by negotiation. Nick was not disappointed reading it for a second time and some fifty odd years later, when the major difference is of course the rise and influence of social media.
Denise read: The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio (2001) by Terry Ryan. This is the biography (by her daughter) of Evelyn Ryan, an enterprising woman who kept poverty at bay with wit, poetry and perfect prose during the “contest era” of the 1950s and 60s. With a failed husband, Evelyn a witty and verbally talented woman begins writing jingles, entertaining copy, and poems to promote various commercial manufacturers when fledgling advertising agencies were active partners with consumers. While the children (10 of them!) were doing their homework, or while ironing, she was creating the means to furnishing their home with the best appliances, with food and with money when they were near to bankruptcy. Whenever a crisis appeared she would win a competition usually at a most auspicious moment, e.g when the bank is about to foreclose on a loan. The children were encouraged to help, too. Through the book you witness the ups and downs of family life, the support and care given to the children. It may seem slights chaotic but in the end everyone does their best including the drunkard husband.
Denise says that this book is so rich in detail, warmth and family love and is a great read. It was made into a film in 2005 Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson, and Laura Dern.
Di: read My Cousin Rachel (1951) by Daphne du Maurier. Di read this on a recent trip to Cornwall. It is described as ‘Gothic’ novel and has thematic similarities to her earlier and more famous novel Rebecca. It is a mystery-romance set primarily on a large estate in Cornwall and was inspired by a portrait of Rachel Carew at Antony House in Cornwall which du Maurier had seen. Ambrose Ashley is the owner of a large country estate on the Cornish coast. He is also the guardian to Philip, his cousin. Health problems drive him to set off to spend his third winter abroad and he chooses Italy. While there he meets a cousin, Rachel - the widowed Contessa Sangalletti - in Florence. They marry but things do not go well and Ambrose’s health deteriorates. He cannot trust anyone and when he becomes ill, Philip travels to Italy to learn that Ambrose has died and Rachel has left the villa. He learns that he is still heir to the Cornish estate. Later Rachel arrives in England and goes to stay with Philip. The latter learns that Ambrose suspected that Rachel and the Doctor were trying to poison him. Eventually though Philip makes the estate over to Rachel and gives her the family jewels, believing this is what Ambrose wanted, he finally announces that they are to be married although she denies this. Philip then falls ill for many weeks and suspects Rachel is poisoning him with laburnum seeds, something he had noticed in her home in Italy. However, he finds nothing incriminating and thinks he has misjudged her. Rachel then falls from an unsafe bridge in the newly created terraced garden. Philip finds her and takes her in his arms. Before she dies, she calls him ‘Ambrose’.
Although Di considers Du Maurier an interesting author who successfully evokes the county of Cornwall, she feels this book is not as good as Rebecca, but felt it was a good way of passing fourteen hours of train journey to and from Penzance! The book has been adapted for film, tv, stage and radio, the first film adaptation coming out in 1952 and starring Richard Burton and Olivia De Havilland Du Maurier called it ‘quite desperate!’.
Sue read: Super-Infinite (1922) by Katherine Rundle. This is a new biography of John Donne, the sixteenth-century metaphysical poet. Donne, who ended his life as Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, is best known as a writer but is so much more. Rundle described her book as “both a biography of Donne and an act of evangelism”. For her, Donne is writing into being a new ideal: a “complete meshing of body and imagination” He was something like a showman and his life was a roller coaster. Donne moved between success and penury, with a stint in law, an unsuccessful foray as an adventurer in Spain, and a period at court that ended when he secretly married Anne More and was thrown in prison by her father. Initially a Catholic, he eventually renounced Catholicism. Sue was very intrigued by the odd mixture of roles he played, for example, he was witty and fashionable and very aware of the message you give by how you present yourself in public. If he were alive today he would undoubtedly be an online ‘influencer’. Despite the misogyny of his prose, he was also the writer of erotic poetry – believing, as Rundell puts it, that you can find “eternity through the human body of one other person”. He was a man of passion. Sue was very intrigued by this odd mixture and feels that Rundle’s book makes for very readable non-fiction which she would definitely recommend.
HELD ON 6th August 2024
Present: Denise, Nick, Sue, Di, Christine
Christine read: Politics At The Edge (2023) by Rory Stewart. Christine had read Rory Stewart’s book about his walk across Afghanistan The Places In Between and was keen to read his latest book which was published at the end of last year. It marks his time as an MP/Minister and Secretary of State with the Conservative party, a period marked by multiple changes of Prime Minister.
She was struck by his writing skills and his ability to be a balanced, reflective and articulate political commentator who writes as effectively and sensitively about his constituency (Penrith and Borders) as he does about those members of his party who supported him through an extremely difficult period of British political history. His bid for leadership as a centrist, pro-EU Tory (which won him enormous support at the time) was then lost by the system for the Party leadership election which saw him pitted against the populist Boris Johnson. He makes no bones in the book about calling out those Tories who he feels have destroyed the Party, and Johnson in particular. To describe them, he finds language which is both satirical and bitter but always eloquent. Throughout he remains dedicated to his constituents and to his Cabinet roles. Perhaps the centre of the book for Christine is his careful analysis of a seriously damaged system. It is incisive, thoughtful, and far more concerned with the business of good government than with the small-time idiocies of party politics
Nick read: Dark Horse (1972) by Fletcher Knebel. An appropriate read some fifty-two years on as we gear up for another US Presidential election. Nick had first read this book twenty years ago and had enjoyed it very much. He still finds it relevant today, with an excellent plot, albeit one which it must be said is at times somewhat far-fetched. Three weeks before the general election, the Republican nominee for President dies suddenly. Party leaders select an obscure Turnpike Commissioner from NJ by the name of Eddie Quinn to replace him. Their rational is that even though Quinn has no chance of winning, his blue collar, populist appeal will help the Republican party. However, Quinn exhibits an unexpected independent streak and starts running a campaign that repudiates his "fat cat" benefactors and promises the working class a fair share. Voters find Eddie Quinn's candour and independence refreshing and the polls show his rapid ascension from dark horse to genuine contender. Much of Dark Horse's take on Republican politics at the national level rings very true today. One internet reviewer suggests that Knebel’s Quinn is, policy-wise, more Trumpian than, say, the very left-wing Bernie Sanders, but has several redeeming points: he values intellectual input and thoughtful policy-making, he instinctively grasps the importance of reaching much wider than the white male demographic and challenges his own party on race and gender issues (even if he doesn’t end up where we might want him to), and he doesn’t tell lies. Immigration is a second or third generation issue, and the terrorists are domestic insurgents neutralised by negotiation. Nick was not disappointed reading it for a second time and some fifty odd years later, when the major difference is of course the rise and influence of social media.
Denise read: The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio (2001) by Terry Ryan. This is the biography (by her daughter) of Evelyn Ryan, an enterprising woman who kept poverty at bay with wit, poetry and perfect prose during the “contest era” of the 1950s and 60s. With a failed husband, Evelyn a witty and verbally talented woman begins writing jingles, entertaining copy, and poems to promote various commercial manufacturers when fledgling advertising agencies were active partners with consumers. While the children (10 of them!) were doing their homework, or while ironing, she was creating the means to furnishing their home with the best appliances, with food and with money when they were near to bankruptcy. Whenever a crisis appeared she would win a competition usually at a most auspicious moment, e.g when the bank is about to foreclose on a loan. The children were encouraged to help, too. Through the book you witness the ups and downs of family life, the support and care given to the children. It may seem slights chaotic but in the end everyone does their best including the drunkard husband.
Denise says that this book is so rich in detail, warmth and family love and is a great read. It was made into a film in 2005 Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson, and Laura Dern.
Di: read My Cousin Rachel (1951) by Daphne du Maurier. Di read this on a recent trip to Cornwall. It is described as ‘Gothic’ novel and has thematic similarities to her earlier and more famous novel Rebecca. It is a mystery-romance set primarily on a large estate in Cornwall and was inspired by a portrait of Rachel Carew at Antony House in Cornwall which du Maurier had seen. Ambrose Ashley is the owner of a large country estate on the Cornish coast. He is also the guardian to Philip, his cousin. Health problems drive him to set off to spend his third winter abroad and he chooses Italy. While there he meets a cousin, Rachel - the widowed Contessa Sangalletti - in Florence. They marry but things do not go well and Ambrose’s health deteriorates. He cannot trust anyone and when he becomes ill, Philip travels to Italy to learn that Ambrose has died and Rachel has left the villa. He learns that he is still heir to the Cornish estate. Later Rachel arrives in England and goes to stay with Philip. The latter learns that Ambrose suspected that Rachel and the Doctor were trying to poison him. Eventually though Philip makes the estate over to Rachel and gives her the family jewels, believing this is what Ambrose wanted, he finally announces that they are to be married although she denies this. Philip then falls ill for many weeks and suspects Rachel is poisoning him with laburnum seeds, something he had noticed in her home in Italy. However, he finds nothing incriminating and thinks he has misjudged her. Rachel then falls from an unsafe bridge in the newly created terraced garden. Philip finds her and takes her in his arms. Before she dies, she calls him ‘Ambrose’.
Although Di considers Du Maurier an interesting author who successfully evokes the county of Cornwall, she feels this book is not as good as Rebecca, but felt it was a good way of passing fourteen hours of train journey to and from Penzance! The book has been adapted for film, tv, stage and radio, the first film adaptation coming out in 1952 and starring Richard Burton and Olivia De Havilland Du Maurier called it ‘quite desperate!’.
Sue read: Super-Infinite (1922) by Katherine Rundle. This is a new biography of John Donne, the sixteenth-century metaphysical poet. Donne, who ended his life as Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, is best known as a writer but is so much more. Rundle described her book as “both a biography of Donne and an act of evangelism”. For her, Donne is writing into being a new ideal: a “complete meshing of body and imagination” He was something like a showman and his life was a roller coaster. Donne moved between success and penury, with a stint in law, an unsuccessful foray as an adventurer in Spain, and a period at court that ended when he secretly married Anne More and was thrown in prison by her father. Initially a Catholic, he eventually renounced Catholicism. Sue was very intrigued by the odd mixture of roles he played, for example, he was witty and fashionable and very aware of the message you give by how you present yourself in public. If he were alive today he would undoubtedly be an online ‘influencer’. Despite the misogyny of his prose, he was also the writer of erotic poetry – believing, as Rundell puts it, that you can find “eternity through the human body of one other person”. He was a man of passion. Sue was very intrigued by this odd mixture and feels that Rundle’s book makes for very readable non-fiction which she would definitely recommend.
Notes FROM THE BOOKLOVERS’ MEETING dated 23rd April 2024
Present: Denise, Sue M, Di, Christine
Sue read: Stanley And Elsie (2019) by Nicola Upson. This is the story of the unconventional domestic life of the artist Stanley Spencer. The book is mainly told, but not entirely, from the point of view of Elsie Munday, who was the Spencers’ maid / housekeeper. (There is a portrait of her in Brighton Museum.) The main section of the book is based in Sandham where Spence was working on his mural commemorating the death of his patron’s son in the First World War. At this time the Spencers’ marriage was strained, adversarial and distant. He falls in love with another artist, Patricia Preece, who is already in a relationship with Dorothy Hepworth, also and artist. Spencer marries Patricia but there is no happiness within the marriage and he ends up living alone. Through Elsie’s eyes the reader gets an impression of the charismatic effect Spencer has on those around him. There are some fascinating descriptions of the paintings at Sandham Chapel and good insights into his creative process. Sue enjoyed the book with its revelations about art and artists.
Christine read: The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories (2019) Introduction by Murakami Haruki. Following just seen a Japanese film called ‘Blind Willow’ which was the animation of various short stories by Murakami Haruki about people in Japan navigating post-Tsunami life, she was keen to read more stories from that country. The book contains thirty-four stories ranging in date from 1898 to 2014 and these are organised by the following themes: Japan and the West; Loyal Warriors; Men and Women; Nature and Memory; Modern Life and Other Nonsense, Dread, and Disasters. Murakami had been unaware of the range of this genre and felt he had ignored his own culture. However, in his introduction he describes himself as having become, through reading them, more aware of its richness. Christine was struck by the very significant cultural differences displayed. She was struck by the fact that many of the stories have as a background natural disasters, e.g. earthquakes, Tsunamis and, of course, the man-made disaster of Hiroshima and the recent meltdown of the nuclear power station at Fukushima following an earthquake. Many of the stories are fantastical and Christine felt she learnt a lot through reading them. She only had time to read fifteen of the thirty-four
Denise read: A Possible Life (2011) by Sebastian Faulks. This volume is a quintet of stories that zigzag in place and time from Vichy France to the Hippy era in California, from a Victorian workhouse, a downtrodden servant in the Massif Central in the nineteenth century to a futuristic setting of 2069. She particularly enjoyed the first story which tells of one Englishman’s war and its impact on his life. Denise felt drawn in from the first page and appreciated Faulks’ descriptive writing. All the stories are about possible lives and she felt that this book represents storytelling at its best.
the Pulitzer Prize in 2023
Di read: Trust by Hernan Diaz (2022). It is set predominantly in NYC and focuses on the world of finance. The novel takes a look at a secretive financier and his wife. It consists of fictional texts: a novel - ‘Bonds’, ‘My Life’ - an incomplete autobiography; a complete memoir - ‘A Memoir, Remembered’, and a diary - ‘Futures’ with each book focusing on the same characters. It is up to the reader of these texts, which are mutually exclusive, to determine where the truth lies. The novel received mainly rave revues and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2023 which Diaz shared with Barbara Kingsolver and her book ‘Demon Copperfield.’ It was also longlisted for the Booker Prize. Although Di enjoyed the intricacy of the novel and its plain prose, she was ultimately disappointed, not deeming it worthy of the rave reviews displayed on the front and back covers!
Present: Denise, Sue M, Di, Christine
Sue read: Stanley And Elsie (2019) by Nicola Upson. This is the story of the unconventional domestic life of the artist Stanley Spencer. The book is mainly told, but not entirely, from the point of view of Elsie Munday, who was the Spencers’ maid / housekeeper. (There is a portrait of her in Brighton Museum.) The main section of the book is based in Sandham where Spence was working on his mural commemorating the death of his patron’s son in the First World War. At this time the Spencers’ marriage was strained, adversarial and distant. He falls in love with another artist, Patricia Preece, who is already in a relationship with Dorothy Hepworth, also and artist. Spencer marries Patricia but there is no happiness within the marriage and he ends up living alone. Through Elsie’s eyes the reader gets an impression of the charismatic effect Spencer has on those around him. There are some fascinating descriptions of the paintings at Sandham Chapel and good insights into his creative process. Sue enjoyed the book with its revelations about art and artists.
Christine read: The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories (2019) Introduction by Murakami Haruki. Following just seen a Japanese film called ‘Blind Willow’ which was the animation of various short stories by Murakami Haruki about people in Japan navigating post-Tsunami life, she was keen to read more stories from that country. The book contains thirty-four stories ranging in date from 1898 to 2014 and these are organised by the following themes: Japan and the West; Loyal Warriors; Men and Women; Nature and Memory; Modern Life and Other Nonsense, Dread, and Disasters. Murakami had been unaware of the range of this genre and felt he had ignored his own culture. However, in his introduction he describes himself as having become, through reading them, more aware of its richness. Christine was struck by the very significant cultural differences displayed. She was struck by the fact that many of the stories have as a background natural disasters, e.g. earthquakes, Tsunamis and, of course, the man-made disaster of Hiroshima and the recent meltdown of the nuclear power station at Fukushima following an earthquake. Many of the stories are fantastical and Christine felt she learnt a lot through reading them. She only had time to read fifteen of the thirty-four
Denise read: A Possible Life (2011) by Sebastian Faulks. This volume is a quintet of stories that zigzag in place and time from Vichy France to the Hippy era in California, from a Victorian workhouse, a downtrodden servant in the Massif Central in the nineteenth century to a futuristic setting of 2069. She particularly enjoyed the first story which tells of one Englishman’s war and its impact on his life. Denise felt drawn in from the first page and appreciated Faulks’ descriptive writing. All the stories are about possible lives and she felt that this book represents storytelling at its best.
the Pulitzer Prize in 2023
Di read: Trust by Hernan Diaz (2022). It is set predominantly in NYC and focuses on the world of finance. The novel takes a look at a secretive financier and his wife. It consists of fictional texts: a novel - ‘Bonds’, ‘My Life’ - an incomplete autobiography; a complete memoir - ‘A Memoir, Remembered’, and a diary - ‘Futures’ with each book focusing on the same characters. It is up to the reader of these texts, which are mutually exclusive, to determine where the truth lies. The novel received mainly rave revues and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2023 which Diaz shared with Barbara Kingsolver and her book ‘Demon Copperfield.’ It was also longlisted for the Booker Prize. Although Di enjoyed the intricacy of the novel and its plain prose, she was ultimately disappointed, not deeming it worthy of the rave reviews displayed on the front and back covers!
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS MEETING 9th January 2024
Sue read: The Years by Annie Ernaux (2008/ 2017): Winning the Nobel Prize for Literature 2022 has brought Ernaux to the attention of English language readers though this book was only translated in 2017. The citation on the Prize was that it was “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory". Sue enjoyed the book very much though found at times that, rooted as it was in her life from birth (1940) to 2007 in France there were many references that are probably only accessible to someone living in France at that time. She felt that the most interesting feature of the book is probably its form: no chapters, no headings, but a series of reflections, memories, descriptions of photos and events, philosophical musings, loosely held together by the process of the author’s life as she grows through childhood and adolescence into adulthood. She wanted to demonstrate that it is possible to write both personally and collectively and the book is written mostly in the first person plural ‘we’. Sue felt Ernaux had succeeded in her aim and that her story is a remarkable record of a whole generation, told through the lens of one person’s experiences who becomes a kind of universal ‘everywoman.’
Christine read: Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder at The Old Bailey (1923) by Her Honour Wendy Joseph KC and found it a gripping read which both informs, instructs and entertains. The author was appointed a Judge in 2007 and when she moved to the Old Bailey in 2013 she was the only woman among sixteen Judges. Through six case studies she examines the processes involved in trying people for murder – the legalities, the people involved, the shortcomings of our system. As the Judge responsibility for overseeing Diversity and Community she makes clear the worrying state our current system, the erosion of trust, and what needs to be done to improve it. She read English and Law at Cambridge and writes extremely well using humour and erudition. She also writes with great compassion and is only too aware that the criminals she has encountered are very much a reflection of our present society. She also makes it clear that as citizens we have a duty to be invested in the processes of the law and to understand what is involved – many of us will at some point in our lives be called to serve on a jury. We have shaped the current system. The case studies, although these are fictionalised, are based on real events and real people and Her Honour’s skill at telling their stories is most compelling. Christine said she could not put the book down and, at the end, felt better educated.
Denise read: The Premonition (2021) by Michael Lewis. This book tackles the US handling of Covid and the ‘superhero’ scientists who tried to save the day. They (dedicated, resourceful and conscientious people who understood how drastically underprepared America was for a viral pandemic) attempted to get the US government to take their response to it seriously. However, they were up against the fragmented dysfunction of the federal government and the possible indifference of the Trump White house. The author’s approach to the book was to find a small number of unheralded individuals working within vast systems and use them to portray the workings (or non-workings) of those systems. Up against institutional malaise, Lewis’s underlying argument is hardly compatible with the conservative ‘big government doesn’t work’ view which blames centralisation as the root of all societal evil. He portrays a system that is incredibly vast and insufficiently centralised. As well as the Trump administration’s drastic mishandling of the crisis, Lewis is more interested in the political conditions that existed before the pandemic though he diagnoses Trump as a ‘co-morbidity’ (the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases or medical conditions in a patient. A lot of the book is spent establishing his characters’ backstories and he gets to the actual pandemic itself late in the book. His message comes across very powerfully: the US government, in its institutional dysfunction, is in danger of abandoning its citizens to a private sector that is even less equipped to deal with large-scale disasters such as Covid. The book ends on a profoundly depressing note with one of the key players, Charity Dean, a deputy director of California’s Department of Public Health leaving the civil service to found a healthcare startup. Denise found the book impressive both in the story told and the way that is done, but also depressing.
Sue read: The Years by Annie Ernaux (2008/ 2017): Winning the Nobel Prize for Literature 2022 has brought Ernaux to the attention of English language readers though this book was only translated in 2017. The citation on the Prize was that it was “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory". Sue enjoyed the book very much though found at times that, rooted as it was in her life from birth (1940) to 2007 in France there were many references that are probably only accessible to someone living in France at that time. She felt that the most interesting feature of the book is probably its form: no chapters, no headings, but a series of reflections, memories, descriptions of photos and events, philosophical musings, loosely held together by the process of the author’s life as she grows through childhood and adolescence into adulthood. She wanted to demonstrate that it is possible to write both personally and collectively and the book is written mostly in the first person plural ‘we’. Sue felt Ernaux had succeeded in her aim and that her story is a remarkable record of a whole generation, told through the lens of one person’s experiences who becomes a kind of universal ‘everywoman.’
Christine read: Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder at The Old Bailey (1923) by Her Honour Wendy Joseph KC and found it a gripping read which both informs, instructs and entertains. The author was appointed a Judge in 2007 and when she moved to the Old Bailey in 2013 she was the only woman among sixteen Judges. Through six case studies she examines the processes involved in trying people for murder – the legalities, the people involved, the shortcomings of our system. As the Judge responsibility for overseeing Diversity and Community she makes clear the worrying state our current system, the erosion of trust, and what needs to be done to improve it. She read English and Law at Cambridge and writes extremely well using humour and erudition. She also writes with great compassion and is only too aware that the criminals she has encountered are very much a reflection of our present society. She also makes it clear that as citizens we have a duty to be invested in the processes of the law and to understand what is involved – many of us will at some point in our lives be called to serve on a jury. We have shaped the current system. The case studies, although these are fictionalised, are based on real events and real people and Her Honour’s skill at telling their stories is most compelling. Christine said she could not put the book down and, at the end, felt better educated.
Denise read: The Premonition (2021) by Michael Lewis. This book tackles the US handling of Covid and the ‘superhero’ scientists who tried to save the day. They (dedicated, resourceful and conscientious people who understood how drastically underprepared America was for a viral pandemic) attempted to get the US government to take their response to it seriously. However, they were up against the fragmented dysfunction of the federal government and the possible indifference of the Trump White house. The author’s approach to the book was to find a small number of unheralded individuals working within vast systems and use them to portray the workings (or non-workings) of those systems. Up against institutional malaise, Lewis’s underlying argument is hardly compatible with the conservative ‘big government doesn’t work’ view which blames centralisation as the root of all societal evil. He portrays a system that is incredibly vast and insufficiently centralised. As well as the Trump administration’s drastic mishandling of the crisis, Lewis is more interested in the political conditions that existed before the pandemic though he diagnoses Trump as a ‘co-morbidity’ (the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases or medical conditions in a patient. A lot of the book is spent establishing his characters’ backstories and he gets to the actual pandemic itself late in the book. His message comes across very powerfully: the US government, in its institutional dysfunction, is in danger of abandoning its citizens to a private sector that is even less equipped to deal with large-scale disasters such as Covid. The book ends on a profoundly depressing note with one of the key players, Charity Dean, a deputy director of California’s Department of Public Health leaving the civil service to found a healthcare startup. Denise found the book impressive both in the story told and the way that is done, but also depressing.
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS’ MEETING 21st November 2023
Present: Christine, Denise, Di, Sue
Sue P read: Educated (2018) by Tara Westover. Westover grew up in a Mormon family in an isolated area of America. it is set in the 1980 and tells the story of the author’s struggle through education to turn her back on the family and its ideologies. For example her father believed that the government was out to get them, and that the world would end soon; her mother, a midwife eventually becomes a herbal healer with her own cures for every disease. They didn’t believe in hospitals or schools. All health issues were treated with the mother’s own cures. One brother sadistically abuses her. Schooling was restricted to a handful of books. Tara eventually realises that “my life was narrated for me by others Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute” and, having seen another of her brothers escaping the family, she decides to go to college. She goes to Trinity College, Cambridge in the UK and then experiences the clash between the different worlds of home and college and of the two belief systems. She is initially in a state of culture shock but she works hard to join her new world and re-invents herself on her own terms. However, even in college she never completely escapes her home and its beliefs. She turns her back on the physical and mental abuse meted out to her and as she narrates her life stories, she conveys how those events have shaped her and how she has changed, revealing the transformative power of education. Sue felt the book was very well-written and readable.
Sue M read: Lessons in Chemistry (2022) by Bonnie Garmus. This book has had an enormous success since it was published and has now become a television series. Set in America in the 1950/60s, Garmus, herself American but now living in London, had a career as a copy writer. This is her first novel. The protagonist is Elizabeth Zott. She’s a scientist, a chemist, who is subjected to sexual discrimination and work and is then sacked for being pregnant. One of her male colleagues steals her work and publishes it as his own. This actually happened to Garmus and was one of the stimuli to write the novel). Elizabeth is subsequently offered a job hosting a TV cookery show and takes the job because she needs the money having been left with a baby and no job. She uses the show as a forum for encouraging women to react against the stereotypical male/female roles of that time, and to follow their dreams. She aims to introduce the audience and the reader to the basics of chemistry as it affects cookery. The book is also a story about love (her partner is her total soulmate), grief (he dies tragically young), feminism (she gets her revenge for the sexism she has experienced), friendship, parenting – and the resilience of the human spirit. It also features a wonderful dog called 6.30 with an extensive vocabulary. Sue found it to be heart-warming, uplifting and very funny.
Christine read: Tyll (2017) by Daniel Kehlmann. Kehlmann is a renowned contemporary German author whose books are bestsellers. This one was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020. The central character, Tyll Uelenspiegel is based on the jester character from medieval German folklore. It is an historical novel set during the Thirty Years’ War from 1618 – 1648. Tyll is a historical witness to the war and with each chapter almost acting as a short story or novella, we see him in various circumstances and with various social groups which included famous people such as Elizabeth Stuart daughter of King James 1 &6th who is by marriage the Queen of Bohemia. He finds himself in a range of challenging circumstances which he always manages to flee from carrying on with his role as an entertainer – a tight rope walker and conjuror. The war is a grim reminder of present times and hunger is forever present even for those characters born in comfortable circumstances. It’s a linguistically fascinating book, profound one minute, witty the next and with many historical insights. There is evidence of much meticulous research and has been described as ‘more than a novel because it has chosen wit and reason as well as art and knowledge as its allies.’ Christine thoroughly enjoyed it and was left wanting to read more by this author.
Di read: Old Filth (2004) by Jane Gardam. This is the first book in a trilogy which has had great popularity. It tells the tale of ‘Old Filth’ aka Sir Edward Feathers, a retired judge and widower, using time slips to cover the period from his birth through his experience as a Raj orphan - one of the many young children sent 'Home' from the East to be fostered and educated in England, to the extremities of his old age. FILTH is an acronym for ‘Failed in London Try Hong Kong’. The story reveals the wounds of a difficult and emotionally hollow childhood but also encapsulates a whole period from the glory days of British Empire, through the Second World War, to the present and beyond. As a young man he was attractive and dynamic but as we meet him, he finds it hard to navigate the world at the back end of his life and can come across as an annoying character. Many reviewers considered this book to be a literary masterpiece. e.g. The Guardian reviewer wrote “This is the rare novel that drives its reader forward while persistently waylaying and detaining by the sheer beauty and inventiveness of its style.” Di found this to be a fascinating and moving character study and extremely well written.
Denise read: Going Infinite (2023) by Michael Lewis. Lewis was there when it happened, i.e. the cryptocurrency Bitcoin frenzy led by Sam Bankman-Fried, a fraudster who founded the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Before he’d turned thirty, he’d become the world’s youngest billionaire who at one point considered paying off the entire national debt of the Bahamas so he could take his business there. Bankman-Fried never liked rules and was allowed to live by his own. Lewis describes him as "an easily distractible, game-obsessed, brilliant, slovenly, cargo-shorts-clad eccentric whose most singular talent was his skill at calculating probabilities in a condition of constantly changing rules." Lewis followed him through the wild financial roller-coaster ride which finally fell apart leaving a tale of hubris and downfall. Reviewers suggest that Lewis is overly sympathetic towards his subject, something he refutes. Lewis said he believes that Bankman-Fried never lied to him, or at least "that he'd only lied by omission, not commission." It appears he started the book writing about an unsung hero, but by the end that hero becomes a villain. Di is fascinated by these intensely clever people who can create such gigantic fortunes and then lose them. She considers that Lewis is very good at second guessing what people are going to do, and very much enjoyed the book.
Present: Christine, Denise, Di, Sue
Sue P read: Educated (2018) by Tara Westover. Westover grew up in a Mormon family in an isolated area of America. it is set in the 1980 and tells the story of the author’s struggle through education to turn her back on the family and its ideologies. For example her father believed that the government was out to get them, and that the world would end soon; her mother, a midwife eventually becomes a herbal healer with her own cures for every disease. They didn’t believe in hospitals or schools. All health issues were treated with the mother’s own cures. One brother sadistically abuses her. Schooling was restricted to a handful of books. Tara eventually realises that “my life was narrated for me by others Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute” and, having seen another of her brothers escaping the family, she decides to go to college. She goes to Trinity College, Cambridge in the UK and then experiences the clash between the different worlds of home and college and of the two belief systems. She is initially in a state of culture shock but she works hard to join her new world and re-invents herself on her own terms. However, even in college she never completely escapes her home and its beliefs. She turns her back on the physical and mental abuse meted out to her and as she narrates her life stories, she conveys how those events have shaped her and how she has changed, revealing the transformative power of education. Sue felt the book was very well-written and readable.
Sue M read: Lessons in Chemistry (2022) by Bonnie Garmus. This book has had an enormous success since it was published and has now become a television series. Set in America in the 1950/60s, Garmus, herself American but now living in London, had a career as a copy writer. This is her first novel. The protagonist is Elizabeth Zott. She’s a scientist, a chemist, who is subjected to sexual discrimination and work and is then sacked for being pregnant. One of her male colleagues steals her work and publishes it as his own. This actually happened to Garmus and was one of the stimuli to write the novel). Elizabeth is subsequently offered a job hosting a TV cookery show and takes the job because she needs the money having been left with a baby and no job. She uses the show as a forum for encouraging women to react against the stereotypical male/female roles of that time, and to follow their dreams. She aims to introduce the audience and the reader to the basics of chemistry as it affects cookery. The book is also a story about love (her partner is her total soulmate), grief (he dies tragically young), feminism (she gets her revenge for the sexism she has experienced), friendship, parenting – and the resilience of the human spirit. It also features a wonderful dog called 6.30 with an extensive vocabulary. Sue found it to be heart-warming, uplifting and very funny.
Christine read: Tyll (2017) by Daniel Kehlmann. Kehlmann is a renowned contemporary German author whose books are bestsellers. This one was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020. The central character, Tyll Uelenspiegel is based on the jester character from medieval German folklore. It is an historical novel set during the Thirty Years’ War from 1618 – 1648. Tyll is a historical witness to the war and with each chapter almost acting as a short story or novella, we see him in various circumstances and with various social groups which included famous people such as Elizabeth Stuart daughter of King James 1 &6th who is by marriage the Queen of Bohemia. He finds himself in a range of challenging circumstances which he always manages to flee from carrying on with his role as an entertainer – a tight rope walker and conjuror. The war is a grim reminder of present times and hunger is forever present even for those characters born in comfortable circumstances. It’s a linguistically fascinating book, profound one minute, witty the next and with many historical insights. There is evidence of much meticulous research and has been described as ‘more than a novel because it has chosen wit and reason as well as art and knowledge as its allies.’ Christine thoroughly enjoyed it and was left wanting to read more by this author.
Di read: Old Filth (2004) by Jane Gardam. This is the first book in a trilogy which has had great popularity. It tells the tale of ‘Old Filth’ aka Sir Edward Feathers, a retired judge and widower, using time slips to cover the period from his birth through his experience as a Raj orphan - one of the many young children sent 'Home' from the East to be fostered and educated in England, to the extremities of his old age. FILTH is an acronym for ‘Failed in London Try Hong Kong’. The story reveals the wounds of a difficult and emotionally hollow childhood but also encapsulates a whole period from the glory days of British Empire, through the Second World War, to the present and beyond. As a young man he was attractive and dynamic but as we meet him, he finds it hard to navigate the world at the back end of his life and can come across as an annoying character. Many reviewers considered this book to be a literary masterpiece. e.g. The Guardian reviewer wrote “This is the rare novel that drives its reader forward while persistently waylaying and detaining by the sheer beauty and inventiveness of its style.” Di found this to be a fascinating and moving character study and extremely well written.
Denise read: Going Infinite (2023) by Michael Lewis. Lewis was there when it happened, i.e. the cryptocurrency Bitcoin frenzy led by Sam Bankman-Fried, a fraudster who founded the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Before he’d turned thirty, he’d become the world’s youngest billionaire who at one point considered paying off the entire national debt of the Bahamas so he could take his business there. Bankman-Fried never liked rules and was allowed to live by his own. Lewis describes him as "an easily distractible, game-obsessed, brilliant, slovenly, cargo-shorts-clad eccentric whose most singular talent was his skill at calculating probabilities in a condition of constantly changing rules." Lewis followed him through the wild financial roller-coaster ride which finally fell apart leaving a tale of hubris and downfall. Reviewers suggest that Lewis is overly sympathetic towards his subject, something he refutes. Lewis said he believes that Bankman-Fried never lied to him, or at least "that he'd only lied by omission, not commission." It appears he started the book writing about an unsung hero, but by the end that hero becomes a villain. Di is fascinated by these intensely clever people who can create such gigantic fortunes and then lose them. She considers that Lewis is very good at second guessing what people are going to do, and very much enjoyed the book.
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS’ MEETING 17TH OCTOBER 2023
Present: Christine, Denise, Di, Sue
Christine read: L’Autre Fille (The Other Daughter, 2011, 23) by Annie Ernaux. This novella by the Nobel Prize winning French author, Annie Ernaux, explores the author’s discovery through overhearing her mother talking to a neighbour, that she had in fact had an elder sister. Ginette, who died at the age of six from diphtheria. Ernaux knew nothing about her and this novella is as much about the impact of family secrets on the living especially in the formation of her own identity. Ernaux never asked her parents a single question about her dead sister but gradually pieces together the life of this seeming ‘little saint’ of a girl from other members of the family and in so doing gives an insight into family life in Lillebonne, near Rouen in Normandy in the 1950s. The author is known for her elegant fictional autobiography which usually simultaneously broadens out into the history of France from her birth in the forties to the present day. Christine found the book fascinating in the questions it poses. Mostly, if we have siblings, we might differentiate ourselves from them; but what do you do when that sister is dead and has been hidden from you. The book has not yet been translated into English but with Ernaux’s current fame will surely soon be.
Sue read: Whole Brain Living (2022) by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Sue is a fan of self-help books, believing that you can usually find some element of value in them and she was fascinated by this book which followed on the heels of the author’s TED talk about her experience, when teaching at Harvard School of Medicine of a severe haemorrhagic stroke. Since then, neuroanatomist Bolte Taylor has become an inspirational speaker and further describes that experience in her first book ‘My Stroke of Insight’ and then in this current one. The question she poses is “Do you show up as different versions of yourself depending on the situation?’ Drawing upon up-to-the-minute brain science as well as a wealth of lived experience, Dr Jill shows you how you can tap into the right here, right now of your right hemisphere to relieve stress and gain the inner peace, detach from reactive emotions and move into a place of balance and observation. She presents four distinct modules of brain cells as four characters that make up who we are: Character 1, Left Thinking; Character 2, Left Emotion; Character 3, Right Emotion; and Character 4, Right Thinking. Your brain holds the key to choosing who and how you are in each moment. Sue felt this to be very definitely a ‘helpful’ book.
Di read: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood. Feeling she was a bit ‘late to the party’, Di said she’d finally got round to reading this prize-winning and TV series influencing novel. Although she felt it slow to start with, she summed it up as being a terrific read, written in beautiful prose with very effective short chapters. This futuristic, dystopian novel story is by now well-known through the tv adaptation, telling of a transformed USA set in New England patriarchal, white supremacist totalitarian state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. The main character and narrator, Offred is one of the "Handmaids", women who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "Commanders", who are the ruling class in Gilead.
The novel explores themes of powerless women in a patriarchal society, loss of female agency and individuality, suppression of women's reproductive rights, and the various means by which women resist and try to gain individuality and independence. Offred, who becomes the lover of the Commander’s aide and possibly becomes pregnant by him is eventually led away by the secret police, The Eye. The novel concludes at a point in the future - 2195 - at a conference where the keynote speaker explains that Offred's account of the events of the novel was recorded onto cassette tapes later found and transcribed by historians studying what is then called "the Gilead Period". The book has had renewed significance in the period of Donald Trump’s USA and the alarming curtailment of women’s abortion rights in some states. Di made me want to read this novel again.
Denise read: The Seal Woman’s Gift (2018) by Sally Magnussen. This is a historical novel which Denise very much enjoyed especially the breadth of the story which moves from Iceland to North Africa in the seventeenth century. Magnussen, a writer and broadcaster, gives a fiction account of a true event of the abduction in 1627 from Iceland of 400 people by pirates and taken to Algiers to become slaves. Among them are a pastor, his wife, Asta, and their children. The author imagines what history does not record: her experience, as she faces her losses with the one thing left to her - the stories from home from the Icelandic sagas - and becomes the lover of the man who bought her. The two swap tales and love grows. Eventually Asta goes back to her husband although the two have grown apart.
With its themes of loss, love, resilience and redemption and a particular resonance with our present age with its mass migrations and tragic sea crossings, Denise thought the novel uplifting and moving and very well written. Magnusson, in her first novel, shows a real gift for description.
Present: Christine, Denise, Di, Sue
Christine read: L’Autre Fille (The Other Daughter, 2011, 23) by Annie Ernaux. This novella by the Nobel Prize winning French author, Annie Ernaux, explores the author’s discovery through overhearing her mother talking to a neighbour, that she had in fact had an elder sister. Ginette, who died at the age of six from diphtheria. Ernaux knew nothing about her and this novella is as much about the impact of family secrets on the living especially in the formation of her own identity. Ernaux never asked her parents a single question about her dead sister but gradually pieces together the life of this seeming ‘little saint’ of a girl from other members of the family and in so doing gives an insight into family life in Lillebonne, near Rouen in Normandy in the 1950s. The author is known for her elegant fictional autobiography which usually simultaneously broadens out into the history of France from her birth in the forties to the present day. Christine found the book fascinating in the questions it poses. Mostly, if we have siblings, we might differentiate ourselves from them; but what do you do when that sister is dead and has been hidden from you. The book has not yet been translated into English but with Ernaux’s current fame will surely soon be.
Sue read: Whole Brain Living (2022) by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Sue is a fan of self-help books, believing that you can usually find some element of value in them and she was fascinated by this book which followed on the heels of the author’s TED talk about her experience, when teaching at Harvard School of Medicine of a severe haemorrhagic stroke. Since then, neuroanatomist Bolte Taylor has become an inspirational speaker and further describes that experience in her first book ‘My Stroke of Insight’ and then in this current one. The question she poses is “Do you show up as different versions of yourself depending on the situation?’ Drawing upon up-to-the-minute brain science as well as a wealth of lived experience, Dr Jill shows you how you can tap into the right here, right now of your right hemisphere to relieve stress and gain the inner peace, detach from reactive emotions and move into a place of balance and observation. She presents four distinct modules of brain cells as four characters that make up who we are: Character 1, Left Thinking; Character 2, Left Emotion; Character 3, Right Emotion; and Character 4, Right Thinking. Your brain holds the key to choosing who and how you are in each moment. Sue felt this to be very definitely a ‘helpful’ book.
Di read: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood. Feeling she was a bit ‘late to the party’, Di said she’d finally got round to reading this prize-winning and TV series influencing novel. Although she felt it slow to start with, she summed it up as being a terrific read, written in beautiful prose with very effective short chapters. This futuristic, dystopian novel story is by now well-known through the tv adaptation, telling of a transformed USA set in New England patriarchal, white supremacist totalitarian state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. The main character and narrator, Offred is one of the "Handmaids", women who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "Commanders", who are the ruling class in Gilead.
The novel explores themes of powerless women in a patriarchal society, loss of female agency and individuality, suppression of women's reproductive rights, and the various means by which women resist and try to gain individuality and independence. Offred, who becomes the lover of the Commander’s aide and possibly becomes pregnant by him is eventually led away by the secret police, The Eye. The novel concludes at a point in the future - 2195 - at a conference where the keynote speaker explains that Offred's account of the events of the novel was recorded onto cassette tapes later found and transcribed by historians studying what is then called "the Gilead Period". The book has had renewed significance in the period of Donald Trump’s USA and the alarming curtailment of women’s abortion rights in some states. Di made me want to read this novel again.
Denise read: The Seal Woman’s Gift (2018) by Sally Magnussen. This is a historical novel which Denise very much enjoyed especially the breadth of the story which moves from Iceland to North Africa in the seventeenth century. Magnussen, a writer and broadcaster, gives a fiction account of a true event of the abduction in 1627 from Iceland of 400 people by pirates and taken to Algiers to become slaves. Among them are a pastor, his wife, Asta, and their children. The author imagines what history does not record: her experience, as she faces her losses with the one thing left to her - the stories from home from the Icelandic sagas - and becomes the lover of the man who bought her. The two swap tales and love grows. Eventually Asta goes back to her husband although the two have grown apart.
With its themes of loss, love, resilience and redemption and a particular resonance with our present age with its mass migrations and tragic sea crossings, Denise thought the novel uplifting and moving and very well written. Magnusson, in her first novel, shows a real gift for description.
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS’ MEETING HELD ON 22nd AUGUST 2023
Present: Denise, Christine, Sue M, Di
Christine read: 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World (2019) by Elif Shafak. Christine had slightly mixed feelings about this book by the renowned Turkish/British author and which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. On the one hand it’s a very well told story about the life and afterlife of a sex worker in Istanbul and her group of friends and it is very engaging with its account of those friends. They all come from different migrant backgrounds, different cultures and beliefs and different sexual orientations and disabilities are united in the need to act when Leila is at risk of being buried in the ‘Cemetery for the Companionless’. What Christine felt worked less well was the premise of the story underpinning its first five or so chapters. This is that Leila, dead and lying in a rubbish bin in Istanbul, can recall and reflect on her life during the 10 minutes 38 seconds that her brain is still functioning while her body is dead. However, the recall of her early childhood, her experience of sexual abuse by her uncle, and her subsequent escape to Istanbul where she works in the Street of Brothels is powerful. It gives an insight into life in Van in Eastern Turkey which is so different from that in the capital. Likewise she felt the ending was not totally successful with its move into magic realism. However, the book has been described by one reviewer as a ‘love letter to Istanbul’ and Christine thought that the way Shafak captures so many of the conflicting aspects of this city is excellent. The smells, the tastes, the sights, the sounds, the different politics and religions, its history and the traces left by it, etc. – she felt that if you’d ever visited this amazing city you will appreciate how she handles this.
Di read: Lying Under the Apple Tree (2014) by Alice Monro. Di was captivated by this collection of short stories by the Canadian author and Nobel prize-winner. Monro is has been described as ‘revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time. Her stories have been said to "embed more than announce, reveal more than parade.’ (Wikipedia). Di is a great fan and loves the poetic language used. Three of the stories in the collection are linked together but every story is really different. They are mainly set in the fifties and sixties and usually with small town settings often in Huron County, Ontario. Her work has often been compared with great short-story writers such as Chekhov, and as with his work, plot is secondary and "little happens" but everything rests on a sudden moment of enlightenment. Munro's work deals with love and work, and “the failings of both our much-lamented inability to delay or prevent its relentless movement forward" (Wikipedia). Di would certainly recommend the work of this much lauded writer as a model for anyone wanting to improve their own story writing. Almost 20 of Munro's works have been made available for free on the web, in most cases only the first version though she is known for her numerous variants of many of her stories.
Denise read: A Rose for Winter (1955) by Laurie Lee. This travel memoir follows the author and his wife in post-war Spain fifteen years after his last visit. He fell in love with Andalusia and now finds a country bowed but not broken, where the heavy gloom of the recent past is still shot through with the brightness tradition for example, the flamenco, the pomp and circumstance of the bullfight, the eternal glory of Christ and church, and life in the cities of Madrid and Seville. Denise appreciated the poetic nature of Lee’s writing and admires his ability to take you with him and his wife on the journey around Spain until the money runs out. From his previous experiences in the country Lee speaks Spanish and so is able to fully appreciate the people and the culture. There are plenty of events in the book which keep you reading and learning, including the terrible fever he develops leading to hallucinations, as well as the impact his wife has on the local people, enchanting them all. Denise feels that if you have enjoyed other books by Lee then this beautiful book will enchant you too.
Sue M read: Best of Friends (2022) by Kamila Shamsie. Sue read this because she had enjoyed her previous novel Home Fire which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018. The author was born and grew up in Karachi and now lives in London and Sue believes that it’s possible to assume that a large part of this novel is autobiographical or at least drawn from Kamsie’s own experiences. The book is divided into two parts: Karachi in 1988 and London in 2019 and in the first part describes the adolescence of two girls growing up in Pakistan – Maryam and Zahra. They are both from well-off backgrounds though Maryam’s family are extremely rich and her future in the family leather business assured, whereas Zahra is very intelligent and academic and plans to go to university in the UK. They are best friends and this part of the book is very powerful as they negotiate this phase of life. There is a pivotal event that occurs to them which has dramatic consequences for both girls which are only played out years later. In the second part (which Sue feels is less successful) they are both in London. Tensions arise between the two women due to their opposing views and the bond between them begins to weaken. The background of the book is the dawning of democracy in Parkistan with the election of Benazir Bhutto’s election and in the second half, the fall-out from Brexit. Shamsie uses the social and political landscape as a kind of metaphor – a way of highlighting the issues between the characters which result in a showdown exposing the underlying fault lines of their relationship.
Present: Denise, Christine, Sue M, Di
Christine read: 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World (2019) by Elif Shafak. Christine had slightly mixed feelings about this book by the renowned Turkish/British author and which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. On the one hand it’s a very well told story about the life and afterlife of a sex worker in Istanbul and her group of friends and it is very engaging with its account of those friends. They all come from different migrant backgrounds, different cultures and beliefs and different sexual orientations and disabilities are united in the need to act when Leila is at risk of being buried in the ‘Cemetery for the Companionless’. What Christine felt worked less well was the premise of the story underpinning its first five or so chapters. This is that Leila, dead and lying in a rubbish bin in Istanbul, can recall and reflect on her life during the 10 minutes 38 seconds that her brain is still functioning while her body is dead. However, the recall of her early childhood, her experience of sexual abuse by her uncle, and her subsequent escape to Istanbul where she works in the Street of Brothels is powerful. It gives an insight into life in Van in Eastern Turkey which is so different from that in the capital. Likewise she felt the ending was not totally successful with its move into magic realism. However, the book has been described by one reviewer as a ‘love letter to Istanbul’ and Christine thought that the way Shafak captures so many of the conflicting aspects of this city is excellent. The smells, the tastes, the sights, the sounds, the different politics and religions, its history and the traces left by it, etc. – she felt that if you’d ever visited this amazing city you will appreciate how she handles this.
Di read: Lying Under the Apple Tree (2014) by Alice Monro. Di was captivated by this collection of short stories by the Canadian author and Nobel prize-winner. Monro is has been described as ‘revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time. Her stories have been said to "embed more than announce, reveal more than parade.’ (Wikipedia). Di is a great fan and loves the poetic language used. Three of the stories in the collection are linked together but every story is really different. They are mainly set in the fifties and sixties and usually with small town settings often in Huron County, Ontario. Her work has often been compared with great short-story writers such as Chekhov, and as with his work, plot is secondary and "little happens" but everything rests on a sudden moment of enlightenment. Munro's work deals with love and work, and “the failings of both our much-lamented inability to delay or prevent its relentless movement forward" (Wikipedia). Di would certainly recommend the work of this much lauded writer as a model for anyone wanting to improve their own story writing. Almost 20 of Munro's works have been made available for free on the web, in most cases only the first version though she is known for her numerous variants of many of her stories.
Denise read: A Rose for Winter (1955) by Laurie Lee. This travel memoir follows the author and his wife in post-war Spain fifteen years after his last visit. He fell in love with Andalusia and now finds a country bowed but not broken, where the heavy gloom of the recent past is still shot through with the brightness tradition for example, the flamenco, the pomp and circumstance of the bullfight, the eternal glory of Christ and church, and life in the cities of Madrid and Seville. Denise appreciated the poetic nature of Lee’s writing and admires his ability to take you with him and his wife on the journey around Spain until the money runs out. From his previous experiences in the country Lee speaks Spanish and so is able to fully appreciate the people and the culture. There are plenty of events in the book which keep you reading and learning, including the terrible fever he develops leading to hallucinations, as well as the impact his wife has on the local people, enchanting them all. Denise feels that if you have enjoyed other books by Lee then this beautiful book will enchant you too.
Sue M read: Best of Friends (2022) by Kamila Shamsie. Sue read this because she had enjoyed her previous novel Home Fire which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018. The author was born and grew up in Karachi and now lives in London and Sue believes that it’s possible to assume that a large part of this novel is autobiographical or at least drawn from Kamsie’s own experiences. The book is divided into two parts: Karachi in 1988 and London in 2019 and in the first part describes the adolescence of two girls growing up in Pakistan – Maryam and Zahra. They are both from well-off backgrounds though Maryam’s family are extremely rich and her future in the family leather business assured, whereas Zahra is very intelligent and academic and plans to go to university in the UK. They are best friends and this part of the book is very powerful as they negotiate this phase of life. There is a pivotal event that occurs to them which has dramatic consequences for both girls which are only played out years later. In the second part (which Sue feels is less successful) they are both in London. Tensions arise between the two women due to their opposing views and the bond between them begins to weaken. The background of the book is the dawning of democracy in Parkistan with the election of Benazir Bhutto’s election and in the second half, the fall-out from Brexit. Shamsie uses the social and political landscape as a kind of metaphor – a way of highlighting the issues between the characters which result in a showdown exposing the underlying fault lines of their relationship.
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS’ MEETING HELD ON 13TH JUNE 2023
Present: Christine, Denise, Di, Sue M, Sue P
Christine read: La Famiglia Grande (2021) by Camille Kouchner. This memoir (translated by Adriana Hunter) by a leading French lawyer focuses on a twenty-year-old family secret which, when revealed on the book’s publication, created a major scandal with unprecedented political fallout reaching to the very top of French politics. Born into a high profile, socially liberal family, Kouchner reveals that her step-father, Olivier Duhamel, then President of the National Foundation of Political Science (FNSP), and a leading political commentator on radio and television, had sexually abused her twin brother who was under age. Consequently Duhamel, then 70, resigned all his positions and withdrew from public life. President Emmanuel Macron pressed for legislative change regarding consent. The French media were prompt to judge this hedonist generation of left-wing intellectuals for whom personal freedom seemed to outrank morality – and the wellbeing of children. The book certainly makes clear the perils of a boundary-less upbringing Another theme which runs through the book is of the numerous suicides in Kouchner’s family and the impact of this family history on the children. Christine found this to be a searing and honest account of parental abuse.
Sue P read: Still Life by Sarah Winman, a book which she described as a ‘fairy tale’ in somewhat stark contrast to the previous book. Ulysses Temper is the modest, searching, protagonist whom we first meet as a young soldier in Italy in 1944. Almost immediately he crosses paths with Evelyn Skinner, a 64-year-old lover of life and an enthusiastic art historian. She imparts life-changing wisdom about love and art and the city of Florence. Their paths diverge, and he takes her words with him back to London, where he resumes working at a pub. Soon enough, Ulysses and his makeshift family — his ex-wife’s young daughter, Alys; his friend Cress; and a talking parrot named Claude — move to Italy, where Ulysses has inherited a large apartment that they convert into a thriving pensione. The book spans four decades (and 450 pages). Much of the story takes place in Florence and one historic moment covered in it is the 1966 flooding of the Arno, during which millions of books and works of art were destroyed, and countless livelihoods were obliterated — each, the author reminds us, meaningless without the other. Evelyn says “Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgment”. This is a theme that runs through the novel. Sue found it a delightful and optimistic read and felt it had echoes of Forster’s work, Room With A View”.
Denise read: Attention All Shipping: A Journey Round the Shipping Forecast (2005) by Charlie Connelly. Denise was captivated by this book which was inspired as we have all been by the solemn, rhythmic intonation of the shipping forecast on BBC radio. Since its first broadcast in the 1920s it has generated poems, songs and novels in addition to its intended objective of warning generations of seafarers of impending storms and gales. However, few people give much thought to where they are or what they contain. Charlie Connelly wittily explores the places behind the voice, those mysterious regions whose names seem often to bear no relation to conventional geography. As he travels around he introduces us to the people who live in these areas, their lives and livelihoods. Denise found this ‘metropolitain’ author’s gentle account both fascinating and pleasing. The book was serialised on Radio 4 in 2015 but is sadly no longer available.Sue M read Black Dogs (1992) by Ian McEwan. The book moves between 1946 and the 1980s. It is a story of evil, betrayal and corruption and explores the personal consequences of political ideas through a singular event which destroys a marriage which doesn’t survive the honeymoon although the relationship does. Jeremy the son-in-law of Bernard and June Tremaine, undertakes to write June's memoir, only to be led back again and again to a terrifying encounter of forty years earlier. Jeremy is left to sort out the conflict between reason and faith embodied by Bernard and June. He ultimately decides that dealing in absolutes (in this case extreme political ideologies) not only led to the couple’s separation but is ultimately an untenable way to live. This novel divided the critics although the author stated that it was his favourite.
Sue felt that it isn’t one of McEwan’s best novels (he has published sixteen) but she found the suspense very gripping and his descriptions, notably the one of June’s encounter with two black dogs on a mountain path, totally engrossing. She says that he has the ability to describe a single event in graphic detail in a way that transports the reader into the scene.
Di read Revolutionary Road (1961) by Richard Yates . The book was Yates’s first novel, though he had worked as a journalist and ghostwriter, writing some of John F. Kennedy’s speeches. Yates described the underlying theme of the novel as an indictment of American society in the 1950s, when there was a strong urge for conformity and desperation for safety and security at any price. It tells of suburban life on the East Coast and the disappointments of a married couple. They have children but these do not really figure in the story. Instead it is an account of the growing sense of entrapment of April who had attempted to become an actress while Frank, her husband, starts an affair with a work colleague. Following a major argument, April suggests that they move to Europe and Frank is initially enthusiastic about the idea. However, he is enticed by his employer’s offer of a bright future and the plan becomes unlikely, all the more so when April conceives their third child. The couple argue over the possibility of aborting the pregnancy and Frank tries to manipulate April into seeking psychiatric help. Eventually she tries to self-abort her pregnancy with fatal consequences. Frank is left a hollow shell of a man with his children largely being brought up by his brother and sister-in-law thus mirroring April’s own childhood.
In 1999 Yates said "If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy." Di found the novel excellent but tragic and it reminded her of Malcolm Bradbury’s 1975 novel The History Man which reveals a marriage in crisis and also demonstrates the fragility of the human heart.
Christine read: La Famiglia Grande (2021) by Camille Kouchner. This memoir (translated by Adriana Hunter) by a leading French lawyer focuses on a twenty-year-old family secret which, when revealed on the book’s publication, created a major scandal with unprecedented political fallout reaching to the very top of French politics. Born into a high profile, socially liberal family, Kouchner reveals that her step-father, Olivier Duhamel, then President of the National Foundation of Political Science (FNSP), and a leading political commentator on radio and television, had sexually abused her twin brother who was under age. Consequently Duhamel, then 70, resigned all his positions and withdrew from public life. President Emmanuel Macron pressed for legislative change regarding consent. The French media were prompt to judge this hedonist generation of left-wing intellectuals for whom personal freedom seemed to outrank morality – and the wellbeing of children. The book certainly makes clear the perils of a boundary-less upbringing Another theme which runs through the book is of the numerous suicides in Kouchner’s family and the impact of this family history on the children. Christine found this to be a searing and honest account of parental abuse.
Sue P read: Still Life by Sarah Winman, a book which she described as a ‘fairy tale’ in somewhat stark contrast to the previous book. Ulysses Temper is the modest, searching, protagonist whom we first meet as a young soldier in Italy in 1944. Almost immediately he crosses paths with Evelyn Skinner, a 64-year-old lover of life and an enthusiastic art historian. She imparts life-changing wisdom about love and art and the city of Florence. Their paths diverge, and he takes her words with him back to London, where he resumes working at a pub. Soon enough, Ulysses and his makeshift family — his ex-wife’s young daughter, Alys; his friend Cress; and a talking parrot named Claude — move to Italy, where Ulysses has inherited a large apartment that they convert into a thriving pensione. The book spans four decades (and 450 pages). Much of the story takes place in Florence and one historic moment covered in it is the 1966 flooding of the Arno, during which millions of books and works of art were destroyed, and countless livelihoods were obliterated — each, the author reminds us, meaningless without the other. Evelyn says “Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgment”. This is a theme that runs through the novel. Sue found it a delightful and optimistic read and felt it had echoes of Forster’s work, Room With A View”.
Denise read: Attention All Shipping: A Journey Round the Shipping Forecast (2005) by Charlie Connelly. Denise was captivated by this book which was inspired as we have all been by the solemn, rhythmic intonation of the shipping forecast on BBC radio. Since its first broadcast in the 1920s it has generated poems, songs and novels in addition to its intended objective of warning generations of seafarers of impending storms and gales. However, few people give much thought to where they are or what they contain. Charlie Connelly wittily explores the places behind the voice, those mysterious regions whose names seem often to bear no relation to conventional geography. As he travels around he introduces us to the people who live in these areas, their lives and livelihoods. Denise found this ‘metropolitain’ author’s gentle account both fascinating and pleasing. The book was serialised on Radio 4 in 2015 but is sadly no longer available.Sue M read Black Dogs (1992) by Ian McEwan. The book moves between 1946 and the 1980s. It is a story of evil, betrayal and corruption and explores the personal consequences of political ideas through a singular event which destroys a marriage which doesn’t survive the honeymoon although the relationship does. Jeremy the son-in-law of Bernard and June Tremaine, undertakes to write June's memoir, only to be led back again and again to a terrifying encounter of forty years earlier. Jeremy is left to sort out the conflict between reason and faith embodied by Bernard and June. He ultimately decides that dealing in absolutes (in this case extreme political ideologies) not only led to the couple’s separation but is ultimately an untenable way to live. This novel divided the critics although the author stated that it was his favourite.
Sue felt that it isn’t one of McEwan’s best novels (he has published sixteen) but she found the suspense very gripping and his descriptions, notably the one of June’s encounter with two black dogs on a mountain path, totally engrossing. She says that he has the ability to describe a single event in graphic detail in a way that transports the reader into the scene.
Di read Revolutionary Road (1961) by Richard Yates . The book was Yates’s first novel, though he had worked as a journalist and ghostwriter, writing some of John F. Kennedy’s speeches. Yates described the underlying theme of the novel as an indictment of American society in the 1950s, when there was a strong urge for conformity and desperation for safety and security at any price. It tells of suburban life on the East Coast and the disappointments of a married couple. They have children but these do not really figure in the story. Instead it is an account of the growing sense of entrapment of April who had attempted to become an actress while Frank, her husband, starts an affair with a work colleague. Following a major argument, April suggests that they move to Europe and Frank is initially enthusiastic about the idea. However, he is enticed by his employer’s offer of a bright future and the plan becomes unlikely, all the more so when April conceives their third child. The couple argue over the possibility of aborting the pregnancy and Frank tries to manipulate April into seeking psychiatric help. Eventually she tries to self-abort her pregnancy with fatal consequences. Frank is left a hollow shell of a man with his children largely being brought up by his brother and sister-in-law thus mirroring April’s own childhood.
In 1999 Yates said "If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy." Di found the novel excellent but tragic and it reminded her of Malcolm Bradbury’s 1975 novel The History Man which reveals a marriage in crisis and also demonstrates the fragility of the human heart.
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS’ MEETING HELD ON 9TH MAY 2023
Present: Denise, Christine, Simon, Sue
Sue read: The Marriage Portrait(2022) by A Maggie O’Farrell. The inspiration for Maggie O’Farrell’s follow-up novel to Hamnet is the famous poem by Robert Browning – ‘My Last Duchess’. Browning’s dramatic monologue takes us inside the mind of the Duke of Ferrara, as he shows a painting of his former wife (Lucrezia) to a representative of the family of his next bride-to-be. O’Farrell’s novel tells the story of Lucrezia di Cosimo de Medici who at the age of 15 married Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. It takes us into the world of Renaissance Italy and the plight of women in particular those of high birth who are at the mercy of men. They are seen only as a means of producing children and continuing the family lineage. She is sequestered in her father’s house until the marriage and is then at the mercy of her husband. The latter seems kind and gentle at the beginning but things quickly deteriorate. There is a very clever surprise ending which also very satisfying. Sue liked the beautiful language and the way you get drawn into Lucrezia’s world.
Christine read: Small Gods (1992) by Terry Pratchett. She had not chosen to read this book which was a book club choice but felt that it was time she acquainted herself with this significant author. The book is a satire on religion and philosophy, and although it can be read as a stand-alone novel, it does form part of the extensive body of work that is Pratchett’s Discworld series. Set initially in the country of Omnia it explores the dominant religion there, that of the God Om who for the past three years has spent his life as a tortoise. Sounds daft? Well, humour abounds and mostly in the form of wit and satire. Pratchett attacks Christianity and Islam and various schools of philosophy in fictional guise and his ‘hero’ Brutha, a simple novice but one with an eidetic memory, is Om’s only true believer at the book's conclusion becomes the Eighth Prophet, ending the Quisition's practice of torture and reforming the established church in Omnia to be more open-minded and humanistic. It’s hard to summarise such an ingenious piece of writing and Christine said that although life’s too short to read the other forty Discworld novels, she is very pleased to have read this one.
Simon read: The Old Curiosity Shop (1840) by Charles Dickens. Many people are aware of the tragedy of Little Nell and her grandfather in one of Dickens’ most sentimental books. When Little Nell Trent’s grandfather gambles away his curiosity shop to his creditor Quilp, the girl and the old man flee London. Nell’s friend Kit Nubbles and a mysterious Single Gentleman (who turns out to be the wealthy brother of Nell’s grandfather) attempt to find them but are thwarted by Quilp, who drowns while fleeing the law. Little Nell dies before Kit and the Single Gentleman arrive, and her broken-hearted grandfather dies days later. Simon highly recommends this novel which is both enjoyable and tragic. He felt that the character and mood desciptions were excellent and give an illuminating insight into life in the 1820s and its fragility for those without money. People survived on their efforts, wits and ingenuity. The framing of Kit was particularly suspenseful episode with an unexpected saviour in the character of the Marchioness. One downside was the occasional authorial comment which Simon could have done without, but which was possibly there to help with the serialisation.
Denise read: Mudlarking (2019) by Lara Maiklem. Lara Maiklem has scoured the banks of the Thames for over fifteen years in pursuit of the objects that the river unearths: from Neolithic flints to Roman hair pins, medieval buckles to Tudor buttons, Georgian clay pipes to Victorian toys. She is obviously passionate about the Thames and its history and Denise found her wide ranging account of her finds and the social history that attaches to them fascinating, especially the way that Lara brings to life the very ordinary lives of the everyday people who lost or dumped their possessions in the Thames. She is a true amateur archaeologist using the river as an excavation ground. The mud of the Thames preserves organic matter extremely well hence the discovery of so many leather items, particularly shoes, and Maiklem doesn’t shy away from mentioning some of the more unsavoury items she finds. However, she also describes how the river is now the cleanest urban river in the world and is slowly regaining its native species. Denise summarised it as ‘a fascinating, well-written and educational read.’
Present: Denise, Christine, Simon, Sue
Sue read: The Marriage Portrait(2022) by A Maggie O’Farrell. The inspiration for Maggie O’Farrell’s follow-up novel to Hamnet is the famous poem by Robert Browning – ‘My Last Duchess’. Browning’s dramatic monologue takes us inside the mind of the Duke of Ferrara, as he shows a painting of his former wife (Lucrezia) to a representative of the family of his next bride-to-be. O’Farrell’s novel tells the story of Lucrezia di Cosimo de Medici who at the age of 15 married Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. It takes us into the world of Renaissance Italy and the plight of women in particular those of high birth who are at the mercy of men. They are seen only as a means of producing children and continuing the family lineage. She is sequestered in her father’s house until the marriage and is then at the mercy of her husband. The latter seems kind and gentle at the beginning but things quickly deteriorate. There is a very clever surprise ending which also very satisfying. Sue liked the beautiful language and the way you get drawn into Lucrezia’s world.
Christine read: Small Gods (1992) by Terry Pratchett. She had not chosen to read this book which was a book club choice but felt that it was time she acquainted herself with this significant author. The book is a satire on religion and philosophy, and although it can be read as a stand-alone novel, it does form part of the extensive body of work that is Pratchett’s Discworld series. Set initially in the country of Omnia it explores the dominant religion there, that of the God Om who for the past three years has spent his life as a tortoise. Sounds daft? Well, humour abounds and mostly in the form of wit and satire. Pratchett attacks Christianity and Islam and various schools of philosophy in fictional guise and his ‘hero’ Brutha, a simple novice but one with an eidetic memory, is Om’s only true believer at the book's conclusion becomes the Eighth Prophet, ending the Quisition's practice of torture and reforming the established church in Omnia to be more open-minded and humanistic. It’s hard to summarise such an ingenious piece of writing and Christine said that although life’s too short to read the other forty Discworld novels, she is very pleased to have read this one.
Simon read: The Old Curiosity Shop (1840) by Charles Dickens. Many people are aware of the tragedy of Little Nell and her grandfather in one of Dickens’ most sentimental books. When Little Nell Trent’s grandfather gambles away his curiosity shop to his creditor Quilp, the girl and the old man flee London. Nell’s friend Kit Nubbles and a mysterious Single Gentleman (who turns out to be the wealthy brother of Nell’s grandfather) attempt to find them but are thwarted by Quilp, who drowns while fleeing the law. Little Nell dies before Kit and the Single Gentleman arrive, and her broken-hearted grandfather dies days later. Simon highly recommends this novel which is both enjoyable and tragic. He felt that the character and mood desciptions were excellent and give an illuminating insight into life in the 1820s and its fragility for those without money. People survived on their efforts, wits and ingenuity. The framing of Kit was particularly suspenseful episode with an unexpected saviour in the character of the Marchioness. One downside was the occasional authorial comment which Simon could have done without, but which was possibly there to help with the serialisation.
Denise read: Mudlarking (2019) by Lara Maiklem. Lara Maiklem has scoured the banks of the Thames for over fifteen years in pursuit of the objects that the river unearths: from Neolithic flints to Roman hair pins, medieval buckles to Tudor buttons, Georgian clay pipes to Victorian toys. She is obviously passionate about the Thames and its history and Denise found her wide ranging account of her finds and the social history that attaches to them fascinating, especially the way that Lara brings to life the very ordinary lives of the everyday people who lost or dumped their possessions in the Thames. She is a true amateur archaeologist using the river as an excavation ground. The mud of the Thames preserves organic matter extremely well hence the discovery of so many leather items, particularly shoes, and Maiklem doesn’t shy away from mentioning some of the more unsavoury items she finds. However, she also describes how the river is now the cleanest urban river in the world and is slowly regaining its native species. Denise summarised it as ‘a fascinating, well-written and educational read.’
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS MEETING held on
Tuesday 4th April 2023
Present: Di, Denise, Christine, Sue
Sue read: Redhead By the Side of the Road (2020) by Anne Tyler. This is the reknowned American author’s twenty-third novel. She is universally praised for her ability to depict multi-faceted men and the hero of this novel, forty-something Micah Mortimer is no exception. Micah runs a business called Tech Hermit and runs around a district in Baltimore fixing computer problems for old women who don’t know what a modem is and Tyler exploits this situation for its full comic effect. Micah is forty something with “not-so-good posture in jeans and a “partially erased looking” brown leather jacket. He lives a quiet life with a teacher girlfriend until one day two things happen. First the fatherless teenage son of an ex-girlfriend turns up on his doorstep and is invited to stay in the spare room, and second, and as a result, his partner leaves him. It has been said that Tyler makes ‘the ordinary extraordinary’. Over the course of what is essentially a novella, Micah gains self-awareness and acknowledges the repetitiveness of his thinking and ‘how his entire life ran in a rut really’.‘ Sue liked the novel for its excellent writing and its optimistic outcome with the sense that Micah might have a better future due to his learning from past errors.
Denise read: London Clay (2021) by Tom Chivers. Chivers spent a decade exploring and researching the history of London and uses vivid reportage and personal memoir as well as his skills as a poet to produce this account of the hidden depths of London. Chivers, who we might today call a psycho-geographer, reveals our connection to place by exploring the underlying geology which is still visible in our modern concrete jungle. Denise found his writing beautiful and was particularly interested in his account of London’s former rivers. For example, he heads down into a sewer to see the River Fleet and has to shower a long time after that experience. He reveals Roman ruins, ancient forests, a submerged theatre, searches for the lost island of Bermondsey and sees if the recently created Olympic Park has eradicated the ancient causeway that crossed the marshes in the Lea Valley. He also meets interesting characters along the way. Denise was captivated by the book and by the author erudition and writing skills.
Di read: All Quiet On The Western Front (1928 - published in German as ‘Im Westen Nichts Neues’) by Erich Maria Remarque. With the recent Netflix film of the novel having garnered several awards at this year’s Oscars, and having watched the previous film version, Di felt she wanted to get back to the novel itself. She was quick to discover that in her view the film versions seriously underperformed and she felt that the book was far more powerful. What she felt was missing from the film version was the powerful sense of camaraderie among the troops as well as the episodes in the hospitals. This famous account of closing months of The Great War was based on Remarque’s own experience as a conscript joining the Imperial German Army at the age of 18. In July 1917 he was wounded by shrapnel in his left leg, right arm and neck, and was repatriated to an army hospital in Germany. Having recovered from his wounds he was re-conscripted, but with the war approaching its end he did not have to fight again. After the war he became a teacher as well as developing his writing career. Remarque was at first unable to find a publisher for All Quiet on the Western Front but on publication it became an international bestseller and a landmark work in twentieth-century literature. However, in 1933, Nazi propaganda minister, Goebbels, declared Remarque's writing as "unpatriotic" and it was banned in Germany. Copies were removed from all libraries and restricted from being sold or published anywhere in the country. In 1938 his German citizenship was revoked and he and his wife moved first to Switzerland and later to the US where he became a naturalised American and died in 1970. However, his most famous book has clearly endured with its sombre message about the horrific realities of war.
Christine read: The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (2019) Christine, a Pullman fan, decided to read all the books from both the first trilogy: His Dark Materials and its sequel The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage (volume 1) and The Secret Commonwealth (volume 2). She was interested to explore why she keeps reading these particular works and says that they help her feel ‘grounded’. She is fascinated by the way in which Pullman delves deeper into his parallel world of Lyra’s Oxford and is able at the same time to highlight contemporary issues in our own world, e.g. immigration, climate change and religious factionism. In The Secret Commonwealth, Lyra, now a student, is twenty, and make no mistake, this is an adult book, described by Pullman as ‘probably being for those children who read His Dark Materials and are now young adults. Alongside the familiar themes of the dangers of fundamentalist religion he now takes on the excessive use of – equally poisonous - rationalism. Threats to contemporary life are not hidden but made painfully clear. At the same time, it’s an exciting read in which Lyra leaves these shores for the continent – not just western Europe but the Middle and Far East. The characters she encounters are often memorable – the familiar Gyptians and characters such as Furnace Man and the Princess Cantacuzino. Towards the end of the book Christine felt that the focus on Oakley Street, the secret agency which is fighting against the might of the Magisterium did tend to move Pullman into John Le Carré and Ian Fleming territory with Malcolm Polstead, Lyra’s saviour in the first volume, a latter-day James Bond/George Smiley. Perhaps though, we need just that form of ‘super-hero’.
Sue read: Redhead By the Side of the Road (2020) by Anne Tyler. This is the reknowned American author’s twenty-third novel. She is universally praised for her ability to depict multi-faceted men and the hero of this novel, forty-something Micah Mortimer is no exception. Micah runs a business called Tech Hermit and runs around a district in Baltimore fixing computer problems for old women who don’t know what a modem is and Tyler exploits this situation for its full comic effect. Micah is forty something with “not-so-good posture in jeans and a “partially erased looking” brown leather jacket. He lives a quiet life with a teacher girlfriend until one day two things happen. First the fatherless teenage son of an ex-girlfriend turns up on his doorstep and is invited to stay in the spare room, and second, and as a result, his partner leaves him. It has been said that Tyler makes ‘the ordinary extraordinary’. Over the course of what is essentially a novella, Micah gains self-awareness and acknowledges the repetitiveness of his thinking and ‘how his entire life ran in a rut really’.‘ Sue liked the novel for its excellent writing and its optimistic outcome with the sense that Micah might have a better future due to his learning from past errors.
Denise read: London Clay (2021) by Tom Chivers. Chivers spent a decade exploring and researching the history of London and uses vivid reportage and personal memoir as well as his skills as a poet to produce this account of the hidden depths of London. Chivers, who we might today call a psycho-geographer, reveals our connection to place by exploring the underlying geology which is still visible in our modern concrete jungle. Denise found his writing beautiful and was particularly interested in his account of London’s former rivers. For example, he heads down into a sewer to see the River Fleet and has to shower a long time after that experience. He reveals Roman ruins, ancient forests, a submerged theatre, searches for the lost island of Bermondsey and sees if the recently created Olympic Park has eradicated the ancient causeway that crossed the marshes in the Lea Valley. He also meets interesting characters along the way. Denise was captivated by the book and by the author erudition and writing skills.
Di read: All Quiet On The Western Front (1928 - published in German as ‘Im Westen Nichts Neues’) by Erich Maria Remarque. With the recent Netflix film of the novel having garnered several awards at this year’s Oscars, and having watched the previous film version, Di felt she wanted to get back to the novel itself. She was quick to discover that in her view the film versions seriously underperformed and she felt that the book was far more powerful. What she felt was missing from the film version was the powerful sense of camaraderie among the troops as well as the episodes in the hospitals. This famous account of closing months of The Great War was based on Remarque’s own experience as a conscript joining the Imperial German Army at the age of 18. In July 1917 he was wounded by shrapnel in his left leg, right arm and neck, and was repatriated to an army hospital in Germany. Having recovered from his wounds he was re-conscripted, but with the war approaching its end he did not have to fight again. After the war he became a teacher as well as developing his writing career. Remarque was at first unable to find a publisher for All Quiet on the Western Front but on publication it became an international bestseller and a landmark work in twentieth-century literature. However, in 1933, Nazi propaganda minister, Goebbels, declared Remarque's writing as "unpatriotic" and it was banned in Germany. Copies were removed from all libraries and restricted from being sold or published anywhere in the country. In 1938 his German citizenship was revoked and he and his wife moved first to Switzerland and later to the US where he became a naturalised American and died in 1970. However, his most famous book has clearly endured with its sombre message about the horrific realities of war.
Christine read: The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (2019) Christine, a Pullman fan, decided to read all the books from both the first trilogy: His Dark Materials and its sequel The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage (volume 1) and The Secret Commonwealth (volume 2). She was interested to explore why she keeps reading these particular works and says that they help her feel ‘grounded’. She is fascinated by the way in which Pullman delves deeper into his parallel world of Lyra’s Oxford and is able at the same time to highlight contemporary issues in our own world, e.g. immigration, climate change and religious factionism. In The Secret Commonwealth, Lyra, now a student, is twenty, and make no mistake, this is an adult book, described by Pullman as ‘probably being for those children who read His Dark Materials and are now young adults. Alongside the familiar themes of the dangers of fundamentalist religion he now takes on the excessive use of – equally poisonous - rationalism. Threats to contemporary life are not hidden but made painfully clear. At the same time, it’s an exciting read in which Lyra leaves these shores for the continent – not just western Europe but the Middle and Far East. The characters she encounters are often memorable – the familiar Gyptians and characters such as Furnace Man and the Princess Cantacuzino. Towards the end of the book Christine felt that the focus on Oakley Street, the secret agency which is fighting against the might of the Magisterium did tend to move Pullman into John Le Carré and Ian Fleming territory with Malcolm Polstead, Lyra’s saviour in the first volume, a latter-day James Bond/George Smiley. Perhaps though, we need just that form of ‘super-hero’.
NOTES FROM THE MEETING held on Tuesday 28th February 2023
Present: Di, Denise, Christine, Simon
Simon read: Scoop (1938) by Evelyn Waugh, a twentieth century satirical classic. A journalist himself, Waugh was well-placed to write this novel which sends up a group of journalists. William Boot a nature journalist working for Lord Copper’s ‘Daily Beast’ is dragooned into becoming a foreign correspondent in Ishmaelia, a fictional state in East Africa, to report on the crisis there. He has been mistaken for another journalist - John Courteney Boot, an altogether more worldly character. The book was written at the time of the planned Abyssinian invasion by Mussolini, a story which Waugh himself covered. In the event, William Boot gets the ‘scoop’ although the other Boot gets the credit. Christopher Hitchens in his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Scoop, said “In the pages of Scoop we encounter Waugh at the mid-season point of his perfect pitch; youthful and limber and light as a feather" and noted: "The manners and mores of the press, are the recurrent motif of the book and the chief reason for its enduring magic...this world of callousness and vulgarity and philistinism...Scoop endures because it is a novel of pitiless realism; the mirror of satire held up to catch the Caliban of the press corps.” Simon enjoyed the book greatly and feels it is still relevant today.
Christine read: Sparkling Cyanide (1945) by Agatha Christie. Christine was trying to rectify what she saw as a gap in her knowledge never having read a Christie novel. She had watched many film versions so had an idea of what to expect. Following a classic Christie pattern, the novel explores two murders: an air-headed socialite with money Rosemary Barton, and her somewhat dull husband George. Both murders take place in a restaurant and involve champagne being spiked with cyanide – hence the title. Christine loved the way each chapter gave a real insight into the character of each of the suspects, noting their desires, their foibles, and their possible motives for being the killer. She felt that Christie is very even-handed in her approach to gender and subtle when it comes to exploring social class. She has a powerful wit. Although Christine felt she had guessed the killer before the end, the classic twist was there and so she wasn’t quite sure. It is not difficult to see why Christie is the world’s best-selling author, even today.
Denise read: The Gulag Archipelag: 1918-1956 – Book 4 (published in the UK in 1975). This account of one of Stalin’s infamous labour camps shocked Denise. It gives a detailed account of how a once beautiful and functional monastery on an island is turned into a prison where even ‘normal’ people show their brutal side. Work was all that mattered. Aspects of the book were, according to Denise, so grisly that she had to skip them. The book is reminder of what the Russian state will do to stop dissidents and how even friends will turn on each other in the fight for survival. Alexander Solzhenitsin, a Nobel Prizewinner, was, of course, himself imprisoned in the Gulag for eight years and he reveals the entire apparatus of Soviet repression including secret police operations, labor camps and prisons; the uprooting or extermination of whole populations, the welcome that awaited Russian soldiers who had been German prisoners of war. We also witness the astounding moral courage of the incorruptible, who, defenceless, endured great brutality and degradation. The book was smuggled out of the USSR to Zurich in 1968. In Denise’s eyes it is an incredibly powerful novel showing the lengths a state will go to to suppress freedom of thought and speech.
Di read: The Year Of The Runaway (2015) by Sanjeev Sahota. A novel which tells of how three young men and and a woman travel from India to England where to hope to begin a new life and support their families back home. However, they don’t know what, as illegal immigrants, awaits them. They set up home in a dilapidated house in Sheffield and get work on a building site. The novel alternates between their current lives and their more lengthy back stories – two men are middle-class with families in India who are becoming poorer, the third has a wife with a visa living elsewhere in Sheffield, and the woman, has the most surprising story of all. The novel takes place over the course of one year, a year in which they are forced to rely on one another and they discover that breaking free of their past is not going to happen as the realities of immigrant life bite. Short-listed for the Booker Prize, this is a novel which Di found to be both beautifully written and very interesting. It reveals the depth of the human spirit with the power of tenderness and humanity in the face of dreadful suffering.
Simon read: Scoop (1938) by Evelyn Waugh, a twentieth century satirical classic. A journalist himself, Waugh was well-placed to write this novel which sends up a group of journalists. William Boot a nature journalist working for Lord Copper’s ‘Daily Beast’ is dragooned into becoming a foreign correspondent in Ishmaelia, a fictional state in East Africa, to report on the crisis there. He has been mistaken for another journalist - John Courteney Boot, an altogether more worldly character. The book was written at the time of the planned Abyssinian invasion by Mussolini, a story which Waugh himself covered. In the event, William Boot gets the ‘scoop’ although the other Boot gets the credit. Christopher Hitchens in his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Scoop, said “In the pages of Scoop we encounter Waugh at the mid-season point of his perfect pitch; youthful and limber and light as a feather" and noted: "The manners and mores of the press, are the recurrent motif of the book and the chief reason for its enduring magic...this world of callousness and vulgarity and philistinism...Scoop endures because it is a novel of pitiless realism; the mirror of satire held up to catch the Caliban of the press corps.” Simon enjoyed the book greatly and feels it is still relevant today.
Christine read: Sparkling Cyanide (1945) by Agatha Christie. Christine was trying to rectify what she saw as a gap in her knowledge never having read a Christie novel. She had watched many film versions so had an idea of what to expect. Following a classic Christie pattern, the novel explores two murders: an air-headed socialite with money Rosemary Barton, and her somewhat dull husband George. Both murders take place in a restaurant and involve champagne being spiked with cyanide – hence the title. Christine loved the way each chapter gave a real insight into the character of each of the suspects, noting their desires, their foibles, and their possible motives for being the killer. She felt that Christie is very even-handed in her approach to gender and subtle when it comes to exploring social class. She has a powerful wit. Although Christine felt she had guessed the killer before the end, the classic twist was there and so she wasn’t quite sure. It is not difficult to see why Christie is the world’s best-selling author, even today.
Denise read: The Gulag Archipelag: 1918-1956 – Book 4 (published in the UK in 1975). This account of one of Stalin’s infamous labour camps shocked Denise. It gives a detailed account of how a once beautiful and functional monastery on an island is turned into a prison where even ‘normal’ people show their brutal side. Work was all that mattered. Aspects of the book were, according to Denise, so grisly that she had to skip them. The book is reminder of what the Russian state will do to stop dissidents and how even friends will turn on each other in the fight for survival. Alexander Solzhenitsin, a Nobel Prizewinner, was, of course, himself imprisoned in the Gulag for eight years and he reveals the entire apparatus of Soviet repression including secret police operations, labor camps and prisons; the uprooting or extermination of whole populations, the welcome that awaited Russian soldiers who had been German prisoners of war. We also witness the astounding moral courage of the incorruptible, who, defenceless, endured great brutality and degradation. The book was smuggled out of the USSR to Zurich in 1968. In Denise’s eyes it is an incredibly powerful novel showing the lengths a state will go to to suppress freedom of thought and speech.
Di read: The Year Of The Runaway (2015) by Sanjeev Sahota. A novel which tells of how three young men and and a woman travel from India to England where to hope to begin a new life and support their families back home. However, they don’t know what, as illegal immigrants, awaits them. They set up home in a dilapidated house in Sheffield and get work on a building site. The novel alternates between their current lives and their more lengthy back stories – two men are middle-class with families in India who are becoming poorer, the third has a wife with a visa living elsewhere in Sheffield, and the woman, has the most surprising story of all. The novel takes place over the course of one year, a year in which they are forced to rely on one another and they discover that breaking free of their past is not going to happen as the realities of immigrant life bite. Short-listed for the Booker Prize, this is a novel which Di found to be both beautifully written and very interesting. It reveals the depth of the human spirit with the power of tenderness and humanity in the face of dreadful suffering.
NOTES FROM THE MEETING held on Tuesday 24th January 2023
Present: Denise, Di, Simon, Sue, Di, Christine
Denise, read: Capitalism and Freedom (1962) by Milton Friedman which has sold more than half a million copies since it was first published and has been translated into eighteen languages. Friedman argues for economic freedom as a precondition for political freedom. He defines "liberal" in European Enlightenment terms as opposed to the more recent use of the term in America by the alt-right which he believes is a corrupted form. Denise chose to read this for answers to the inertia of governments and the lack of social progress. Friedman identifies several places in which a free market can be promoted for both philosophical and practical reasons. However, it would appear that capitalism only offers rich people choices. He also states that only a crisis can bring about change and so governments should plan for crises. Something they have singularly failed to do in recent years. Despite the lack of answers, Denise found this a very interesting read.
Simon read: Make Room! Make Room! (1966) By Harry Harrison. This science fiction novel is set in the then future of 1999 has something of a cult status. It was the basis for a 1973 film called Soylent Green which starred Charlton Hesoon as the hard-bitten detective hero. According to Wikipedia the novel ‘explores the trends in the proportion of world resources used by the United States and other countries compared to population growth, depicting a world where the global population is seven billion people, plagued with overcrowding, resource shortages and a crumbling infrastructure’. The plot jumps from character to character, recounting the lives of people in various walks of life in New York City with its population of 35 million. Although Simon felt the book to be well written he said he was somewhat disappointed in it compared to the film.
Di read: The Rite of Spring (2019) by Gillian Moore. She found this an enlightening read about one of the seminal cultural events of the twentieth century. Intriguingly somebody once said that if everyone who claimed to have been at the first performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring had actually been there, you’d have needed Wembley stadium to fit them all in. Simillarly the riot that is supposed to have happened on that occasion is now questioned in academic circles as to whether it did actually happen. The book itself is beautifully illustrated and was enthusiastically passed round the group. Di found this a fascinating account of not just an event but of a period in history.
Sue read: Love After Love (2020) by Ingrid Persaud. Set in Trinidad, this is a novel about love in all its forms and is written in Trinidadian patois. It was the winner of the 2020 Costa First Novel Award. Not only does it tell a heart-warmthe practice of voodoo. According to Di it’s well written in a playful and lyrical style and is also amusing. The central characters are Ramdin-Chetan family: the mother, the irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, who form an unconventional household, happy in their differences, as they build a home together. Betty was married to a physical abusive man whom she pushed downstairs and her son Solo was traumatised on his fifth birthday. According to Sue , this is an amuising read which is well-written, especially the character of Solo.
Christine read: Food for Life : The New Science of Eating Well (2022) by Tim Spector. Spector, in addition to being an esteemed professor of immunology at Kings College, London University, has written other best-selling populist scientific works. A fairly weighty book, it provides an in-depth account of the myths surrounding the food we eat with a close scrutiny on the flawed research which has led to this. In addition to this it gives a food group-by-food group account leaving the reader in no doubt as to what we should be putting inside our bodies. Serious science on one level, the book is extremely accessible when it comes to helping guide our eating decisions and each chapter concludes with a helpful set of five facts and tips about each of the food groups e.g. breads. Christine found it an enjoyable read and really useful in sorting out the somewhat confusing information we daily receive about the food we eat.
Denise, read: Capitalism and Freedom (1962) by Milton Friedman which has sold more than half a million copies since it was first published and has been translated into eighteen languages. Friedman argues for economic freedom as a precondition for political freedom. He defines "liberal" in European Enlightenment terms as opposed to the more recent use of the term in America by the alt-right which he believes is a corrupted form. Denise chose to read this for answers to the inertia of governments and the lack of social progress. Friedman identifies several places in which a free market can be promoted for both philosophical and practical reasons. However, it would appear that capitalism only offers rich people choices. He also states that only a crisis can bring about change and so governments should plan for crises. Something they have singularly failed to do in recent years. Despite the lack of answers, Denise found this a very interesting read.
Simon read: Make Room! Make Room! (1966) By Harry Harrison. This science fiction novel is set in the then future of 1999 has something of a cult status. It was the basis for a 1973 film called Soylent Green which starred Charlton Hesoon as the hard-bitten detective hero. According to Wikipedia the novel ‘explores the trends in the proportion of world resources used by the United States and other countries compared to population growth, depicting a world where the global population is seven billion people, plagued with overcrowding, resource shortages and a crumbling infrastructure’. The plot jumps from character to character, recounting the lives of people in various walks of life in New York City with its population of 35 million. Although Simon felt the book to be well written he said he was somewhat disappointed in it compared to the film.
Di read: The Rite of Spring (2019) by Gillian Moore. She found this an enlightening read about one of the seminal cultural events of the twentieth century. Intriguingly somebody once said that if everyone who claimed to have been at the first performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring had actually been there, you’d have needed Wembley stadium to fit them all in. Simillarly the riot that is supposed to have happened on that occasion is now questioned in academic circles as to whether it did actually happen. The book itself is beautifully illustrated and was enthusiastically passed round the group. Di found this a fascinating account of not just an event but of a period in history.
Sue read: Love After Love (2020) by Ingrid Persaud. Set in Trinidad, this is a novel about love in all its forms and is written in Trinidadian patois. It was the winner of the 2020 Costa First Novel Award. Not only does it tell a heart-warmthe practice of voodoo. According to Di it’s well written in a playful and lyrical style and is also amusing. The central characters are Ramdin-Chetan family: the mother, the irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, who form an unconventional household, happy in their differences, as they build a home together. Betty was married to a physical abusive man whom she pushed downstairs and her son Solo was traumatised on his fifth birthday. According to Sue , this is an amuising read which is well-written, especially the character of Solo.
Christine read: Food for Life : The New Science of Eating Well (2022) by Tim Spector. Spector, in addition to being an esteemed professor of immunology at Kings College, London University, has written other best-selling populist scientific works. A fairly weighty book, it provides an in-depth account of the myths surrounding the food we eat with a close scrutiny on the flawed research which has led to this. In addition to this it gives a food group-by-food group account leaving the reader in no doubt as to what we should be putting inside our bodies. Serious science on one level, the book is extremely accessible when it comes to helping guide our eating decisions and each chapter concludes with a helpful set of five facts and tips about each of the food groups e.g. breads. Christine found it an enjoyable read and really useful in sorting out the somewhat confusing information we daily receive about the food we eat.
August & September 2022
Present: Denise, Di, Sue, Alan, Christine
Sue read: Fleischmann In Trouble (2019) by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. This is an American novel about a marriage on the verge of ending and is narrated by a friend of the husband from his college days. The wife has disappeared off to a yoga retreat leaving their two children in the care of their father thus jeopardising his online dating activity. After telling Toby’s side of the story sympathetically, the friend, Libby, a staff writer on a men’s magazine begins to wonder why he is never concerned about her issues and the narrative then moves to explore etc. and, according to The New Yorker’s review: “The best parts of “Fleishman,” its saddest and angriest passages, unfold female experiences: a doctor abuses Rachel as she is delivering her first child, and she struggles to recover from the trauma. Both Rachel and Libby contend with workplace sexism, the assumption that “whatever kind of woman you are, even when you’re a lot of kinds of women, you’re still always just a woman, which is to say you’re always a little bit less than a man.” The author kindles some kind of empathy for all the characters, male and female alike and the book finishes with some form of redemption. Sue said that although at times it was a bit of a rant but it was very interesting.
Alan read: The Seaplane (2022) on Final Approach by another American author, Rebecca Rukeyser. He describes it as a comic novel set in Alaska and concerns a truanting high school girl, Mira, who is sent to stay with her Aunt and falls in love with her son. From there all goes wrong. A ‘Bookmarks’ reviewer wrote: “ It’s a painfully recognisable adolescent yearning that’s captured well in this author’s debut ... Miles from any sort of civilisation, the scene is set for a spiral into disaster — which Mira relates, from the perspective of some years’ distance, with a deftly juggled mix of mercilessly sharp character judgment and gentle compassion for each person’s failings. But mainly Rukeyser lets Mira’s solipsistic wranglings with her sexual desires take centre stage — this is not a novel for anyone who demands lots of plot, but definitely one for readers who enjoy the sort of dive into dysfunction championed by Ottessa Moshfegh.
Di read Juliet, Naked (2009) by Nick Hornby. Having endured months of heavy creative writing study, Di chose this book in order to relax and felt it enabled that. Nick Hornby, author of six novels, is the master of writing about the forty-something male and also about music. In this book the story focusses on a kind of ménage-à-trois in that the married couple and Anne who live in an improbably named town called Gooleness both become embroiled, at a distance, with an American Bob Dylan type pop musician called Tucker Crowe. He is about to release a new album ‘Juliet Naked’ to follow-up his greatest album ‘Juliet’. Duncan is anxious to be the first to hear it. Looking for a change in her life Anne starts up an email correspondence with Crowe and she gets to hear the new album first. The novel was described by ‘Goodreads’ as a powerfully engrossing, humblingly humorous novel about music, love, loneliness, and the struggle to live up to one’s promise.
Di found the book very amusing with a good narrative structure by an author who writes well not just about men but also women. The prose is very readable and touches sensitively on tension and reconciliation in relationships.
Christine read In Other Words (2015) by Jumpa Lahiri. This is a dual language book by the Indian-American writer with the text in Italian on the left-hand side of the page and the English lined up precisely on the right. Christine had recently read Lahiri’s first novel to be written and published in Italian called ‘Whereabouts’ and so she was interested to read this account of the author’s journey from the first steps of learning a new language to actually moving herself and her family to Rome in order to perfect her knowledge of Italian. The Italian in the book mirrors the journey starting with lots of simple sentences and then moving on to more complex ones and equally beginning with fairly straightforward vocabulary and then displaying her acquisition of a broader and more specialised one. Christine felt the book was strong on the process of new foreign language acquisition and its psychological impact on the learner. For Lahiri this meant trying to overcome her tendency towards perfection and learning to recognise that this will all take time. In parts of the book there is more realism about her life in Italy with her family but for Christine perhaps not enough so that the book came across as somewhat dry and the reading of it in both languages a rather academic process which only intermittently gave her pleasure.
September Booklovers: Present: Sue, Di and Christine
Di read: The Promise (2021) by Damon Galgut. This novel is set in South Africa and covers the pre and post Apartheid era. It is about a white family with three siblings whose mother dies. The promise refers to one made to their mother and which refers to her wish to give her property to a black servant named Salome. Galgut said the theme of the book is ‘time’ and was inspired by a conversation with a friend, who is the last surviving member of his family, and who told Galgut about the funerals he had attended for his mother, father, brother, and sister. The book won the Booker Prize in 2021. The judges said the book is “a strong, unambiguous commentary on the history of South Africa and of humanity itself that can best be summed up in the question: does true justice exist in this world?” Di found it very readable and the characters psychologically very well drawn.
Christine read Heat (1997) by Penelope Lively: Christine said she had forgotten what a good writer Lively is and how well she depicts England and contemporary society. The central character and the one through whose eyes the action is portrayed is Pauline, an editor. One hot summer in a village deep in middle England, Pauline who lives next door to her daughter, son-in-law and baby, watches a tragedy unfold. She sees her son-in-law engage in an extra-marital affair which drags up painful memories of her own personal history. Lively depicts the countryside in a blazing hot summer with great skill and the book was particularly attuned to August 2022. Christine felt she has a great capacity for conveying with insight the pain and romantic obsession of jealousy and suspicion. She felt she would like to read more of this author’s works.
Sue read Klara And The Sun (2021) by Kazuo Ishiguro. This book has featured in Booklovers notes before and Sue was enthusiastic about it feeling that it explores what life is about and what the worth of an individual is. The notes state: “The eponymous Klara is an AF is an artificial friend who is in a store waiting for parents to come in and choose one as a companion for their child. Klara is chosen by Josie, a fragile young woman who has an illness that might kill her as it killed her sister. Her home is a new environment for Klara who sees things in pixels. In the store she has been watching the sun on its path across the shop floor and it is clear that sees things differently to humans. There is a hint of genetic modification in the novel with the aim of making a higher caste. Klara wants to find a cure for Josie but her friend gets worse. Ishiguro states that he has a ‘dirty secret’: “I tend to write the same book over and over.” This book certainly has connections with Never Let Me Go and The Buried Giant.
Sue read: Fleischmann In Trouble (2019) by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. This is an American novel about a marriage on the verge of ending and is narrated by a friend of the husband from his college days. The wife has disappeared off to a yoga retreat leaving their two children in the care of their father thus jeopardising his online dating activity. After telling Toby’s side of the story sympathetically, the friend, Libby, a staff writer on a men’s magazine begins to wonder why he is never concerned about her issues and the narrative then moves to explore etc. and, according to The New Yorker’s review: “The best parts of “Fleishman,” its saddest and angriest passages, unfold female experiences: a doctor abuses Rachel as she is delivering her first child, and she struggles to recover from the trauma. Both Rachel and Libby contend with workplace sexism, the assumption that “whatever kind of woman you are, even when you’re a lot of kinds of women, you’re still always just a woman, which is to say you’re always a little bit less than a man.” The author kindles some kind of empathy for all the characters, male and female alike and the book finishes with some form of redemption. Sue said that although at times it was a bit of a rant but it was very interesting.
Alan read: The Seaplane (2022) on Final Approach by another American author, Rebecca Rukeyser. He describes it as a comic novel set in Alaska and concerns a truanting high school girl, Mira, who is sent to stay with her Aunt and falls in love with her son. From there all goes wrong. A ‘Bookmarks’ reviewer wrote: “ It’s a painfully recognisable adolescent yearning that’s captured well in this author’s debut ... Miles from any sort of civilisation, the scene is set for a spiral into disaster — which Mira relates, from the perspective of some years’ distance, with a deftly juggled mix of mercilessly sharp character judgment and gentle compassion for each person’s failings. But mainly Rukeyser lets Mira’s solipsistic wranglings with her sexual desires take centre stage — this is not a novel for anyone who demands lots of plot, but definitely one for readers who enjoy the sort of dive into dysfunction championed by Ottessa Moshfegh.
Di read Juliet, Naked (2009) by Nick Hornby. Having endured months of heavy creative writing study, Di chose this book in order to relax and felt it enabled that. Nick Hornby, author of six novels, is the master of writing about the forty-something male and also about music. In this book the story focusses on a kind of ménage-à-trois in that the married couple and Anne who live in an improbably named town called Gooleness both become embroiled, at a distance, with an American Bob Dylan type pop musician called Tucker Crowe. He is about to release a new album ‘Juliet Naked’ to follow-up his greatest album ‘Juliet’. Duncan is anxious to be the first to hear it. Looking for a change in her life Anne starts up an email correspondence with Crowe and she gets to hear the new album first. The novel was described by ‘Goodreads’ as a powerfully engrossing, humblingly humorous novel about music, love, loneliness, and the struggle to live up to one’s promise.
Di found the book very amusing with a good narrative structure by an author who writes well not just about men but also women. The prose is very readable and touches sensitively on tension and reconciliation in relationships.
Christine read In Other Words (2015) by Jumpa Lahiri. This is a dual language book by the Indian-American writer with the text in Italian on the left-hand side of the page and the English lined up precisely on the right. Christine had recently read Lahiri’s first novel to be written and published in Italian called ‘Whereabouts’ and so she was interested to read this account of the author’s journey from the first steps of learning a new language to actually moving herself and her family to Rome in order to perfect her knowledge of Italian. The Italian in the book mirrors the journey starting with lots of simple sentences and then moving on to more complex ones and equally beginning with fairly straightforward vocabulary and then displaying her acquisition of a broader and more specialised one. Christine felt the book was strong on the process of new foreign language acquisition and its psychological impact on the learner. For Lahiri this meant trying to overcome her tendency towards perfection and learning to recognise that this will all take time. In parts of the book there is more realism about her life in Italy with her family but for Christine perhaps not enough so that the book came across as somewhat dry and the reading of it in both languages a rather academic process which only intermittently gave her pleasure.
September Booklovers: Present: Sue, Di and Christine
Di read: The Promise (2021) by Damon Galgut. This novel is set in South Africa and covers the pre and post Apartheid era. It is about a white family with three siblings whose mother dies. The promise refers to one made to their mother and which refers to her wish to give her property to a black servant named Salome. Galgut said the theme of the book is ‘time’ and was inspired by a conversation with a friend, who is the last surviving member of his family, and who told Galgut about the funerals he had attended for his mother, father, brother, and sister. The book won the Booker Prize in 2021. The judges said the book is “a strong, unambiguous commentary on the history of South Africa and of humanity itself that can best be summed up in the question: does true justice exist in this world?” Di found it very readable and the characters psychologically very well drawn.
Christine read Heat (1997) by Penelope Lively: Christine said she had forgotten what a good writer Lively is and how well she depicts England and contemporary society. The central character and the one through whose eyes the action is portrayed is Pauline, an editor. One hot summer in a village deep in middle England, Pauline who lives next door to her daughter, son-in-law and baby, watches a tragedy unfold. She sees her son-in-law engage in an extra-marital affair which drags up painful memories of her own personal history. Lively depicts the countryside in a blazing hot summer with great skill and the book was particularly attuned to August 2022. Christine felt she has a great capacity for conveying with insight the pain and romantic obsession of jealousy and suspicion. She felt she would like to read more of this author’s works.
Sue read Klara And The Sun (2021) by Kazuo Ishiguro. This book has featured in Booklovers notes before and Sue was enthusiastic about it feeling that it explores what life is about and what the worth of an individual is. The notes state: “The eponymous Klara is an AF is an artificial friend who is in a store waiting for parents to come in and choose one as a companion for their child. Klara is chosen by Josie, a fragile young woman who has an illness that might kill her as it killed her sister. Her home is a new environment for Klara who sees things in pixels. In the store she has been watching the sun on its path across the shop floor and it is clear that sees things differently to humans. There is a hint of genetic modification in the novel with the aim of making a higher caste. Klara wants to find a cure for Josie but her friend gets worse. Ishiguro states that he has a ‘dirty secret’: “I tend to write the same book over and over.” This book certainly has connections with Never Let Me Go and The Buried Giant.
Present: Denise, Di, Sue, Alan, Christine
Sue read No Time To Spare : Thinking About What Matters (2017) by Ursula Le Guin. Le Guin, who died in 2018, was a highly prolific author who published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation and is perhaps best known for her fantasy novels. In old age, she explored a new literary form: the blog. This book contains the best of it giving us perfectly crystallized dispatches about what mattered to her late in life, her concerns with the world, and her wonder at it: “How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.” The book contains responses to a Harvard University survey on age and these contained gems such as Q. What do you do in your spare time? A. ‘I have no spare time. I spend my time…’ and then follows a long, long list of activities with which she fills her time; or Q. Are you living your secret desires? A. ‘I have none. My desires are flagrant.’ She writes about her cat, she makes comments on changes in society, on swearing, and so on. ‘Old age is not for the young’ concludes Le Guin. Sue really enjoyed this book and it persuaded her to start writing her own blog.
Denise read Tittivulus: The Verbiage Collector (1953) by Michael Ayrton. The story behind Denise’s choice of read is that in her early twenties she once borrowed a copy (signed) from a work colleague and it remained with her for some time. Eventually to the delight of the owner she got round to returning it but she still coveted this book and felt she needed to have a copy of what she felt was a memorable read. After searching for some time she recently found a copy for sale on the internet and was able to purchase it and re-read it. Second time round it has not disappointed. Tittivulus is a fiend happy in his own world who travels to the hereafter where "was given the dreary and thankless task of collecting in sacks all the negligences, pomposities and vanities of utterance throughout the world." Needless to say, his task grows in positive correlation to the "progress" of civilization. The invention of the printing press in particular adds to the difficulty of his task. It’s a great satire and beautifully illustrated by the author. Denise felt the book could work for older children.
Michael Ayrton, was an English artist and writer, known as a painter, printmaker, sculptor and designer, and also as a critic, broadcaster and novelist.
Alan read: Memoirs Of A Midget: (1921) by Walter De La Mare. This book was the winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize tells the story of a year in the life of a diminutive lady, Miss M, who has a “passion for shells, fossils, flints, butterflies, and stuffed animals.” The reader can never work out how big Miss M is. Her height appears to change depending on her perspective on the subject being discussed. The story is told from her point of view and she is essentially a very devious person. It would appear that Miss M, engineers her mother’s death and her father then dies from grief. She is well looked after by an aristocrat and taken to London where she joins the circus. At the end of the novel she is called away – ‘by fellow spirits?’ speculates Alan. The book definitely has surrealist elements about it and was published at the time when Surrealism was a cultural phenomenon. Although De La Mare’s output is described as being ‘uneven’ this book is, by some, considered a ‘masterpiece’. Alan certainly enjoyed it and it has captured the appeal of many other readers in the years since it was published.
Di read Juliet, Naked (2009) by Nick Hornby. Having endured months of heavy creative writing study, Di chose this book in order to relax and felt it enabled that. Nick Hornby, author of six novels, is the master of writing about the forty-something male and also about music. In this book the story focusses on a kind of ménage-à-trois in that the married couple and Anne who live in an improbably named town called Gooleness both become embroiled, at a distance, with an American Bob Dylan type pop musician called Tucker Crowe. He is about to release a new album ‘Juliet Naked’ to follow-up his greatest album ‘Juliet’. Duncan is anxious to be the first to hear it. Looking for a change in her life Anne starts up an email correspondence with Crowe and she gets to hear the new album first. The novel was described by ‘Goodreads’ as a powerfully engrossing, humblingly humorous novel about music, love, loneliness, and the struggle to live up to one’s promise.
Di found the book very amusing with a good narrative structure by an author who writes well not just about men but also women. The prose is very readable and touches sensitively on tension and reconciliation in relationships.
Christine read In Other Words (2015) by Jumpa Lahiri. This is a dual language book by the Indian-American writer with the text in Italian on the left-hand side of the page and the English lined up precisely on the right. Christine had recently read Lahiri’s first novel to be written and published in Italian called ‘Whereabouts’ and so she was interested to read this account of the author’s journey from the first steps of learning a new language to actually moving herself and her family to Rome in order to perfect her knowledge of Italian. The Italian in the book mirrors the journey starting with lots of simple sentences and then moving on to more complex ones and equally beginning with fairly straightforward vocabulary and then displaying her acquisition of a broader and more specialised one. Christine felt the book was strong on the process of new foreign language acquisition and its psychological impact on the learner. For Lahiri this meant trying to overcome her tendency towards perfection and learning to recognise that this will all take time. In parts of the book there is more realism about her life in Italy with her family but for Christine perhaps not enough so that the book came across as somewhat dry and the reading of it in both languages a rather academic process which only intermittently gave her pleasure.
Sue read No Time To Spare : Thinking About What Matters (2017) by Ursula Le Guin. Le Guin, who died in 2018, was a highly prolific author who published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation and is perhaps best known for her fantasy novels. In old age, she explored a new literary form: the blog. This book contains the best of it giving us perfectly crystallized dispatches about what mattered to her late in life, her concerns with the world, and her wonder at it: “How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.” The book contains responses to a Harvard University survey on age and these contained gems such as Q. What do you do in your spare time? A. ‘I have no spare time. I spend my time…’ and then follows a long, long list of activities with which she fills her time; or Q. Are you living your secret desires? A. ‘I have none. My desires are flagrant.’ She writes about her cat, she makes comments on changes in society, on swearing, and so on. ‘Old age is not for the young’ concludes Le Guin. Sue really enjoyed this book and it persuaded her to start writing her own blog.
Denise read Tittivulus: The Verbiage Collector (1953) by Michael Ayrton. The story behind Denise’s choice of read is that in her early twenties she once borrowed a copy (signed) from a work colleague and it remained with her for some time. Eventually to the delight of the owner she got round to returning it but she still coveted this book and felt she needed to have a copy of what she felt was a memorable read. After searching for some time she recently found a copy for sale on the internet and was able to purchase it and re-read it. Second time round it has not disappointed. Tittivulus is a fiend happy in his own world who travels to the hereafter where "was given the dreary and thankless task of collecting in sacks all the negligences, pomposities and vanities of utterance throughout the world." Needless to say, his task grows in positive correlation to the "progress" of civilization. The invention of the printing press in particular adds to the difficulty of his task. It’s a great satire and beautifully illustrated by the author. Denise felt the book could work for older children.
Michael Ayrton, was an English artist and writer, known as a painter, printmaker, sculptor and designer, and also as a critic, broadcaster and novelist.
Alan read: Memoirs Of A Midget: (1921) by Walter De La Mare. This book was the winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize tells the story of a year in the life of a diminutive lady, Miss M, who has a “passion for shells, fossils, flints, butterflies, and stuffed animals.” The reader can never work out how big Miss M is. Her height appears to change depending on her perspective on the subject being discussed. The story is told from her point of view and she is essentially a very devious person. It would appear that Miss M, engineers her mother’s death and her father then dies from grief. She is well looked after by an aristocrat and taken to London where she joins the circus. At the end of the novel she is called away – ‘by fellow spirits?’ speculates Alan. The book definitely has surrealist elements about it and was published at the time when Surrealism was a cultural phenomenon. Although De La Mare’s output is described as being ‘uneven’ this book is, by some, considered a ‘masterpiece’. Alan certainly enjoyed it and it has captured the appeal of many other readers in the years since it was published.
Di read Juliet, Naked (2009) by Nick Hornby. Having endured months of heavy creative writing study, Di chose this book in order to relax and felt it enabled that. Nick Hornby, author of six novels, is the master of writing about the forty-something male and also about music. In this book the story focusses on a kind of ménage-à-trois in that the married couple and Anne who live in an improbably named town called Gooleness both become embroiled, at a distance, with an American Bob Dylan type pop musician called Tucker Crowe. He is about to release a new album ‘Juliet Naked’ to follow-up his greatest album ‘Juliet’. Duncan is anxious to be the first to hear it. Looking for a change in her life Anne starts up an email correspondence with Crowe and she gets to hear the new album first. The novel was described by ‘Goodreads’ as a powerfully engrossing, humblingly humorous novel about music, love, loneliness, and the struggle to live up to one’s promise.
Di found the book very amusing with a good narrative structure by an author who writes well not just about men but also women. The prose is very readable and touches sensitively on tension and reconciliation in relationships.
Christine read In Other Words (2015) by Jumpa Lahiri. This is a dual language book by the Indian-American writer with the text in Italian on the left-hand side of the page and the English lined up precisely on the right. Christine had recently read Lahiri’s first novel to be written and published in Italian called ‘Whereabouts’ and so she was interested to read this account of the author’s journey from the first steps of learning a new language to actually moving herself and her family to Rome in order to perfect her knowledge of Italian. The Italian in the book mirrors the journey starting with lots of simple sentences and then moving on to more complex ones and equally beginning with fairly straightforward vocabulary and then displaying her acquisition of a broader and more specialised one. Christine felt the book was strong on the process of new foreign language acquisition and its psychological impact on the learner. For Lahiri this meant trying to overcome her tendency towards perfection and learning to recognise that this will all take time. In parts of the book there is more realism about her life in Italy with her family but for Christine perhaps not enough so that the book came across as somewhat dry and the reading of it in both languages a rather academic process which only intermittently gave her pleasure.
Notes from the Booklovers Meeting held on Friday, 1st July 2022
Present: Denise, Di, Sue, Alan, Christine
Sue read No Time To Spare : Thinking About What Matters (2017) by Ursula Le Guin. Le Guin, who died in 2018, was a highly prolific author who published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation and is perhaps best known for her fantasy novels. In old age, she explored a new literary form: the blog. This book contains the best of it giving us perfectly crystallized dispatches about what mattered to her late in life, her concerns with the world, and her wonder at it: “How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.” The book contains responses to a Harvard University survey on age and these contained gems such as Q. What do you do in your spare time? A. ‘I have no spare time. I spend my time…’ and then follows a long, long list of activities with which she fills her time; or Q. Are you living your secret desires? A. ‘I have none. My desires are flagrant.’ She writes about her cat, she makes comments on changes in society, on swearing, and so on. ‘Old age is not for the young’ concludes Le Guin. Sue really enjoyed this book and it persuaded her to start writing her own blog.
Denise read Tittivulus: The Verbiage Collector (1953) by Michael Ayrton. The story behind Denise’s choice of read is that in her early twenties she once borrowed a copy (signed) from a work colleague and it remained with her for some time. Eventually to the delight of the owner she got round to returning it but she still coveted this book and felt she needed to have a copy of what she felt was a memorable read. After searching for some time she recently found a copy for sale on the internet and was able to purchase it and re-read it. Second time round it has not disappointed. Tittivulus is a fiend happy in his own world who travels to the hereafter where "was given the dreary and thankless task of collecting in sacks all the negligences, pomposities and vanities of utterance throughout the world." Needless to say, his task grows in positive correlation to the "progress" of civilization. The invention of the printing press in particular adds to the difficulty of his task. It’s a great satire and beautifully illustrated by the author. Denise felt the book could work for older children.
Michael Ayrton, was an English artist and writer, known as a painter, printmaker, sculptor and designer, and also as a critic, broadcaster and novelist.
Alan read: Memoirs Of A Midget: (1921) by Walter De La Mare. This book was the winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize tells the story of a year in the life of a diminutive lady, Miss M, who has a “passion for shells, fossils, flints, butterflies, and stuffed animals.” The reader can never work out how big Miss M is. Her height appears to change depending on her perspective on the subject being discussed. The story is told from her point of view and she is essentially a very devious person. It would appear that Miss M, engineers her mother’s death and her father then dies from grief. She is well looked after by an aristocrat and taken to London where she joins the circus. At the end of the novel she is called away – ‘by fellow spirits?’ speculates Alan. The book definitely has surrealist elements about it and was published at the time when Surrealism was a cultural phenomenon. Although De La Mare’s output is described as being ‘uneven’ this book is, by some, considered a ‘masterpiece’. Alan certainly enjoyed it and it has captured the appeal of many other readers in the years since it was published.
Di read Juliet, Naked (2009) by Nick Hornby. Having endured months of heavy creative writing study, Di chose this book in order to relax and felt it enabled that. Nick Hornby, author of six novels, is the master of writing about the forty-something male and also about music. In this book the story focusses on a kind of ménage-à-trois in that the married couple and Anne who live in an improbably named town called Gooleness both become embroiled, at a distance, with an American Bob Dylan type pop musician called Tucker Crowe. He is about to release a new album ‘Juliet Naked’ to follow-up his greatest album ‘Juliet’. Duncan is anxious to be the first to hear it. Looking for a change in her life Anne starts up an email correspondence with Crowe and she gets to hear the new album first. The novel was described by ‘Goodreads’ as a powerfully engrossing, humblingly humorous novel about music, love, loneliness, and the struggle to live up to one’s promise.
Di found the book very amusing with a good narrative structure by an author who writes well not just about men but also women. The prose is very readable and touches sensitively on tension and reconciliation in relationships.
Christine read In Other Words (2015) by Jumpa Lahiri. This is a dual language book by the Indian-American writer with the text in Italian on the left-hand side of the page and the English lined up precisely on the right. Christine had recently read Lahiri’s first novel to be written and published in Italian called ‘Whereabouts’ and so she was interested to read this account of the author’s journey from the first steps of learning a new language to actually moving herself and her family to Rome in order to perfect her knowledge of Italian. The Italian in the book mirrors the journey starting with lots of simple sentences and then moving on to more complex ones and equally beginning with fairly straightforward vocabulary and then displaying her acquisition of a broader and more specialised one. Christine felt the book was strong on the process of new foreign language acquisition and its psychological impact on the learner. For Lahiri this meant trying to overcome her tendency towards perfection and learning to recognise that this will all take time. In parts of the book there is more realism about her life in Italy with her family but for Christine perhaps not enough so that the book came across as somewhat dry and the reading of it in both languages a rather academic process which only intermittently gave her pleasure.
Present: Denise, Di, Sue, Alan, Christine
Sue read No Time To Spare : Thinking About What Matters (2017) by Ursula Le Guin. Le Guin, who died in 2018, was a highly prolific author who published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation and is perhaps best known for her fantasy novels. In old age, she explored a new literary form: the blog. This book contains the best of it giving us perfectly crystallized dispatches about what mattered to her late in life, her concerns with the world, and her wonder at it: “How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.” The book contains responses to a Harvard University survey on age and these contained gems such as Q. What do you do in your spare time? A. ‘I have no spare time. I spend my time…’ and then follows a long, long list of activities with which she fills her time; or Q. Are you living your secret desires? A. ‘I have none. My desires are flagrant.’ She writes about her cat, she makes comments on changes in society, on swearing, and so on. ‘Old age is not for the young’ concludes Le Guin. Sue really enjoyed this book and it persuaded her to start writing her own blog.
Denise read Tittivulus: The Verbiage Collector (1953) by Michael Ayrton. The story behind Denise’s choice of read is that in her early twenties she once borrowed a copy (signed) from a work colleague and it remained with her for some time. Eventually to the delight of the owner she got round to returning it but she still coveted this book and felt she needed to have a copy of what she felt was a memorable read. After searching for some time she recently found a copy for sale on the internet and was able to purchase it and re-read it. Second time round it has not disappointed. Tittivulus is a fiend happy in his own world who travels to the hereafter where "was given the dreary and thankless task of collecting in sacks all the negligences, pomposities and vanities of utterance throughout the world." Needless to say, his task grows in positive correlation to the "progress" of civilization. The invention of the printing press in particular adds to the difficulty of his task. It’s a great satire and beautifully illustrated by the author. Denise felt the book could work for older children.
Michael Ayrton, was an English artist and writer, known as a painter, printmaker, sculptor and designer, and also as a critic, broadcaster and novelist.
Alan read: Memoirs Of A Midget: (1921) by Walter De La Mare. This book was the winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize tells the story of a year in the life of a diminutive lady, Miss M, who has a “passion for shells, fossils, flints, butterflies, and stuffed animals.” The reader can never work out how big Miss M is. Her height appears to change depending on her perspective on the subject being discussed. The story is told from her point of view and she is essentially a very devious person. It would appear that Miss M, engineers her mother’s death and her father then dies from grief. She is well looked after by an aristocrat and taken to London where she joins the circus. At the end of the novel she is called away – ‘by fellow spirits?’ speculates Alan. The book definitely has surrealist elements about it and was published at the time when Surrealism was a cultural phenomenon. Although De La Mare’s output is described as being ‘uneven’ this book is, by some, considered a ‘masterpiece’. Alan certainly enjoyed it and it has captured the appeal of many other readers in the years since it was published.
Di read Juliet, Naked (2009) by Nick Hornby. Having endured months of heavy creative writing study, Di chose this book in order to relax and felt it enabled that. Nick Hornby, author of six novels, is the master of writing about the forty-something male and also about music. In this book the story focusses on a kind of ménage-à-trois in that the married couple and Anne who live in an improbably named town called Gooleness both become embroiled, at a distance, with an American Bob Dylan type pop musician called Tucker Crowe. He is about to release a new album ‘Juliet Naked’ to follow-up his greatest album ‘Juliet’. Duncan is anxious to be the first to hear it. Looking for a change in her life Anne starts up an email correspondence with Crowe and she gets to hear the new album first. The novel was described by ‘Goodreads’ as a powerfully engrossing, humblingly humorous novel about music, love, loneliness, and the struggle to live up to one’s promise.
Di found the book very amusing with a good narrative structure by an author who writes well not just about men but also women. The prose is very readable and touches sensitively on tension and reconciliation in relationships.
Christine read In Other Words (2015) by Jumpa Lahiri. This is a dual language book by the Indian-American writer with the text in Italian on the left-hand side of the page and the English lined up precisely on the right. Christine had recently read Lahiri’s first novel to be written and published in Italian called ‘Whereabouts’ and so she was interested to read this account of the author’s journey from the first steps of learning a new language to actually moving herself and her family to Rome in order to perfect her knowledge of Italian. The Italian in the book mirrors the journey starting with lots of simple sentences and then moving on to more complex ones and equally beginning with fairly straightforward vocabulary and then displaying her acquisition of a broader and more specialised one. Christine felt the book was strong on the process of new foreign language acquisition and its psychological impact on the learner. For Lahiri this meant trying to overcome her tendency towards perfection and learning to recognise that this will all take time. In parts of the book there is more realism about her life in Italy with her family but for Christine perhaps not enough so that the book came across as somewhat dry and the reading of it in both languages a rather academic process which only intermittently gave her pleasure.
Notes from the Booklovers Meeting Held on 24th May 2022
Present: Denise, Di, Vanessa, Alan, Christine
Denise read Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition and Compromise (2021) by Joshua Yaffa. This is a contemporary account of Putin’s Russia and how you can live within a system which is inimical to you.
The book has been described as ‘groundbreaking portrait of modern Russia and the inner struggles of the people who sustain Putin’s rule.’ It won the Orwell Prize for political writing.
‘Joshua Yaffa introduces readers to some of the country’s most remarkable figures—from politicians and entrepreneurs to artists and historians—who have built their careers and constructed their identities in the shadow of the Putin system. Torn between their own ambitions and the omnipresent demands of the state, each walks an individual path of compromise. Some muster cunning and cynicism to extract all manner of benefits and privileges from those in power. Others, finding themselves to be less adept, are left broken and demoralized. What binds them together is the tangled web of dilemmas and contradictions they face. A Moscow correspondent of The New Yorker, Yaffa offers urgent lessons about the true nature of modern authoritarianism.’ (Publisher’s website) ‘A very good read’ according to Denise.
Di read The Vanishing Half (2020) by Brit Bennett which is about twins who grow up together in the deep south of the United States. At sixteen they run away and grow up in entirely different circumstances – one lives with her black daughter in her hometown and the other passes for white with her white husband who is unaware of her past. The book covers the 1950s to the 1990s. Eventually their own daughters paths cross and there is a reconciliation. The book isn’t just about racism but is a fascinating account of twins who are non-identical and how this plays out genetically. Above all it looks at the influence of the past and how this might shape a person’s decisions, desires and expectations. It also explores why people sometimes feel compelled to reject their origins.
Di also read The Improbability of Love (2015) by Hannah Rothschild, a novel which explores the tumultuous London Art world seen through the eyes of the lovelorn Annie McDee who comes across a dirty painting, a lost Watteau in a junk shop. Having bought the book she is then pursued by various dubious art collectors. Rothchild is a Trustee of the National Gallery and knows her subject well. The book was very well received and was joint winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. It has been translated into more than ten languages and was chosen as one of Waterstones "Books of the Year".
Vanessa read A Week in December (2007) by Sebastian Faulks The book deals with the lives of seven major characters living in London who interconnect but who don’t get together in the novel until its end.
Over seven days in the week before Christmas we follow the lives of these characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. The novel deals with modern urban life, greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age and the fragmentation of society. It is a humorous book but also serious in that it shows the role of hedge fund managers and how they caused the financial crash of 2009. By the end of the novel, the characters are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit.
Alan read Hans Brinker (1865) by Mary Mapes Dodge. Alan explained to us that he has had a long love of and curiosity about The Netherlands and frequently seeks out books on this subject. The interesting thing about this book is that it is essentially an American creation, its author, although of Dutch descent, had never been to that country until after the book’s publication. It became a children’s classic. The story of Hans Brinker revolves around a beautiful pair of silver skates. Hans, 15, and his younger sister Gretel wanted to enter the ice-skating race on the canal, but all they have is homemade wooden skates. Hans’s father fell from the dyke where he worked as a sluicer, and he is so severely injured that he cannot work. Mrs. Brinker, Hans, and Gretel have to work to survive and life is a struggle. Hans who has saved money for new skates for the races offers this to a famous surgeon for his father’s operation. In the end the surgeon operates for free and Hans buys good skates. However, he allows a friend to win the race as he has more pressing needs. The book has a happy ending and Alan enjoyed it thoroughly.
In the years after publication American tourists repeatedly ask to see the dyke in Holland and so insistently that in 1950, that the Dutch Bureau for Tourism decided to place a statue of Hans Brinker by the sculptor Grada Rueb at Spaarndam.
Christine was in the middle of reading In Parenthesis (1937) by David Jones. Technically this is a novel-length prose poem. The poem won the Hawthornden Prize and the admiration of writers such as W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot who, as its publisher at Faber, considered it ‘a work of genius’. The work is based on Jones's own experience as an infantryman, who,in the book is the English Private John Ball who is fighting with an English-Welsh regiment. It begins with John Ball’s embarkation from England and ends seven months later with the assault on Mametz Wood during the Battle of the Somme. The work is highly allusive and has copious end-notes to explain some of those. It ranges in tone from formal to Cockney colloquial and military slang. Despite its highly creative use of language it generally readable. It has recently been made into an opera by the Welsh National Opera. Christine is not sure that she will complete her reading of it but feels that an acquaintance with it has enhanced her knowledge of the literature of The Great War.
Denise read Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition and Compromise (2021) by Joshua Yaffa. This is a contemporary account of Putin’s Russia and how you can live within a system which is inimical to you.
The book has been described as ‘groundbreaking portrait of modern Russia and the inner struggles of the people who sustain Putin’s rule.’ It won the Orwell Prize for political writing.
‘Joshua Yaffa introduces readers to some of the country’s most remarkable figures—from politicians and entrepreneurs to artists and historians—who have built their careers and constructed their identities in the shadow of the Putin system. Torn between their own ambitions and the omnipresent demands of the state, each walks an individual path of compromise. Some muster cunning and cynicism to extract all manner of benefits and privileges from those in power. Others, finding themselves to be less adept, are left broken and demoralized. What binds them together is the tangled web of dilemmas and contradictions they face. A Moscow correspondent of The New Yorker, Yaffa offers urgent lessons about the true nature of modern authoritarianism.’ (Publisher’s website) ‘A very good read’ according to Denise.
Di read The Vanishing Half (2020) by Brit Bennett which is about twins who grow up together in the deep south of the United States. At sixteen they run away and grow up in entirely different circumstances – one lives with her black daughter in her hometown and the other passes for white with her white husband who is unaware of her past. The book covers the 1950s to the 1990s. Eventually their own daughters paths cross and there is a reconciliation. The book isn’t just about racism but is a fascinating account of twins who are non-identical and how this plays out genetically. Above all it looks at the influence of the past and how this might shape a person’s decisions, desires and expectations. It also explores why people sometimes feel compelled to reject their origins.
Di also read The Improbability of Love (2015) by Hannah Rothschild, a novel which explores the tumultuous London Art world seen through the eyes of the lovelorn Annie McDee who comes across a dirty painting, a lost Watteau in a junk shop. Having bought the book she is then pursued by various dubious art collectors. Rothchild is a Trustee of the National Gallery and knows her subject well. The book was very well received and was joint winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. It has been translated into more than ten languages and was chosen as one of Waterstones "Books of the Year".
Vanessa read A Week in December (2007) by Sebastian Faulks The book deals with the lives of seven major characters living in London who interconnect but who don’t get together in the novel until its end.
Over seven days in the week before Christmas we follow the lives of these characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. The novel deals with modern urban life, greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age and the fragmentation of society. It is a humorous book but also serious in that it shows the role of hedge fund managers and how they caused the financial crash of 2009. By the end of the novel, the characters are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit.
Alan read Hans Brinker (1865) by Mary Mapes Dodge. Alan explained to us that he has had a long love of and curiosity about The Netherlands and frequently seeks out books on this subject. The interesting thing about this book is that it is essentially an American creation, its author, although of Dutch descent, had never been to that country until after the book’s publication. It became a children’s classic. The story of Hans Brinker revolves around a beautiful pair of silver skates. Hans, 15, and his younger sister Gretel wanted to enter the ice-skating race on the canal, but all they have is homemade wooden skates. Hans’s father fell from the dyke where he worked as a sluicer, and he is so severely injured that he cannot work. Mrs. Brinker, Hans, and Gretel have to work to survive and life is a struggle. Hans who has saved money for new skates for the races offers this to a famous surgeon for his father’s operation. In the end the surgeon operates for free and Hans buys good skates. However, he allows a friend to win the race as he has more pressing needs. The book has a happy ending and Alan enjoyed it thoroughly.
In the years after publication American tourists repeatedly ask to see the dyke in Holland and so insistently that in 1950, that the Dutch Bureau for Tourism decided to place a statue of Hans Brinker by the sculptor Grada Rueb at Spaarndam.
Christine was in the middle of reading In Parenthesis (1937) by David Jones. Technically this is a novel-length prose poem. The poem won the Hawthornden Prize and the admiration of writers such as W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot who, as its publisher at Faber, considered it ‘a work of genius’. The work is based on Jones's own experience as an infantryman, who,in the book is the English Private John Ball who is fighting with an English-Welsh regiment. It begins with John Ball’s embarkation from England and ends seven months later with the assault on Mametz Wood during the Battle of the Somme. The work is highly allusive and has copious end-notes to explain some of those. It ranges in tone from formal to Cockney colloquial and military slang. Despite its highly creative use of language it generally readable. It has recently been made into an opera by the Welsh National Opera. Christine is not sure that she will complete her reading of it but feels that an acquaintance with it has enhanced her knowledge of the literature of The Great War.
Notes from the Booklovers Meeting Held on 17th March 2022
Present: Alan, Christine, Denise, Vanessa
Denise read: The Throwaway Children (2015) by Diney Costello. Set in 1948 this is the story of two sisters sent first to an English, then an Australian orphanage in the aftermath of the Second World War. They are only nine and five years old when their mother marries a violent bully and is persuaded by him to send the girls to an orphanage. She believes that this is in their interest not realising that this will have a drastic impact on their lives. The Children’s Commissioner decides that they, and others and without their families’ consent should be sent to a sister institution in Australia. Rosie who is beautiful ends up committing suicide. Her sister Rita fares better and it is through her voice that the story is told.
This is a fictionalised account of true events. From the 1920s to 1970s, more than 100,000 British boys and girls were sent to Commonwealth countries including Australia as part of an unprecedented child migration program. In reality thousands of these children were forced into labour at remote workhouses where they were often physically and sexually abused. In 2015 a record $24 million compensation was made to ex-students. A disastrous social experiment. Denise felt that the story was not particularly well-written and not a particularly noteworthy account of what is a dreadful story.
Christine read: Blue Postcards (20210 by Douglas Bruton. Set in Paris the 1950s this atmospheric novella, longlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2022, delicately intertwines three narratives. It uses as a leitmotif the passage of swallows through a summer to mirror the events one year in Paris. It is a meditation on truth and fiction, memory and is a haunting read reaching as it does back into the past and the fate of Jews in Paris as well giving us echoes of Paris in the 50s. The ending is unpredictable but entirely appropriate. The three narratives concern the narrator and his relationship with a young woman, Michelle, who sells postcards from a stall at the base of the Eiffel Tower and from whom he buys a card of Yves Klein’s blue paintings, Henri, a Jewish tailor, who reflects on the fate of his parents in Paris in the war and his relationship with a lady who brings blue flowers and bread to him each day, and finally Yves Klein, the painter, who made his name through his focus on the colour blue. Whole paintings were dedicated to the representation of this colour, named by him ‘International Klein Blue.’ Henri makes a suit for Klein, and as with each item he confects, sews a blue Tekhelet thread hidden in the trousers. Tekhelet is the Hebrew for a dye highly prized by ancient Mediterranean civilizations Believed to have been made from ground Hillazon shells, it was viewed as a holy thread that was incorporated into priestly clothing and the tapestries in the Tabernacle.
It is the structure of this novella that makes it unusual and highly readable. Consisting of 500 postcard length paragraphs it provides an alternative way of reading. Episodic yes, but due to the interlinking of the three narratives it does not come across as bitty and key images and symbols thread their way through the whole. Christine found it a most engaging and moving read.
Alan read: Love In The Time Of Cholera (1985, translated 1988) ) by Nobel prize-winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marques. Alan felt that this novel has the qualities of a nineteenth century novel. It tells a love story and is set in an unidentified city in Columbia where the author was born. The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's Aunt Escolástica. They exchange love letters. But once Fermina's father, Lorenzo Daza, finds out about the two, he forces his daughter to stop seeing Flore a modern doctor, committed to the eradication of cholera. Meanwhile Florentino having sworn to stay faithful to Fermina, lives a live of promiscuity but makes sure that his former lover will never find out. Her own husband is likewise a philanderer and this complicates the story – despite this, Florentino’s love is spiritually chaste and after Urbino’s death resulting from a fall from a ladder while rescuing his pet parrot from a mango tree (!) he proclaims his love for Fermina and says he has been faithful. After he confesses to one affair, Fermina agrees to give him a second chance and their love blossoms in old age.
Alan says that this is not a classic love story but is so well told, not so much about love but about the way people live their lives. It has echoes of the Roman satirical poet Juvenal (the name the author gives Urbino) and like him he does provides a savage dissection of the society in which the story takes place. Thomas Pynchon, the American novelist writing in a the New York Times, argued that "This novel is also revolutionary in daring to suggest that vows of love made under a presumption of immortality – youthful idiocy, to some – may yet be honoured, much later in life when we ought to know better, in the face of the undeniable, and describes it as a “shining and heartbreaking novel."
Vanessa read: The Madhouse At The End Of The Earth: The Belgica’s Journey Into The Dark Antarctic Night (2021) by Julian Sancton. Vanessa is drawn to stories about ice and cold and found this account of the disastrous polar expedition very engrossing. It was already doomed before it started as it was short of funding and could be described as having a motley crew although it did have a good captain in the form of the Belgian, Adrien de Gerlache, who set sail aboard the Belgica, fuelled by a profound sense of adventure and dreams. However he leads the expedition to disaster. Even before the ship cleared South America, it had already broken down, run aground, and lost several key crew members, leaving behind a group with dubious experience for such an ambitious voyage. Among the crew was Frederick Cook, an American doctor who saved many of the crew from the gruesome symptoms of scurvy by finding ways to provide them with vitamin C (Lime juice and the flesh of penguins and seals) and whose relentless optimism buoyed their spirits through the long, dark polar night. Then there was Roald Amundsen, a young Norwegian who went on to become a famous polar explorer in his own right, exceeding de Gerlache's wildest dreams by leading the first expeditions to traverse the Northwest Passage and reach the South Pole.
Vanessa was enthralled by this account feeling it reads like a novel. However, she said it was an extremely well researched account based on first-hand accounts from diaries kept by the as well as the ship’s logbook.
Denise read: The Throwaway Children (2015) by Diney Costello. Set in 1948 this is the story of two sisters sent first to an English, then an Australian orphanage in the aftermath of the Second World War. They are only nine and five years old when their mother marries a violent bully and is persuaded by him to send the girls to an orphanage. She believes that this is in their interest not realising that this will have a drastic impact on their lives. The Children’s Commissioner decides that they, and others and without their families’ consent should be sent to a sister institution in Australia. Rosie who is beautiful ends up committing suicide. Her sister Rita fares better and it is through her voice that the story is told.
This is a fictionalised account of true events. From the 1920s to 1970s, more than 100,000 British boys and girls were sent to Commonwealth countries including Australia as part of an unprecedented child migration program. In reality thousands of these children were forced into labour at remote workhouses where they were often physically and sexually abused. In 2015 a record $24 million compensation was made to ex-students. A disastrous social experiment. Denise felt that the story was not particularly well-written and not a particularly noteworthy account of what is a dreadful story.
Christine read: Blue Postcards (20210 by Douglas Bruton. Set in Paris the 1950s this atmospheric novella, longlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2022, delicately intertwines three narratives. It uses as a leitmotif the passage of swallows through a summer to mirror the events one year in Paris. It is a meditation on truth and fiction, memory and is a haunting read reaching as it does back into the past and the fate of Jews in Paris as well giving us echoes of Paris in the 50s. The ending is unpredictable but entirely appropriate. The three narratives concern the narrator and his relationship with a young woman, Michelle, who sells postcards from a stall at the base of the Eiffel Tower and from whom he buys a card of Yves Klein’s blue paintings, Henri, a Jewish tailor, who reflects on the fate of his parents in Paris in the war and his relationship with a lady who brings blue flowers and bread to him each day, and finally Yves Klein, the painter, who made his name through his focus on the colour blue. Whole paintings were dedicated to the representation of this colour, named by him ‘International Klein Blue.’ Henri makes a suit for Klein, and as with each item he confects, sews a blue Tekhelet thread hidden in the trousers. Tekhelet is the Hebrew for a dye highly prized by ancient Mediterranean civilizations Believed to have been made from ground Hillazon shells, it was viewed as a holy thread that was incorporated into priestly clothing and the tapestries in the Tabernacle.
It is the structure of this novella that makes it unusual and highly readable. Consisting of 500 postcard length paragraphs it provides an alternative way of reading. Episodic yes, but due to the interlinking of the three narratives it does not come across as bitty and key images and symbols thread their way through the whole. Christine found it a most engaging and moving read.
Alan read: Love In The Time Of Cholera (1985, translated 1988) ) by Nobel prize-winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marques. Alan felt that this novel has the qualities of a nineteenth century novel. It tells a love story and is set in an unidentified city in Columbia where the author was born. The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's Aunt Escolástica. They exchange love letters. But once Fermina's father, Lorenzo Daza, finds out about the two, he forces his daughter to stop seeing Flore a modern doctor, committed to the eradication of cholera. Meanwhile Florentino having sworn to stay faithful to Fermina, lives a live of promiscuity but makes sure that his former lover will never find out. Her own husband is likewise a philanderer and this complicates the story – despite this, Florentino’s love is spiritually chaste and after Urbino’s death resulting from a fall from a ladder while rescuing his pet parrot from a mango tree (!) he proclaims his love for Fermina and says he has been faithful. After he confesses to one affair, Fermina agrees to give him a second chance and their love blossoms in old age.
Alan says that this is not a classic love story but is so well told, not so much about love but about the way people live their lives. It has echoes of the Roman satirical poet Juvenal (the name the author gives Urbino) and like him he does provides a savage dissection of the society in which the story takes place. Thomas Pynchon, the American novelist writing in a the New York Times, argued that "This novel is also revolutionary in daring to suggest that vows of love made under a presumption of immortality – youthful idiocy, to some – may yet be honoured, much later in life when we ought to know better, in the face of the undeniable, and describes it as a “shining and heartbreaking novel."
Vanessa read: The Madhouse At The End Of The Earth: The Belgica’s Journey Into The Dark Antarctic Night (2021) by Julian Sancton. Vanessa is drawn to stories about ice and cold and found this account of the disastrous polar expedition very engrossing. It was already doomed before it started as it was short of funding and could be described as having a motley crew although it did have a good captain in the form of the Belgian, Adrien de Gerlache, who set sail aboard the Belgica, fuelled by a profound sense of adventure and dreams. However he leads the expedition to disaster. Even before the ship cleared South America, it had already broken down, run aground, and lost several key crew members, leaving behind a group with dubious experience for such an ambitious voyage. Among the crew was Frederick Cook, an American doctor who saved many of the crew from the gruesome symptoms of scurvy by finding ways to provide them with vitamin C (Lime juice and the flesh of penguins and seals) and whose relentless optimism buoyed their spirits through the long, dark polar night. Then there was Roald Amundsen, a young Norwegian who went on to become a famous polar explorer in his own right, exceeding de Gerlache's wildest dreams by leading the first expeditions to traverse the Northwest Passage and reach the South Pole.
Vanessa was enthralled by this account feeling it reads like a novel. However, she said it was an extremely well researched account based on first-hand accounts from diaries kept by the as well as the ship’s logbook.
Notes from the Booklovers Meeting Held on 17th February 2022
Present: Alan, Christine, Vanessa, Denise
Alan read: An Honest Thief (1848) a collection of short stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky. He enjoyed it for its humour and felt the stories would provide a suitable introduction to the longer works as they encompass the author’s primary concerns, i.e. human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of nineteenth century Russia. Three stories stood out for Alan: Un Unpleasant Predicament a satirical story recounting the escapades of a Russian civil servant who, after too much to drink, tells of his intention to embrace a philosophy based on kindness to those in lower status social positions and how he puts this into action. The second story Alan liked is Beaumont in which the world of the dead is explored; and finally, The Crocodile which he found particularly humorous. In this story Ivan Matveich with his wife visits a department store in St Petersburg to see a crocodile that has been put on display by a German entrepreneur. ‘After teasing the crocodile, Ivan Matveich is swallowed alive. He finds the inside of the crocodile to be quite comfortable and from it is able to gain an objective view of the world. The animal's owner refuses to allow it to be cut open despite pleas from Ivan’s wife. As the story ends, she is contemplating divorce and Ivan resolves to carry on his work as a civil servant as best he can from inside the crocodile.’ (Wikipedia)
Christine read: A Single Thread (2019) by Tracey Chevalier. She described this as a multi-layered book with some flaws. It is set in1932 and the central character personifies a spinster of that period. Bereaved by her fiancé’s death in the First World War and suffering from attitudes to spinsterhood and women generally at that time, she escapes her unpleasant mother (herself also a victim of bereavement due to WW1) she moves from Southampton to Winchester. There she, with difficulty, she forms a new social group based on the Broderers of the Cathedral and her workplace, an insurance office. On the plus side Christine felt Chevalier writes strongly about women’s roles at the time but that additional aspects of the novel, i.e. detailed accounts of embroidery and of bell-ringing practice and their histories sat a little heavily and interrupted the flow of the narrative. An additional theme is that of lesbianism and social attitudes at the time. Violet herself has a relationship with a married man which adds a poignancy to the story as she can never be with him. Despite to her mind, the overly researched nature of this book, Christine still found it a compelling read and felt it a fitting reminder of the grief which overlaid that era and which has some relevance now in this post-pandemic world.
Vanessa read May We Be Forgiven (2012) by a.m. holmes. A very funny novel according to Vanessa by an American author none of us were familiar with. It’s the story of twenty-first-century domestic life and the possibility of personal transformation. It concerns two brothers, Harold and George. Harold has spent his life jealous of his brother who is taller, smarter and more successful and has a covetable wife, two kids and a beautiful home. Harry is an under-achieving academic and is aware that his brother also has a murderous temper. George loses control and the result is an act of violence so shocking that both brothers are hurled into entirely new lives. Harry finds himself father to George’s children. One reviewer sums it up as follows: ‘The rest of the book is a digital-age picaresque, a series of bizarre, episodic adventures. People are hospitalised repeatedly; sacked, kidnapped, and incarcerated in sinister experimental correctional facilities. There is child abuse, abuse of prescription drugs, internet sex, and a swingers' party. There are subplots to do with a murdered woman, a Bar Mitzvah in a South African village, and the discovery that Richard Nixon wrote dark short stories. The overall direction of travel, though, is towards the light. The children, says Harry, push him into being "a better version of myself", and an alternative family unit forms under his supervision. Dark satire gives way to spiritual uplift.’ We were all intrigued by Vanessa’s account of this book.
Denise read Just Another Mzungu Passing Through (2008) by Jim Bowen. This book is a fictionalised account of Jim Bowen’s (in the book he is called Griff) journey from a school in Cardiff having been threatened with a knife by a pupil, to Nairobi. He makes the decision to change his life following this episode and also his divorce, and becomes a teacher at a small struggling school, Greenfields. A Mzungu is Swahili for a white person arriving in Kenya who is seen as privileged and naïve though it is not necessarily pejorative, and the book is concerned with how Jim has to learn the hard way as he encounters floods, corruption, urban dangers and hair-raising journeys such as one to Mombasa. He is robbed, gets caught in riots and experiences Kenya in a way most tourists won't dream of. Now new roads are being built in Nairobi and elsewhere by Italians and Chinese, but it continues to be inadvisable to walk alone in Nairobi or any other large town. Denise found the story interesting and a good account of learning about life and oneself the hard way.
Alan read: An Honest Thief (1848) a collection of short stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky. He enjoyed it for its humour and felt the stories would provide a suitable introduction to the longer works as they encompass the author’s primary concerns, i.e. human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of nineteenth century Russia. Three stories stood out for Alan: Un Unpleasant Predicament a satirical story recounting the escapades of a Russian civil servant who, after too much to drink, tells of his intention to embrace a philosophy based on kindness to those in lower status social positions and how he puts this into action. The second story Alan liked is Beaumont in which the world of the dead is explored; and finally, The Crocodile which he found particularly humorous. In this story Ivan Matveich with his wife visits a department store in St Petersburg to see a crocodile that has been put on display by a German entrepreneur. ‘After teasing the crocodile, Ivan Matveich is swallowed alive. He finds the inside of the crocodile to be quite comfortable and from it is able to gain an objective view of the world. The animal's owner refuses to allow it to be cut open despite pleas from Ivan’s wife. As the story ends, she is contemplating divorce and Ivan resolves to carry on his work as a civil servant as best he can from inside the crocodile.’ (Wikipedia)
Christine read: A Single Thread (2019) by Tracey Chevalier. She described this as a multi-layered book with some flaws. It is set in1932 and the central character personifies a spinster of that period. Bereaved by her fiancé’s death in the First World War and suffering from attitudes to spinsterhood and women generally at that time, she escapes her unpleasant mother (herself also a victim of bereavement due to WW1) she moves from Southampton to Winchester. There she, with difficulty, she forms a new social group based on the Broderers of the Cathedral and her workplace, an insurance office. On the plus side Christine felt Chevalier writes strongly about women’s roles at the time but that additional aspects of the novel, i.e. detailed accounts of embroidery and of bell-ringing practice and their histories sat a little heavily and interrupted the flow of the narrative. An additional theme is that of lesbianism and social attitudes at the time. Violet herself has a relationship with a married man which adds a poignancy to the story as she can never be with him. Despite to her mind, the overly researched nature of this book, Christine still found it a compelling read and felt it a fitting reminder of the grief which overlaid that era and which has some relevance now in this post-pandemic world.
Vanessa read May We Be Forgiven (2012) by a.m. holmes. A very funny novel according to Vanessa by an American author none of us were familiar with. It’s the story of twenty-first-century domestic life and the possibility of personal transformation. It concerns two brothers, Harold and George. Harold has spent his life jealous of his brother who is taller, smarter and more successful and has a covetable wife, two kids and a beautiful home. Harry is an under-achieving academic and is aware that his brother also has a murderous temper. George loses control and the result is an act of violence so shocking that both brothers are hurled into entirely new lives. Harry finds himself father to George’s children. One reviewer sums it up as follows: ‘The rest of the book is a digital-age picaresque, a series of bizarre, episodic adventures. People are hospitalised repeatedly; sacked, kidnapped, and incarcerated in sinister experimental correctional facilities. There is child abuse, abuse of prescription drugs, internet sex, and a swingers' party. There are subplots to do with a murdered woman, a Bar Mitzvah in a South African village, and the discovery that Richard Nixon wrote dark short stories. The overall direction of travel, though, is towards the light. The children, says Harry, push him into being "a better version of myself", and an alternative family unit forms under his supervision. Dark satire gives way to spiritual uplift.’ We were all intrigued by Vanessa’s account of this book.
Denise read Just Another Mzungu Passing Through (2008) by Jim Bowen. This book is a fictionalised account of Jim Bowen’s (in the book he is called Griff) journey from a school in Cardiff having been threatened with a knife by a pupil, to Nairobi. He makes the decision to change his life following this episode and also his divorce, and becomes a teacher at a small struggling school, Greenfields. A Mzungu is Swahili for a white person arriving in Kenya who is seen as privileged and naïve though it is not necessarily pejorative, and the book is concerned with how Jim has to learn the hard way as he encounters floods, corruption, urban dangers and hair-raising journeys such as one to Mombasa. He is robbed, gets caught in riots and experiences Kenya in a way most tourists won't dream of. Now new roads are being built in Nairobi and elsewhere by Italians and Chinese, but it continues to be inadvisable to walk alone in Nairobi or any other large town. Denise found the story interesting and a good account of learning about life and oneself the hard way.
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS’ MEETING HELD ON 20th JANUARY 2022
Christine read: Hungry (2020) by Grace Dent and thoroughly enjoyed this memoir by the journalist and restaurant critic. ‘Hungry’ refers not just to the fact that Grace was always hungry as a child but her hunger extended to wanting more than her existence in a lower middle-class household in Carlisle growing up in the seventies and eighties could offer her. She is a witty writer and is known for her general journalism as well as for a number of teen/young adult books. She is also known in her role as a judge on BBC’s Masterchef. This account of life in a happy though emotionally unexpressive and semi-functional family (her father had a secret second family with two daughters in addition to Grace and brother) was often humorous particular in its references to the diet of the Dent household which was described by the author as ‘beige’. This book is also a social history of food retailing moving from the corner shop to early supermarkets and then to the hypermarket in the form of Asda. Grace, a bright girl, makes it to Stirling University to study English and gradually forges a career as a journalist. Her interest in food is omnipresent and she charts her progress from living off Campbell’s soups to fine dining and ultimately the opportunity for a career as a food critic. The mood turns darker towards the end as it chronicles her father’s descent into dementia and her mother’s death from cancer. Christine felt that it is a book which offers the reader a range of insights into the social history of Britain in the past fifty years as well as deeply affecting emotional insights into one woman and her family’s lives.
Vanessa read: Kintu (2014) by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. Vanessa is interested in books about Africa and was fascinated by this family saga (the author’s debut novel) which begins in 1750. After accidentally killing his adopted son, Kidda, a Kingsman, has to go on a long journey. The boy’s real father unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. Vanessa enjoyed the fact that this book not only tells the story of the descendants affected by the curse but also of the Ugandan nation up until 2004. It touches on Idi Amin’s time of rule. In this ambitious tale of a clan and of a nation and blending oral tradition, myth, folktale and history, Makumbi weaves together the stories of Kintu’s descendants as they seek to break from the burden of their shared past and reconcile the inheritance of tradition and the modern world that is their future.
Simon is in the process of reading: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (1966) by Robert Heinlein. A Sci-Fi classic, this novel tells of a lunar colony's revolt against absentee rule from Earth. The novel expresses and discusses libertarian ideals. It is respected for its credible presentation of a comprehensively imagined future human society on both the Earth and the Moon. It was originally serialized monthly in Worlds of If and the book was nominated for various awards for Best Novel in 1967. Three million inhabits live underground on the moon and with men outnumbering women two to one polyandry and polygamy are rife. The Moon is the main provider of grain for Earth. Simon found the characters interesting, particularly the main instigator of the revolutionary overthrow of Earth - Garcia "Mannie" O'Kelly-Davis, a computer technician who discovers that HOLMES IV the computer which runs the colony has achieved self-awareness and developed a sense of humour. Mannie names it "Mike" after Mycroft Holmes, brother of Sherlock Holmes, and they become friends thus enabling Mannie to plan a revolution. Although an anarchist he considers carefully the different types of government, their merits and demerits.
The book, believed to be Heinlein’s finest has become a cult novel. It popularized the acronym TANSTAAFL ("There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. A film has long been in the process of production.
Alan read: Hide And Seek (1854) by Wilkie Collins. This is Collins’ third novel published at the time of the Crimean war. He dedicated it to Charles Dickens, his friend and mentor. At the centre of Hide and Seek there is a secret. Why should the apparently respectable painter Valentine Blyth refuse to account for the presence in his household of the beautiful deaf and dumb girl known as Madonna? It is not until his young friend Zack Thorpe, who is in rebellion against his strict father, gets into bad company and meets a mysterious stranger that the secret of Madonna can be unravelled. Wilkie Collins's third novel, dedicated to his life-long friend Dickens, is a story in which excitement is combined with charm and humour in its mixture of the everyday and the extraordinary, Hide And Seek forms a bridge between the domestic novel and the sensational fiction for which Collins later became famous. Alan enjoyed its ‘amazing’ insights into the London of that time and also into its art scene. He feels that it is a very readable and well-constructed book and that as a writer Collins was ahead of his time, describing him an author for ‘tired readers’.
Denise read The Salt Path (2018) by Raynor Winn. This book has been a great success and is the unusual story of a couple, Raynor and Moth, who have effectively, through a bad investment and legal proceedings, lost everything and are left homeless. With the bailiffs at the door and with her husband aged who has received the brutal diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration, or CBD: an incurable degenerative and chronic disease.
Rather than apply for council accommodation they make the decision to walk the 650 mile coastal path of the south-west of England. Buying cheap camping gear, they set off and experience an amazing journey. Their journey is filled with many ups and downs yet the freedom of wild camping, swimming in the moonlit sea and surviving on fudge and pasties allows them to come to terms with their situation and learn to hope again: “Like the windblown trees along our route, we had been re-formed by the elements.” Through the healing power of nature Moth’s health gradually improves.
Denise found the book to be both uplifting and hilarious, a real triumph of faith over adversity. Since 2019 the couple have been living on a farm in Cornwall offered to them as a rental by its owner who was unable to continue with her plans to restore it. This they have now taken on and are just about to embark on another long-distance walk. Raynor has published a sequel to The Salt Path called The Wild Silence telling of this continuation and published in 2021.
Vanessa read: Kintu (2014) by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. Vanessa is interested in books about Africa and was fascinated by this family saga (the author’s debut novel) which begins in 1750. After accidentally killing his adopted son, Kidda, a Kingsman, has to go on a long journey. The boy’s real father unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. Vanessa enjoyed the fact that this book not only tells the story of the descendants affected by the curse but also of the Ugandan nation up until 2004. It touches on Idi Amin’s time of rule. In this ambitious tale of a clan and of a nation and blending oral tradition, myth, folktale and history, Makumbi weaves together the stories of Kintu’s descendants as they seek to break from the burden of their shared past and reconcile the inheritance of tradition and the modern world that is their future.
Simon is in the process of reading: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (1966) by Robert Heinlein. A Sci-Fi classic, this novel tells of a lunar colony's revolt against absentee rule from Earth. The novel expresses and discusses libertarian ideals. It is respected for its credible presentation of a comprehensively imagined future human society on both the Earth and the Moon. It was originally serialized monthly in Worlds of If and the book was nominated for various awards for Best Novel in 1967. Three million inhabits live underground on the moon and with men outnumbering women two to one polyandry and polygamy are rife. The Moon is the main provider of grain for Earth. Simon found the characters interesting, particularly the main instigator of the revolutionary overthrow of Earth - Garcia "Mannie" O'Kelly-Davis, a computer technician who discovers that HOLMES IV the computer which runs the colony has achieved self-awareness and developed a sense of humour. Mannie names it "Mike" after Mycroft Holmes, brother of Sherlock Holmes, and they become friends thus enabling Mannie to plan a revolution. Although an anarchist he considers carefully the different types of government, their merits and demerits.
The book, believed to be Heinlein’s finest has become a cult novel. It popularized the acronym TANSTAAFL ("There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. A film has long been in the process of production.
Alan read: Hide And Seek (1854) by Wilkie Collins. This is Collins’ third novel published at the time of the Crimean war. He dedicated it to Charles Dickens, his friend and mentor. At the centre of Hide and Seek there is a secret. Why should the apparently respectable painter Valentine Blyth refuse to account for the presence in his household of the beautiful deaf and dumb girl known as Madonna? It is not until his young friend Zack Thorpe, who is in rebellion against his strict father, gets into bad company and meets a mysterious stranger that the secret of Madonna can be unravelled. Wilkie Collins's third novel, dedicated to his life-long friend Dickens, is a story in which excitement is combined with charm and humour in its mixture of the everyday and the extraordinary, Hide And Seek forms a bridge between the domestic novel and the sensational fiction for which Collins later became famous. Alan enjoyed its ‘amazing’ insights into the London of that time and also into its art scene. He feels that it is a very readable and well-constructed book and that as a writer Collins was ahead of his time, describing him an author for ‘tired readers’.
Denise read The Salt Path (2018) by Raynor Winn. This book has been a great success and is the unusual story of a couple, Raynor and Moth, who have effectively, through a bad investment and legal proceedings, lost everything and are left homeless. With the bailiffs at the door and with her husband aged who has received the brutal diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration, or CBD: an incurable degenerative and chronic disease.
Rather than apply for council accommodation they make the decision to walk the 650 mile coastal path of the south-west of England. Buying cheap camping gear, they set off and experience an amazing journey. Their journey is filled with many ups and downs yet the freedom of wild camping, swimming in the moonlit sea and surviving on fudge and pasties allows them to come to terms with their situation and learn to hope again: “Like the windblown trees along our route, we had been re-formed by the elements.” Through the healing power of nature Moth’s health gradually improves.
Denise found the book to be both uplifting and hilarious, a real triumph of faith over adversity. Since 2019 the couple have been living on a farm in Cornwall offered to them as a rental by its owner who was unable to continue with her plans to restore it. This they have now taken on and are just about to embark on another long-distance walk. Raynor has published a sequel to The Salt Path called The Wild Silence telling of this continuation and published in 2021.
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS’ MEETING HELD ON 22nd JULY 2021
Present: Di, Sue, Alan, Denise, Christine
.
Sue read: An American Marriage (1918) by Tayari Jones. This is the story of Celestial and Roy are newly wed and starting their life together full of promise. He is a young executive and she is artist, a doll maker. However an unforeseen set of circumstances turns their life upside down. Spending the night in a motel, Roy chats to another woman at a drinks machine. Subsequently, Roy and Celestial have an argument when he announces to her that his father is not actually is real father provoking concern in Celestial that he hasn’t been truthful to her. Roy is arrested for the rape of the woman he met earlier in the evening and is subsequently sentenced to twelve years for a crime he didn’t commit. Celestial finds herself alone and unhappy and takes comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. She finds it difficult to stay faithful to their marriage as she cannot bear the shame of Roy’s conviction. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together only to find that Celestial is pregnant with Andre’s baby and no longer romantically attached to Roy. Sue found the book well constructed with sections in the voices of the main characters and good use of letters. She said it also highlighted the inconsistent approaches to black Americans in terms of the application of the law.
Christine read: I am I am I am - Seventeen Brushes with Death (2018) by Maggie O’Farrell. This book falls into the autobiography / memoir categories and is precisely what the title (a quote from Sylvia Plath) says. It consists of a series of essays detailing each occasion when the author came near to death including an encounter with a murderer on a walk in Scotland, haemorrhage during childbirth, miscarriage, childhood encephalitis, amoebic dysentery and an ill-advised leap off a harbour wall into the sea as a teen. It also dedicates one chapter to her daughter who has a severe immune disorder that has, as detailed here, repeatedly requires life-saving treatment. The idea for this book which arose from her daughter’s circumstances is O’Farrell’s way of letting her child know that, in facing down death on a regular basis, she is not alone. She is showing her that life is still possible. The different episodes certainly have different tones and in Christine’s opinion are beautifully written and ultimately life affirming. They reveal the life of a writer who demonstrates resilience and the ability to communicate without self-pity and gives encouragement to others not to ultimately be defined by such episodes in life. It certainly encouraged Christine to review certain events in her own life and feel grateful for survival.
Sue read: Hamnet (2020) by Maggie O’Farrell. This book won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Although it is ostensibly a story about William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, the central protagonist is in fact the boy’s mother known to us as Anne Hathaway but whose name was in fact Agnes and whom O’Farrell here attempts to retrieve from the obscurity of her life. She doesn’t ever mention Shakespeare by name using terms such as “lodger, brother, husband, father, player’ but chooses to focus on Agnes turning her into a rounded character with skills in herbal medicine and a role in her community as one who tends the sick. However this does not stop the plague from reaching her family: “It has come to them, Agnes thinks, from a long way off, from a place of rot and wet and confinement. It has cut a swingeing path for itself through humans and beasts and insects alike; it feeds on pain and unhappiness and grief. It is insatiable, unstoppable, the worst, blackest kind of evil.”
Sue liked the structure of the book and found it ‘very emotional, sensual and descriptive’ and very much about the emotions associated with loss, the central theme of grief being beautifully evoked. It also reveals much about our own concerns and morality.
Alan read Salammbô (1862) by Gustave Flaubert. This book comes after Madame Bovary in Flaubert’s oeuvre. Obsessed with Carthage and the obscure Punic Wars which were mainly fought in Sicily Flaubert wanted to write a novel about it. It is the story of the siege of Carthage in 240–237 b.c. by mercenaries who had not been paid for their help in fighting the Romans. It is also the story of the love of Mathô, one of the mercenaries, for Salammbô, the daughter of Hamilcar, chief magistrate of Carthage, and priestess of the city’s moon goddess. The book was initially a flop and St Beuve castigated Flaubert saying that the author ‘concedes too much pedestal and not enough statue.
Alan said it was unlike any other historical novel he had ever read and that you need stamina to get through it.
Di read Big Brother (2017) by Lionel Shriver. She found this novel extraordinary as the author writes so directly. It draws on Shriver’s own experience of her brother and family relationships. In the novel the main character (a robust character married to a keep fit fanatic. She makes talking dolls. Her brother, Edison, comes to stay for two months and has an eating disorder resulting in morbid obesity. She feels it is her job to keep him on the straight and narrow and takes him to a motel feeding him protein drinks in order to get him to lose weight. However, he goes to a party and gorges himself. The episode at the motel didn’t happen in real life but it is what the author would have liked to have happen. The main character becomes alienated from her husband as she is caught between him and the brother.
Di found the novel very moving with very realistic insights into this sort of problem.
Denise read The Madwomen’s Ball (2021) by Victoria Mas. The story is based on a mental asylum (the Salpetriere asylum) set in a gunpowder factory in 1885. It is an atmospheric novel which deals with the real life Doctor Charcot who deals with hysteric women sent by their fathers to an asylum. The truth is much more complicated - for these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives or strong-willed daughters. Once a year a grand ball is held at the hospital. For the Parisian elite, the Mad Women's Ball is the highlight of the social season; for the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope. Genevieve is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister, she has shunned religion and placed her faith in Doctor Charcot and his new science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugenie, the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family. Because Eugenie has a secret, and she needs Genevieve's help. Their fates will collide on the night of the Mad Women's Ball... there is a plot to get Eugenie out since it is clear that she is not made. Denise thought this was a very, very good story with a very good ending.
.
Sue read: An American Marriage (1918) by Tayari Jones. This is the story of Celestial and Roy are newly wed and starting their life together full of promise. He is a young executive and she is artist, a doll maker. However an unforeseen set of circumstances turns their life upside down. Spending the night in a motel, Roy chats to another woman at a drinks machine. Subsequently, Roy and Celestial have an argument when he announces to her that his father is not actually is real father provoking concern in Celestial that he hasn’t been truthful to her. Roy is arrested for the rape of the woman he met earlier in the evening and is subsequently sentenced to twelve years for a crime he didn’t commit. Celestial finds herself alone and unhappy and takes comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. She finds it difficult to stay faithful to their marriage as she cannot bear the shame of Roy’s conviction. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together only to find that Celestial is pregnant with Andre’s baby and no longer romantically attached to Roy. Sue found the book well constructed with sections in the voices of the main characters and good use of letters. She said it also highlighted the inconsistent approaches to black Americans in terms of the application of the law.
Christine read: I am I am I am - Seventeen Brushes with Death (2018) by Maggie O’Farrell. This book falls into the autobiography / memoir categories and is precisely what the title (a quote from Sylvia Plath) says. It consists of a series of essays detailing each occasion when the author came near to death including an encounter with a murderer on a walk in Scotland, haemorrhage during childbirth, miscarriage, childhood encephalitis, amoebic dysentery and an ill-advised leap off a harbour wall into the sea as a teen. It also dedicates one chapter to her daughter who has a severe immune disorder that has, as detailed here, repeatedly requires life-saving treatment. The idea for this book which arose from her daughter’s circumstances is O’Farrell’s way of letting her child know that, in facing down death on a regular basis, she is not alone. She is showing her that life is still possible. The different episodes certainly have different tones and in Christine’s opinion are beautifully written and ultimately life affirming. They reveal the life of a writer who demonstrates resilience and the ability to communicate without self-pity and gives encouragement to others not to ultimately be defined by such episodes in life. It certainly encouraged Christine to review certain events in her own life and feel grateful for survival.
Sue read: Hamnet (2020) by Maggie O’Farrell. This book won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Although it is ostensibly a story about William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, the central protagonist is in fact the boy’s mother known to us as Anne Hathaway but whose name was in fact Agnes and whom O’Farrell here attempts to retrieve from the obscurity of her life. She doesn’t ever mention Shakespeare by name using terms such as “lodger, brother, husband, father, player’ but chooses to focus on Agnes turning her into a rounded character with skills in herbal medicine and a role in her community as one who tends the sick. However this does not stop the plague from reaching her family: “It has come to them, Agnes thinks, from a long way off, from a place of rot and wet and confinement. It has cut a swingeing path for itself through humans and beasts and insects alike; it feeds on pain and unhappiness and grief. It is insatiable, unstoppable, the worst, blackest kind of evil.”
Sue liked the structure of the book and found it ‘very emotional, sensual and descriptive’ and very much about the emotions associated with loss, the central theme of grief being beautifully evoked. It also reveals much about our own concerns and morality.
Alan read Salammbô (1862) by Gustave Flaubert. This book comes after Madame Bovary in Flaubert’s oeuvre. Obsessed with Carthage and the obscure Punic Wars which were mainly fought in Sicily Flaubert wanted to write a novel about it. It is the story of the siege of Carthage in 240–237 b.c. by mercenaries who had not been paid for their help in fighting the Romans. It is also the story of the love of Mathô, one of the mercenaries, for Salammbô, the daughter of Hamilcar, chief magistrate of Carthage, and priestess of the city’s moon goddess. The book was initially a flop and St Beuve castigated Flaubert saying that the author ‘concedes too much pedestal and not enough statue.
Alan said it was unlike any other historical novel he had ever read and that you need stamina to get through it.
Di read Big Brother (2017) by Lionel Shriver. She found this novel extraordinary as the author writes so directly. It draws on Shriver’s own experience of her brother and family relationships. In the novel the main character (a robust character married to a keep fit fanatic. She makes talking dolls. Her brother, Edison, comes to stay for two months and has an eating disorder resulting in morbid obesity. She feels it is her job to keep him on the straight and narrow and takes him to a motel feeding him protein drinks in order to get him to lose weight. However, he goes to a party and gorges himself. The episode at the motel didn’t happen in real life but it is what the author would have liked to have happen. The main character becomes alienated from her husband as she is caught between him and the brother.
Di found the novel very moving with very realistic insights into this sort of problem.
Denise read The Madwomen’s Ball (2021) by Victoria Mas. The story is based on a mental asylum (the Salpetriere asylum) set in a gunpowder factory in 1885. It is an atmospheric novel which deals with the real life Doctor Charcot who deals with hysteric women sent by their fathers to an asylum. The truth is much more complicated - for these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives or strong-willed daughters. Once a year a grand ball is held at the hospital. For the Parisian elite, the Mad Women's Ball is the highlight of the social season; for the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope. Genevieve is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister, she has shunned religion and placed her faith in Doctor Charcot and his new science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugenie, the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family. Because Eugenie has a secret, and she needs Genevieve's help. Their fates will collide on the night of the Mad Women's Ball... there is a plot to get Eugenie out since it is clear that she is not made. Denise thought this was a very, very good story with a very good ending.
Notes from the Booklovers Meeting held on 18th June 2021 via Zoom
Present on Zoom: Sue, Alan, Denise, Christine
For various reasons we were low on numbers this time so there are only three reviews.
Alan read: The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) by Charles Dickens and entertained us all with an account of the seemingly cult nature which this unfinished novel (Alan’s favourite by this author) has become. Only six of the planned twelve chapters were written thus leaving the reader up in the air. There have been many later adaptations and continuations and the story has been filmed and dramatized and even turned into a musical. The book is a mystery and deals with the mysterious disappearance of choirmaster, Jon Jasper, Drood’s uncle and also a precentor, choirmaster and opium addict, who is in love with his pupil, Rosa Bud. Miss Bud, Edwin Drood's fiancée, has also caught the eye of the high-spirited and hot-tempered Neville Landless. Landless and Edwin Drood take an instant dislike to each other. Later Drood disappears under mysterious circumstances. The story is set in Cloisterham, a lightly disguised Rochester. Alan feels that this novel shows Dickens’ skill at characterisation and is a superbly mature work, which, had it been finished might have been his masterpiece. It is also seen as abstruse with clues hidden in the text. According to Wikipedia although the killer is not revealed, it is generally believed that John Jasper, Edwin's uncle, is the murderer.
Alan also read Edwin Drood: An Unfinished Novel And Our Endless Attempts to End It (2018) by Pete Orford. This book guides you through the tangled web of theories and counter-theories surrounding this enduring literary enigma.
Christine read: I am I am I am - Seventeen Brushes with Death (2018) by Maggie O’Farrell. This book falls into the autobiography / memoir categories and is precisely what the title (a quote from Sylvia Plath) says. It consists of a series of essays detailing each occasion when the author came near to death including an encounter with a murderer on a walk in Scotland, haemorrhage during childbirth, miscarriage, childhood encephalitis, amoebic dysentery and an ill-advised leap off a harbour wall into the sea as a teen. It also dedicates one chapter to her daughter who has a severe immune disorder that has, as detailed here, repeatedly requires life-saving treatment. The idea for this book which arose from her daughter’s circumstances is O’Farrell’s way of letting her child know that, in facing down death on a regular basis, she is not alone. She is showing her that life is still possible. The different episodes certainly have different tones and in Christine’s opinion are beautifully written and ultimately life affirming. They reveal the life of a writer who demonstrates resilience and the ability to communicate without self-pity and gives encouragement to others not to ultimately be defined by such episodes in life. It certainly encouraged Christine to review certain events in her own life and feel grateful for survival.
Sue read: Hamnet (2020) by Maggie O’Farrell. This book won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Although it is ostensibly a story about William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, the central protagonist is in fact the boy’s mother known to us as Anne Hathaway but whose name was in fact Agnes and whom O’Farrell here attempts to retrieve from the obscurity of her life. She doesn’t ever mention Shakespeare by name using terms such as “lodger, brother, husband, father, player’ but chooses to focus on Agnes turning her into a rounded character with skills in herbal medicine and a role in her community as one who tends the sick. However this does not stop the plague from reaching her family: “It has come to them, Agnes thinks, from a long way off, from a place of rot and wet and confinement. It has cut a swingeing path for itself through humans and beasts and insects alike; it feeds on pain and unhappiness and grief. It is insatiable, unstoppable, the worst, blackest kind of evil.”
Sue liked the structure of the book and found it ‘very emotional, sensual and descriptive’ and very much about the emotions associated with loss, the central theme of grief being beautifully evoked. It also reveals much about our own concerns and morality.
For various reasons we were low on numbers this time so there are only three reviews.
Alan read: The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) by Charles Dickens and entertained us all with an account of the seemingly cult nature which this unfinished novel (Alan’s favourite by this author) has become. Only six of the planned twelve chapters were written thus leaving the reader up in the air. There have been many later adaptations and continuations and the story has been filmed and dramatized and even turned into a musical. The book is a mystery and deals with the mysterious disappearance of choirmaster, Jon Jasper, Drood’s uncle and also a precentor, choirmaster and opium addict, who is in love with his pupil, Rosa Bud. Miss Bud, Edwin Drood's fiancée, has also caught the eye of the high-spirited and hot-tempered Neville Landless. Landless and Edwin Drood take an instant dislike to each other. Later Drood disappears under mysterious circumstances. The story is set in Cloisterham, a lightly disguised Rochester. Alan feels that this novel shows Dickens’ skill at characterisation and is a superbly mature work, which, had it been finished might have been his masterpiece. It is also seen as abstruse with clues hidden in the text. According to Wikipedia although the killer is not revealed, it is generally believed that John Jasper, Edwin's uncle, is the murderer.
Alan also read Edwin Drood: An Unfinished Novel And Our Endless Attempts to End It (2018) by Pete Orford. This book guides you through the tangled web of theories and counter-theories surrounding this enduring literary enigma.
Christine read: I am I am I am - Seventeen Brushes with Death (2018) by Maggie O’Farrell. This book falls into the autobiography / memoir categories and is precisely what the title (a quote from Sylvia Plath) says. It consists of a series of essays detailing each occasion when the author came near to death including an encounter with a murderer on a walk in Scotland, haemorrhage during childbirth, miscarriage, childhood encephalitis, amoebic dysentery and an ill-advised leap off a harbour wall into the sea as a teen. It also dedicates one chapter to her daughter who has a severe immune disorder that has, as detailed here, repeatedly requires life-saving treatment. The idea for this book which arose from her daughter’s circumstances is O’Farrell’s way of letting her child know that, in facing down death on a regular basis, she is not alone. She is showing her that life is still possible. The different episodes certainly have different tones and in Christine’s opinion are beautifully written and ultimately life affirming. They reveal the life of a writer who demonstrates resilience and the ability to communicate without self-pity and gives encouragement to others not to ultimately be defined by such episodes in life. It certainly encouraged Christine to review certain events in her own life and feel grateful for survival.
Sue read: Hamnet (2020) by Maggie O’Farrell. This book won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Although it is ostensibly a story about William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, the central protagonist is in fact the boy’s mother known to us as Anne Hathaway but whose name was in fact Agnes and whom O’Farrell here attempts to retrieve from the obscurity of her life. She doesn’t ever mention Shakespeare by name using terms such as “lodger, brother, husband, father, player’ but chooses to focus on Agnes turning her into a rounded character with skills in herbal medicine and a role in her community as one who tends the sick. However this does not stop the plague from reaching her family: “It has come to them, Agnes thinks, from a long way off, from a place of rot and wet and confinement. It has cut a swingeing path for itself through humans and beasts and insects alike; it feeds on pain and unhappiness and grief. It is insatiable, unstoppable, the worst, blackest kind of evil.”
Sue liked the structure of the book and found it ‘very emotional, sensual and descriptive’ and very much about the emotions associated with loss, the central theme of grief being beautifully evoked. It also reveals much about our own concerns and morality.
Notes from the Booklovers Meeting held on Thursday, 15th April 2021 via Zoom
Present: Vanessa, Di, Alan, Simon, Christine, Sue, Denise,
Simon read: The Warden (1855) by Anthony Trollope. This is Trollope’s first book in the Barsetshire Chronicles and is the story of the Warden’s guilt and the growth of his conscience. This relates to the fact that the Warden Mr Septimus Harding, the meek, elderly warden of Hiram's Hospital and precentor of Barchester Cathedral is in possession of an income from a charity far in excess of the sum devoted to the purposes of the foundation. The warden, who lives with his remaining child, an unmarried younger daughter Eleanor and performs his duties conscientiously. The story concerns the impact upon Harding and his circle when a zealous young reformer, John Bold, launches a campaign to expose the disparity in the apportionment of the charity's income between its object, the bedesmen, and its officer, Mr Harding whom he aims to take to court. The book is described by Penguin Classics as ‘an affectionate and wittily satirical view of the workings of the Church of England, The Warden is also a subtle exploration of the rights and wrongs of moral crusades and, in its account of Harding's intensely felt personal drama, a moving depiction of the private impact of public affairs.’ Simon liked the way The Warden starts in hesitancy but grows in sensitivity and consciousness. He said ‘it is ultimately about someone being true to themselves’. He felt it was nicely written and led him to feel that he would definitely read more books by Trollope. He wrote over forty novels so Simon is spoilt for choice!
Denise read: Born A Crime (2016) by Trevor Noah an autobiographical account of Noah’s battle to overcome the fact of his birth taking him from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show That fact was that he had a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. His mother educated him as a means of hiding him from a government which could steal him away. The ending of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule meant that Trevor and his mother could embark on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. A mischievous boy and a restless young man,
he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. The structure of the book is of eighteen stories covering such events as subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school.
It is also the story of Noah’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. Denise found it a really funny account of how Noah lived with the blacks in the ‘hood’ and his means of escaping it. This happened when someone gave him a camera. She found his character to be clever, charismatic and felt the book showed a very interesting way of growing up.
Christine read: The Making of Poetry: Coleridge, The Wordsworths, And Their Year of Marvels. (2019) by Adam Nicholson. Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award in 2019 this book by Adam, son of Nigel and grandson of Harold Nicholson, this book is an interesting combination of biography, poetry, art and nature writing. During 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge and their close family members and friends lived near each other in the Quantock hills – Coleridge in a cottage in Nether Stowey and Wordsworth in a grander house Alfoxden loaned to him by an acquaintance and only five miles away. In that time Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan and The Ancient Mariner, This Lime Tree Bower My Prison and Wordsworth tackled revolutionary themes in The Prelude and Tintern Abbey, his hymn to the unity of soul and cosmos, love and understanding. It is Nicholson’s premise that this great outpouring of poetry was a function of their joint exploration of this area in all weathers, all seasons, by night and by day. Nicholson spent a year walking in the places they walked in and attempting to understand how they reached their view of poetry, their attempt to strip away dead matter and embark on new forms and new concepts. He also investigates the emotional and psychological relationship between the poets and tensions that grew from this. Ultimately their individual poetic voices took very different routes.
Christine enjoyed the book although she felt at times that Nicholson had unwittingly slipped into prose of a Romantic style almost sounding like the poets themselves. She felt that Nicholson produces the most beautiful nature writing and this made her want to revisit this area. She also found his detail research was fascinating especially with regard to the poets’ playwriting years in London and the fact that they were spied upon by the Home Office as being connected to the French revolutionaries.
Di read: The Light We Cannot See (2015) by Anthony Doerr, an award winning American author. This is the story of a French and a German teenager whose lives converge towards the end of the Second World Warand is told in almost 200 short chapters, constantly cuting back and forth between two main characters: Werner Pfennig, a young German boy with an aptitude for radio engineering, and Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a young, blind French girl who excels at reading and studying science. Marie-Laure’s father works at the Museum of Natural History and when the Nazis arrive demanding the keys to the museum he decides to move to his uncle’s house in Saint-Malo. Eventually he is caught by the Nazis and taken to a prison camp. His daughter continues to live with her eccentric uncle and joins the Resistance carrying messages in baguettes. Simultaneously, the story of Werner is told and he also finds himself in Saint Malo at the heart of the action.
Sue, who had read the book, commented on the fact that she felt the author was cashing in on a certain style of book set in this historical period. The Guardian’s review of the novel made the comment that ‘it is a weakness of this book that it has many aspects of genre fiction, despite the huge amount of research that has gone into it. There is a worrying even-handedness in Doerr’s treatment of the Germans and the French There are also some strange mistakes: for instance, Niels Bohr was not a German. However, the story itself is gripping and it is easy to understand why Doerr’s book is regarded by many as an epic and a masterpiece.’ However, Di very much enjoyed it, particularly the language which she found beautiful and poetic, dealing particularly well with the aspect of Marie-Laure’s blindness.
Sue read: ‘Still Life’ (1985) by A S Byatt. A book about the life of an extended family and the difficulties of being a ‘clever woman’ in the 1950s and having to make a choice between domesticity and ambition. It is the second in a quartet of novels, the ‘Frederica’ quartet, the first being The Virgin In the Garden. It deals with the relationship between two sisters and with their domestic and intellectual lives. Frederica Potter, 'doomed to be intelligent' goes to Cambridge University greedy for knowledge, sex and love whereas in North Yorkshire her sister Stephanie has abandoned academe for the cosy frustration of the family. However, she finds that as a woman her life is still limited. A third character, Alexander Wedderburn, now in London, struggles to write a play about Van Gogh, whose art and tragic life give the novel its central Leitmotiv.
Sue felt the novel was well written with some well observed vignettes. She described the language as ‘beautiful’ and ‘poetic’ however, although she ultimately found the book ‘annoying’ and much of it ‘irrelevant’ even though the key themes were interesting to wrestle with.
Vanessa read: The Testaments Margaret Atwood, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. It is set well into the future and follows the narrative of three of the earlier characters and what happened as Gilead began to crumble. Christine had read this (see Booklovers’ Notes from November 2020) and had been very enthusiastic about it. However, Vanessa who was a great fan of The Handmaid’s Tale felt that this sequel had been somewhat spoilt by the intervening television series which had created strong images of the characters and seemed to drive the narrative of this book.
Alan read: Some Tame Gazelle (1950) by Barbara Pym, her first novel and written when she was a second year undergraduate in the 934. Initially rejected by several publishers, she was encouraged by Jonathan Cape to make alterations and resubmit the novel. The novel tells the story of two sisters and focuses in particular on one of them, Belinda Bede, a spinster now in her fifties who shares a house with her younger, more dominant but equally unmarried sister Harriet. Since her university days, Belinda has loved the village’s Archdeacon Hoccleve, with whom she studied then, although he had preferred to marry the better connected Agatha, a bishop’s daughter. Harriet’s preference has always been to look after the welfare of young curates, although her admirer in the village is the Italian Count Ricardo Bianco, who regularly proposes marriage to her. For the two sisters, their unrequited loves keep them going
Despite great popularity at one time Barbara Pym was eventually dropped by her publisher as she was deemed ‘unfashionable’. Despite this, some of her books have been republished and Some Tame Gazelle was released as an audiobook in 2012. Alan felt she has strengths stating that she has a great ear for what people say and is very good at portraying women and sexual jealousy.
Simon read: The Warden (1855) by Anthony Trollope. This is Trollope’s first book in the Barsetshire Chronicles and is the story of the Warden’s guilt and the growth of his conscience. This relates to the fact that the Warden Mr Septimus Harding, the meek, elderly warden of Hiram's Hospital and precentor of Barchester Cathedral is in possession of an income from a charity far in excess of the sum devoted to the purposes of the foundation. The warden, who lives with his remaining child, an unmarried younger daughter Eleanor and performs his duties conscientiously. The story concerns the impact upon Harding and his circle when a zealous young reformer, John Bold, launches a campaign to expose the disparity in the apportionment of the charity's income between its object, the bedesmen, and its officer, Mr Harding whom he aims to take to court. The book is described by Penguin Classics as ‘an affectionate and wittily satirical view of the workings of the Church of England, The Warden is also a subtle exploration of the rights and wrongs of moral crusades and, in its account of Harding's intensely felt personal drama, a moving depiction of the private impact of public affairs.’ Simon liked the way The Warden starts in hesitancy but grows in sensitivity and consciousness. He said ‘it is ultimately about someone being true to themselves’. He felt it was nicely written and led him to feel that he would definitely read more books by Trollope. He wrote over forty novels so Simon is spoilt for choice!
Denise read: Born A Crime (2016) by Trevor Noah an autobiographical account of Noah’s battle to overcome the fact of his birth taking him from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show That fact was that he had a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. His mother educated him as a means of hiding him from a government which could steal him away. The ending of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule meant that Trevor and his mother could embark on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. A mischievous boy and a restless young man,
he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. The structure of the book is of eighteen stories covering such events as subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school.
It is also the story of Noah’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. Denise found it a really funny account of how Noah lived with the blacks in the ‘hood’ and his means of escaping it. This happened when someone gave him a camera. She found his character to be clever, charismatic and felt the book showed a very interesting way of growing up.
Christine read: The Making of Poetry: Coleridge, The Wordsworths, And Their Year of Marvels. (2019) by Adam Nicholson. Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award in 2019 this book by Adam, son of Nigel and grandson of Harold Nicholson, this book is an interesting combination of biography, poetry, art and nature writing. During 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge and their close family members and friends lived near each other in the Quantock hills – Coleridge in a cottage in Nether Stowey and Wordsworth in a grander house Alfoxden loaned to him by an acquaintance and only five miles away. In that time Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan and The Ancient Mariner, This Lime Tree Bower My Prison and Wordsworth tackled revolutionary themes in The Prelude and Tintern Abbey, his hymn to the unity of soul and cosmos, love and understanding. It is Nicholson’s premise that this great outpouring of poetry was a function of their joint exploration of this area in all weathers, all seasons, by night and by day. Nicholson spent a year walking in the places they walked in and attempting to understand how they reached their view of poetry, their attempt to strip away dead matter and embark on new forms and new concepts. He also investigates the emotional and psychological relationship between the poets and tensions that grew from this. Ultimately their individual poetic voices took very different routes.
Christine enjoyed the book although she felt at times that Nicholson had unwittingly slipped into prose of a Romantic style almost sounding like the poets themselves. She felt that Nicholson produces the most beautiful nature writing and this made her want to revisit this area. She also found his detail research was fascinating especially with regard to the poets’ playwriting years in London and the fact that they were spied upon by the Home Office as being connected to the French revolutionaries.
Di read: The Light We Cannot See (2015) by Anthony Doerr, an award winning American author. This is the story of a French and a German teenager whose lives converge towards the end of the Second World Warand is told in almost 200 short chapters, constantly cuting back and forth between two main characters: Werner Pfennig, a young German boy with an aptitude for radio engineering, and Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a young, blind French girl who excels at reading and studying science. Marie-Laure’s father works at the Museum of Natural History and when the Nazis arrive demanding the keys to the museum he decides to move to his uncle’s house in Saint-Malo. Eventually he is caught by the Nazis and taken to a prison camp. His daughter continues to live with her eccentric uncle and joins the Resistance carrying messages in baguettes. Simultaneously, the story of Werner is told and he also finds himself in Saint Malo at the heart of the action.
Sue, who had read the book, commented on the fact that she felt the author was cashing in on a certain style of book set in this historical period. The Guardian’s review of the novel made the comment that ‘it is a weakness of this book that it has many aspects of genre fiction, despite the huge amount of research that has gone into it. There is a worrying even-handedness in Doerr’s treatment of the Germans and the French There are also some strange mistakes: for instance, Niels Bohr was not a German. However, the story itself is gripping and it is easy to understand why Doerr’s book is regarded by many as an epic and a masterpiece.’ However, Di very much enjoyed it, particularly the language which she found beautiful and poetic, dealing particularly well with the aspect of Marie-Laure’s blindness.
Sue read: ‘Still Life’ (1985) by A S Byatt. A book about the life of an extended family and the difficulties of being a ‘clever woman’ in the 1950s and having to make a choice between domesticity and ambition. It is the second in a quartet of novels, the ‘Frederica’ quartet, the first being The Virgin In the Garden. It deals with the relationship between two sisters and with their domestic and intellectual lives. Frederica Potter, 'doomed to be intelligent' goes to Cambridge University greedy for knowledge, sex and love whereas in North Yorkshire her sister Stephanie has abandoned academe for the cosy frustration of the family. However, she finds that as a woman her life is still limited. A third character, Alexander Wedderburn, now in London, struggles to write a play about Van Gogh, whose art and tragic life give the novel its central Leitmotiv.
Sue felt the novel was well written with some well observed vignettes. She described the language as ‘beautiful’ and ‘poetic’ however, although she ultimately found the book ‘annoying’ and much of it ‘irrelevant’ even though the key themes were interesting to wrestle with.
Vanessa read: The Testaments Margaret Atwood, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. It is set well into the future and follows the narrative of three of the earlier characters and what happened as Gilead began to crumble. Christine had read this (see Booklovers’ Notes from November 2020) and had been very enthusiastic about it. However, Vanessa who was a great fan of The Handmaid’s Tale felt that this sequel had been somewhat spoilt by the intervening television series which had created strong images of the characters and seemed to drive the narrative of this book.
Alan read: Some Tame Gazelle (1950) by Barbara Pym, her first novel and written when she was a second year undergraduate in the 934. Initially rejected by several publishers, she was encouraged by Jonathan Cape to make alterations and resubmit the novel. The novel tells the story of two sisters and focuses in particular on one of them, Belinda Bede, a spinster now in her fifties who shares a house with her younger, more dominant but equally unmarried sister Harriet. Since her university days, Belinda has loved the village’s Archdeacon Hoccleve, with whom she studied then, although he had preferred to marry the better connected Agatha, a bishop’s daughter. Harriet’s preference has always been to look after the welfare of young curates, although her admirer in the village is the Italian Count Ricardo Bianco, who regularly proposes marriage to her. For the two sisters, their unrequited loves keep them going
Despite great popularity at one time Barbara Pym was eventually dropped by her publisher as she was deemed ‘unfashionable’. Despite this, some of her books have been republished and Some Tame Gazelle was released as an audiobook in 2012. Alan felt she has strengths stating that she has a great ear for what people say and is very good at portraying women and sexual jealousy.
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS MEETING HELD ON 18th FEBRUARY 2021 VIA ZOOM
Christine read: The Retreat by Aharon Appelfeld (1984). Appelfeld is an Israeli writer who was born in Bukovina which at the time of his birth in 1932 was in the Austrian empire but subsequently became part of the USSR. Aged eight his mother was shot by the Nazis and his father and he were sent to a concentration camp where his father died. He, however, managed to escape from the camp and spent the rest of the war hiding in the Ukrainian countryside before joining the Russian army. In 1946 he made his way to Israel and has lived there ever since becoming one of the country’s leading novelists. Appelfeld has chosen not to write about the Holocaust believing it impossible to do so. However, all of his books are informed at some level by that experience and The Retreat is no different. It is set in 1938 and The Retreat of the title is a kind of hotel founded by an Austrian Jew who promotes it as a place where Jews might come to rid themselves of their Jewish characteristics and to that extent to no longer shame their assimilated children. There is a programme laid on of healthy activities; however, Balaban, the founder of the establishment eventually himself turns his back on his ideals and slumps back into his old ways, as do most of the guests. Gradually the guests die off including Balaban himself and the drumbeat of war gets ever closer.
Christine found this an intensely powerful book raising many interesting ideas both about individuals and how they see themselves in the world and also about group identify and stereotyping. She felt it was disturbing particularly in the way the Jewish residents are so desirous of shedding the aspects of their Jewishness which in so many cases have led to loss of jobs and persecution. She felt the book makes you reflect at large on human beings and their reactions to others.
Alan: read Daisy Miller by Henry James(1878), a book he fully recommends. This book made James’s reputation and is technically a novella which first appeared in Cornhill Magazine. It portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Randolph Winterbourne (the first-person narrator), a sophisticated compatriot of hers. His pursuit of her is hampered by her own flirtatiousness, which is frowned upon by the other expatriates when they meet in Switzerland and Italy. Randolph does not like Europe whereas Daisy is absolutely delighted with the continent and the high society she wants to enter. Winterbourne is impressed by her beauty and attempts to win her over taking her to the Chateau de Chillon. He leaves the next day from Geneva and Daisy invites him to visit her in Rome later that year. When they meet unexpectedly in that city, Winterbourne realises that Daisy is violating social conventions and engaging in an intimate relationship with a young Italian, Giovanelli, of questionable society. Winterbourne and another American ex-patriot try to persuade her from the relationship but she refuses. One night, Winterbourne takes a walk through the Colosseum a known malarial area, and sees a young couple sitting at its centre. He realises that they are Giovanelli and Daisy. Infuriated with Giovanelli, Winterbourne asks him how he could dare to take Daisy to a place where she runs the risk of catching "Roman fever" or malaria. Daisy says she does not care and Winterbourne leaves them. Daisy falls ill and dies a few days later.
The novella with its unreliable narrator serves as both a psychological description of the mind of a young woman and as an analysis of the traditional views of a society where she is a clear outsider. Henry James uses Daisy's story to discuss what he thinks Europeans and Americans believe about each other and more generally the prejudices common in any culture.
Vanessa read: Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch. (2019) This is the latest crime story in a series called ‘Rivers of London’. The main character is a Metropolitan policeman called Peter Grant. He is an ordinary constable turned magician’s apprentice and his patch is the area around Covent Garden and Russell Square. He solves crimes across London in a fascinating blend of inventive urban fantasy, gripping mystery thriller, and hilarious fantasy caper. The story involves ‘the so-called ‘Faceless Man’ who is wanted for multiple counts of murder, fraud, and crimes against humanity, but has been unmasked and is on the run. Grant plays a key role in an unprecedented joint operation to bring him to justice. He uncovers clues that the Faceless Man, far from being finished, is executing the final stages of a long-term plan. A plan could literally bring the city to its knees.
According to Vanessa this particular novel is very light and witty and ‘laugh out loud’. It is an interesting blend of urban fantasy and mystery thriller.
Sue read: The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri (2019). A book which has spent much time in the bestseller lists, this is the love story of a mother blinded by loss and her husband who insists on their survival as they undertake the Syrian refugee trail to Europe. Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo--until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain. On the way, Nuri is sustained by the knowledge that waiting for them is Mustafa, his cousin and business partner, who has started an apiary and is teaching fellow refugees in Yorkshire to keep bees. As Nuri and Afra make their journey to the UK, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss, but dangers that would overwhelm the bravest of souls. Above all, they must journey to find each other again.
Audiences have been moved by the compassion of the book but Sue was not particularly impressed. She feels this type of novel has become a ‘bit of a thing’ and that it was not very well-written and a bit jumbled up. Although the author spent two years volunteering in a refugee camp in Athens Sue felt it was to serve a purpose and the result somewhat manipulative.
Denise read: The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar (2018). This is a debut book by this author who originally studied archaeology and has worked in museums, followed by an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. The author often used to write stories about the objects she encountered in the museum world and this book is based on a dissertation she wrote and is described as being historical fiction meeting magic realism. It is set in Georgian London where widowed merchant Jonah Hancock showcases his fossilised mermaid to an enthralled public earning him fame and fortune. The heroine of the novel, Angelica Neal, works in a high-class brothel whose owner wants to use the mermaid to entertain her customers. Angelica’s job, just as she is about to leave the brothel, is to charm Mr. Hancock with her womanly wiles into handing over his mermaid. The meeting between Hancock and Angelica will steer both their lives onto a dangerous new course. The story combines myth and legend with the harsh realities of misogyny and racism. Denise thought it both very funny and very sad. The film rights to the novel have been bought so watch out for a mermaid on a screen near you (albeit a TV screen!)
Di read: Larry’s Party by Carol Shields (1975) This is the story of Larry Weller, born in 1950, an ordinary guy loved by his narrator. Through various episodes from his life Larry, who becomes a landscape gardener with a passion for mazes, goes on his journey toward the millennium and we see him adapting to society's changing expectations of men. Goodreads describes this as Larry moving ‘through the spontaneity of the seventies, the blind enchantment of the eighties and the lean, mean nineties, completing at last his quiet, stubborn search of self. His odyssey mirrors the male condition at the end of our century with targeted wit, unerring poignancy and faultless wisdom.’ At the end of the novel, Larry gathers all of his friends and lovers together for a party. ‘Over roasted lamb and fine wine they banter about the meaning of life. Life, they say, is the ultimate maze, and a maze is “our thumbprint on the planet.” One guest observes that “at the centre of the maze there’s an encounter with oneself…a sense of rebirth.” (Penguin Random House synopsis.)
Di describes Shields as a very lively writer with a light tone and says she was completely convinced by the character of Larry.
Christine found this an intensely powerful book raising many interesting ideas both about individuals and how they see themselves in the world and also about group identify and stereotyping. She felt it was disturbing particularly in the way the Jewish residents are so desirous of shedding the aspects of their Jewishness which in so many cases have led to loss of jobs and persecution. She felt the book makes you reflect at large on human beings and their reactions to others.
Alan: read Daisy Miller by Henry James(1878), a book he fully recommends. This book made James’s reputation and is technically a novella which first appeared in Cornhill Magazine. It portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Randolph Winterbourne (the first-person narrator), a sophisticated compatriot of hers. His pursuit of her is hampered by her own flirtatiousness, which is frowned upon by the other expatriates when they meet in Switzerland and Italy. Randolph does not like Europe whereas Daisy is absolutely delighted with the continent and the high society she wants to enter. Winterbourne is impressed by her beauty and attempts to win her over taking her to the Chateau de Chillon. He leaves the next day from Geneva and Daisy invites him to visit her in Rome later that year. When they meet unexpectedly in that city, Winterbourne realises that Daisy is violating social conventions and engaging in an intimate relationship with a young Italian, Giovanelli, of questionable society. Winterbourne and another American ex-patriot try to persuade her from the relationship but she refuses. One night, Winterbourne takes a walk through the Colosseum a known malarial area, and sees a young couple sitting at its centre. He realises that they are Giovanelli and Daisy. Infuriated with Giovanelli, Winterbourne asks him how he could dare to take Daisy to a place where she runs the risk of catching "Roman fever" or malaria. Daisy says she does not care and Winterbourne leaves them. Daisy falls ill and dies a few days later.
The novella with its unreliable narrator serves as both a psychological description of the mind of a young woman and as an analysis of the traditional views of a society where she is a clear outsider. Henry James uses Daisy's story to discuss what he thinks Europeans and Americans believe about each other and more generally the prejudices common in any culture.
Vanessa read: Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch. (2019) This is the latest crime story in a series called ‘Rivers of London’. The main character is a Metropolitan policeman called Peter Grant. He is an ordinary constable turned magician’s apprentice and his patch is the area around Covent Garden and Russell Square. He solves crimes across London in a fascinating blend of inventive urban fantasy, gripping mystery thriller, and hilarious fantasy caper. The story involves ‘the so-called ‘Faceless Man’ who is wanted for multiple counts of murder, fraud, and crimes against humanity, but has been unmasked and is on the run. Grant plays a key role in an unprecedented joint operation to bring him to justice. He uncovers clues that the Faceless Man, far from being finished, is executing the final stages of a long-term plan. A plan could literally bring the city to its knees.
According to Vanessa this particular novel is very light and witty and ‘laugh out loud’. It is an interesting blend of urban fantasy and mystery thriller.
Sue read: The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri (2019). A book which has spent much time in the bestseller lists, this is the love story of a mother blinded by loss and her husband who insists on their survival as they undertake the Syrian refugee trail to Europe. Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo--until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain. On the way, Nuri is sustained by the knowledge that waiting for them is Mustafa, his cousin and business partner, who has started an apiary and is teaching fellow refugees in Yorkshire to keep bees. As Nuri and Afra make their journey to the UK, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss, but dangers that would overwhelm the bravest of souls. Above all, they must journey to find each other again.
Audiences have been moved by the compassion of the book but Sue was not particularly impressed. She feels this type of novel has become a ‘bit of a thing’ and that it was not very well-written and a bit jumbled up. Although the author spent two years volunteering in a refugee camp in Athens Sue felt it was to serve a purpose and the result somewhat manipulative.
Denise read: The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar (2018). This is a debut book by this author who originally studied archaeology and has worked in museums, followed by an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. The author often used to write stories about the objects she encountered in the museum world and this book is based on a dissertation she wrote and is described as being historical fiction meeting magic realism. It is set in Georgian London where widowed merchant Jonah Hancock showcases his fossilised mermaid to an enthralled public earning him fame and fortune. The heroine of the novel, Angelica Neal, works in a high-class brothel whose owner wants to use the mermaid to entertain her customers. Angelica’s job, just as she is about to leave the brothel, is to charm Mr. Hancock with her womanly wiles into handing over his mermaid. The meeting between Hancock and Angelica will steer both their lives onto a dangerous new course. The story combines myth and legend with the harsh realities of misogyny and racism. Denise thought it both very funny and very sad. The film rights to the novel have been bought so watch out for a mermaid on a screen near you (albeit a TV screen!)
Di read: Larry’s Party by Carol Shields (1975) This is the story of Larry Weller, born in 1950, an ordinary guy loved by his narrator. Through various episodes from his life Larry, who becomes a landscape gardener with a passion for mazes, goes on his journey toward the millennium and we see him adapting to society's changing expectations of men. Goodreads describes this as Larry moving ‘through the spontaneity of the seventies, the blind enchantment of the eighties and the lean, mean nineties, completing at last his quiet, stubborn search of self. His odyssey mirrors the male condition at the end of our century with targeted wit, unerring poignancy and faultless wisdom.’ At the end of the novel, Larry gathers all of his friends and lovers together for a party. ‘Over roasted lamb and fine wine they banter about the meaning of life. Life, they say, is the ultimate maze, and a maze is “our thumbprint on the planet.” One guest observes that “at the centre of the maze there’s an encounter with oneself…a sense of rebirth.” (Penguin Random House synopsis.)
Di describes Shields as a very lively writer with a light tone and says she was completely convinced by the character of Larry.
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS MEETING HELD ON 21st JANUARY 2021 VIA ZOOM
Vanessa read: The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock (2018) by Imogen Hermes Gowar. The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock is a historical novel with elements of magical realism by Imogen Hermes Gowar. It had its origins in an award-winning historical dissertation the author wrote while studying archaeology and anthropology. She worked in museums and her writing is inspired by the artifacts she encountered. She then went on to study for an MA in Creative Writing at UEA. First published in 2018, and nominated for numerous awards, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock follows what happens when a ‘mermaid’ causes chaos at every level of society. Set in Georgian England it features a ship’s merchant who finds one of his captains waiting eagerly on his doorstep. He has sold Jonah’s ship for what appears to be a mermaid. Everyone wants to see Mr Hancock’s marvel and he leaves his ordinary existence and enters the doors of high society, where he meets Angelica Neal, the most desirable woman he has ever laid eyes on... and a courtesan of great accomplishment. Vanessa had bought her copy in a National Trust bookshop and was captivated by its cover. In this instance she felt you could ‘judge a book by its cover’ and felt the story was a very good ‘yarn’ and the depiction of Georgian London and its society to be fascinating..
Sue read: Giver Of Stars by JoJo Moyes (2019). Based in a small mining town in Kentucky this is a fictionalised version of a true event. Alice Wright, Englishwoman, marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically.
The leader, and soon Alice’s greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who’s never asked a man’s permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky. They become stronger as women as the story carries on, refusing to be cowed by men or convention. Facing all kinds of dangers in a landscape which is both beautiful and brutal, they commit to their job of bringing books, and so, education, to people who have never had any. Alice’s marriage is annulled and through her work finds a new partner and has a happy marriage. Sue felt the book to be extremely well researched and the characters fascinating and it appealed to her because of her former background as a librarian.
Simon read The Mask of Demetrios by Eric Ambler (1939). Simon felt he should read something by this author who was a very popular writer in his day. Ambler began his writing career in the early 1930s, and quickly established a reputation as a thriller writer of extraordinary depth and originality. He is often credited as the inventor of the modern political thriller and John Le Carré once described him as 'the source on which we all draw.’ According to The Guardian’s quote on the cover of this Penguin Modern classic, the book is ‘still as fresh as new’. It is a thriller about a crime fiction novelist who is on holiday in Istanbul where he meets a colonel who takes him to the post-mortem of the supposed Demetrios Makaloupolos whose body has been fished out of the Bosphorus. A conversation about this notorious criminal ensues, and Latimer is hooked. He feels a need to find out the man’s story. The tale follows him in pursuit of this, to many European locations and many interesting settings.
Simon liked the description of the various settings throughout Europe and the antics of those times: drug dealing (there is a very good account of the process of addiction), blackmail, assassination, etc. He found it very suspenseful and it ends with blackmail and a confrontation. The novel was made into a film starring Peter Lorre.
Christine read Agent Running In The Field (2019) by John Le Carré. This is the author’s final book since he died earlier this year. Christine read it on a break from Hilary Mantel the weight of whose The Mirror And The Light continues to challenge her ability to read it at anything like a normal pace!
Le Carré wrote some 26 novels – not all of them spy thrillers but usually with the subtext of the fallibility of human nature. Alan Massie writing in The Scotsman says ‘He remains angry about corruption, duplicity, treachery, the arrogance and indifference of wealth and power and the readiness to use others as mere instruments.’ The book is very much of its time and its hero Nat is very much Le Carré’s mouthpiece expressing his distress at Brexit and Trump and it feels very up to date in its references to the current world order. Christine felt the book was a little uneven with, in her view, a less than satisfactory ending but overall she enjoyed it a great deal especially its careful exposé of spying techniques. Nat is a first person narrator with whom she didn’t always feel empathetic but generally speaking he is a human being with a heart who is not completely sold to The Firm. He has recently returned from Europe to the UK to what is essentially a downgraded post in a London outback office. At 49, there is a degree of despondency and rejection that permeate his tone and which ultimately is the source of the novel’s ending. That Le Carré wrote this novel when he was 88 is gratifying to Christine but she felt it is sad to think we have recently lost one of our great novelists.
Denise read: Legacy : ‘One Family, One Cup of Tea, And The Company That Took On The World’ (2019) by Thomas Harding. This is the story of the Lyons dynasty, its rise and fall. In the early 1800s Lehmann Gluckstein and his family escaped the pogroms of Eastern Europe and made their way to Whitechapel in the East End of London. There, starting with nothing, they worked tirelessly to pull themselves out of the slums, creating a small tobacco factory that quickly grew to become the largest catering company in the world: J. Lyons. A truly fascinating family history according to Denise and it is the narrative process whereby the author takes one person from the family and explores their role in the creation of this company. It is essentially social history from 1873 -1978. A company that serviced The Great Exhibition but which after the Second World War suffered from high prices, bad governance and over-borrowing. Denise found it enormously readable enjoying especially the accounts of the main characters (all male), their partners and their children. She certainly made it sound a compelling read.
Alan read: The Fisher King (1989) by Anthony Powell. Powell is best known for his collection of twelve books under the umbrella title of Dance to the Music of Time and this book is his second following the completion of his magnum opus. As the title suggest, the book references the The Fisher King of Arthurian legend, the maimed and impotent ruler of a barren country of whom Perceval failed to ask the right questions. The story is contemporary and actually set on board a cruise ship, the Alecto (another mythological reference) , which is sailing round the British isles. A prolific romance author Valentine Beals ruminates on the ship's most seemingly incongruous couple: a graceful, ethereal, virginal dancer named Barberina Rookwood and her lover, Saul Henchman, a crippled, emasculated war hero and photographer. Fancifully, Beals imagines Henchman to be the re-embodiment of the Fisher King legend dovetails the various explanations Powell offers from his competing narrators as to why a talented young dancer would forsake her art to care for a feeble older man. Ostensibly a novel about gossip on a cruise ship, The Fisher King is much more: a highly stylized narrative infused with world mythology, legend, and satire.The novel makes the serious point that myths, old or new, are potential guides to recurring patterns in human behaviour and in human relationships, but that those who look for simple patterns in myths or in life are doomed to confusion. While challenging the reader to know and understand various mythologies, it at the same time a very comic novel. Alan found it interesting, comic and moving.
Di read: The Great Gatsby (1925) by F Scott Fitzgerald – her favourite novel and she reminded us all as to why this book has become a modern classic. It epitomises the American Dream and the impossibility of attaining it. Set in the Prohibition era in 1922, the book focuses on Jay Gatsby the eponymous hero who has come from nothing but through his own ingenuity and deception (he was a bootlegger) has become wealthy and owns a fantastic house on Long Island where he gives extravagant parties. The narrator of the book Nick Carraway, Gatsby’s neighbour, becomes friendly with him and introduces him to his cousin Daisy Buchanan who was in fact a former lover of Gatsby. The two renew their relationship and the story spirals out of control when following a trip to New York a road traffic accident with Daisy at the wheel results in the killing of Myrtle, the mistress of Daisy’s husband Jack. Myrtle and her husband George Wilson live in ‘The Valley of Ashes’ outside New York – the name says it all. The book is loaded with references to the inequalities already present in American society in the twenties with visible contrasts between the life of the wealthy in New York and on Long Island and people like Myrtle and her husband.
Although the book had mixed reviews when it was published, as it was generally felt not to be up to the standard of Fitzgerald’s earlier works, it has since become a modern classic of American literature and is studied in schools across the English speaking world. Di who is currently hard at work studying creative writing had returned to the novel for the pure pleasure of reading it again.
Sue read: Giver Of Stars by JoJo Moyes (2019). Based in a small mining town in Kentucky this is a fictionalised version of a true event. Alice Wright, Englishwoman, marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically.
The leader, and soon Alice’s greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who’s never asked a man’s permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky. They become stronger as women as the story carries on, refusing to be cowed by men or convention. Facing all kinds of dangers in a landscape which is both beautiful and brutal, they commit to their job of bringing books, and so, education, to people who have never had any. Alice’s marriage is annulled and through her work finds a new partner and has a happy marriage. Sue felt the book to be extremely well researched and the characters fascinating and it appealed to her because of her former background as a librarian.
Simon read The Mask of Demetrios by Eric Ambler (1939). Simon felt he should read something by this author who was a very popular writer in his day. Ambler began his writing career in the early 1930s, and quickly established a reputation as a thriller writer of extraordinary depth and originality. He is often credited as the inventor of the modern political thriller and John Le Carré once described him as 'the source on which we all draw.’ According to The Guardian’s quote on the cover of this Penguin Modern classic, the book is ‘still as fresh as new’. It is a thriller about a crime fiction novelist who is on holiday in Istanbul where he meets a colonel who takes him to the post-mortem of the supposed Demetrios Makaloupolos whose body has been fished out of the Bosphorus. A conversation about this notorious criminal ensues, and Latimer is hooked. He feels a need to find out the man’s story. The tale follows him in pursuit of this, to many European locations and many interesting settings.
Simon liked the description of the various settings throughout Europe and the antics of those times: drug dealing (there is a very good account of the process of addiction), blackmail, assassination, etc. He found it very suspenseful and it ends with blackmail and a confrontation. The novel was made into a film starring Peter Lorre.
Christine read Agent Running In The Field (2019) by John Le Carré. This is the author’s final book since he died earlier this year. Christine read it on a break from Hilary Mantel the weight of whose The Mirror And The Light continues to challenge her ability to read it at anything like a normal pace!
Le Carré wrote some 26 novels – not all of them spy thrillers but usually with the subtext of the fallibility of human nature. Alan Massie writing in The Scotsman says ‘He remains angry about corruption, duplicity, treachery, the arrogance and indifference of wealth and power and the readiness to use others as mere instruments.’ The book is very much of its time and its hero Nat is very much Le Carré’s mouthpiece expressing his distress at Brexit and Trump and it feels very up to date in its references to the current world order. Christine felt the book was a little uneven with, in her view, a less than satisfactory ending but overall she enjoyed it a great deal especially its careful exposé of spying techniques. Nat is a first person narrator with whom she didn’t always feel empathetic but generally speaking he is a human being with a heart who is not completely sold to The Firm. He has recently returned from Europe to the UK to what is essentially a downgraded post in a London outback office. At 49, there is a degree of despondency and rejection that permeate his tone and which ultimately is the source of the novel’s ending. That Le Carré wrote this novel when he was 88 is gratifying to Christine but she felt it is sad to think we have recently lost one of our great novelists.
Denise read: Legacy : ‘One Family, One Cup of Tea, And The Company That Took On The World’ (2019) by Thomas Harding. This is the story of the Lyons dynasty, its rise and fall. In the early 1800s Lehmann Gluckstein and his family escaped the pogroms of Eastern Europe and made their way to Whitechapel in the East End of London. There, starting with nothing, they worked tirelessly to pull themselves out of the slums, creating a small tobacco factory that quickly grew to become the largest catering company in the world: J. Lyons. A truly fascinating family history according to Denise and it is the narrative process whereby the author takes one person from the family and explores their role in the creation of this company. It is essentially social history from 1873 -1978. A company that serviced The Great Exhibition but which after the Second World War suffered from high prices, bad governance and over-borrowing. Denise found it enormously readable enjoying especially the accounts of the main characters (all male), their partners and their children. She certainly made it sound a compelling read.
Alan read: The Fisher King (1989) by Anthony Powell. Powell is best known for his collection of twelve books under the umbrella title of Dance to the Music of Time and this book is his second following the completion of his magnum opus. As the title suggest, the book references the The Fisher King of Arthurian legend, the maimed and impotent ruler of a barren country of whom Perceval failed to ask the right questions. The story is contemporary and actually set on board a cruise ship, the Alecto (another mythological reference) , which is sailing round the British isles. A prolific romance author Valentine Beals ruminates on the ship's most seemingly incongruous couple: a graceful, ethereal, virginal dancer named Barberina Rookwood and her lover, Saul Henchman, a crippled, emasculated war hero and photographer. Fancifully, Beals imagines Henchman to be the re-embodiment of the Fisher King legend dovetails the various explanations Powell offers from his competing narrators as to why a talented young dancer would forsake her art to care for a feeble older man. Ostensibly a novel about gossip on a cruise ship, The Fisher King is much more: a highly stylized narrative infused with world mythology, legend, and satire.The novel makes the serious point that myths, old or new, are potential guides to recurring patterns in human behaviour and in human relationships, but that those who look for simple patterns in myths or in life are doomed to confusion. While challenging the reader to know and understand various mythologies, it at the same time a very comic novel. Alan found it interesting, comic and moving.
Di read: The Great Gatsby (1925) by F Scott Fitzgerald – her favourite novel and she reminded us all as to why this book has become a modern classic. It epitomises the American Dream and the impossibility of attaining it. Set in the Prohibition era in 1922, the book focuses on Jay Gatsby the eponymous hero who has come from nothing but through his own ingenuity and deception (he was a bootlegger) has become wealthy and owns a fantastic house on Long Island where he gives extravagant parties. The narrator of the book Nick Carraway, Gatsby’s neighbour, becomes friendly with him and introduces him to his cousin Daisy Buchanan who was in fact a former lover of Gatsby. The two renew their relationship and the story spirals out of control when following a trip to New York a road traffic accident with Daisy at the wheel results in the killing of Myrtle, the mistress of Daisy’s husband Jack. Myrtle and her husband George Wilson live in ‘The Valley of Ashes’ outside New York – the name says it all. The book is loaded with references to the inequalities already present in American society in the twenties with visible contrasts between the life of the wealthy in New York and on Long Island and people like Myrtle and her husband.
Although the book had mixed reviews when it was published, as it was generally felt not to be up to the standard of Fitzgerald’s earlier works, it has since become a modern classic of American literature and is studied in schools across the English speaking world. Di who is currently hard at work studying creative writing had returned to the novel for the pure pleasure of reading it again.
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS MEETING HELD VIA ZOOM ON 17TH DECEMBER 2020
Present : Denise, Simon, Alan Christine
Apologies: Di, Sue, Vanessa
Christine read (but has not completed) The Mirror and The Light which is the final book in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. It was published in 2020 and made it to final six in the Booker Prize. The first two novels in the series Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies take the story of Cromwell’s rise from his humble beginnings as the son of a blacksmith to becoming King Henry VIII’s Chancellor . The second volume ends immediately after the beheading of Anne Boleyn and the hurry for the marriage of the King to Katherine Seymour, always with the prime motivation of getting a son and heir. This novel takes us to Cromwell’s fall but Christine hasn’t completed the book yet – not by a long way. A very heavy 900 page book, she’s find it a physical challenging read and feels she can only read it in bed so slow progress is being made. She wishes she had downloaded it on to her Kindle. Having said that she says she is enjoying it tremendously and is finding Mantel’s use of language fascinating. Although there is a glossary at the front of the book listing the many characters and their purpose in the book, Mantel mostly refers to Cromwell as ‘he’ (although he is addressed by his name by other characters.) This particular trope is fascinating as it seems to bestow a special almost
God-like quality on the central character. Will this change?
Denise read: Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2017). Greer is an American author who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 with this novel. She describes it as both a love story and a satirical novel. It portrays the journey of Arthur Less who is approaching fifty, who after a difficult breakup plans a round-the-world trip to better understand himself but primarily to avoid attending the wedding of his former lover Freddy, whom he dated for 15 years. Dissatisfied and sad, Arthur then travels to Mexico to a literary festival which is conducted in Spanish, so he spends his time being shown around the city by a local man named Arturo. Arthur then flies to Italy, where his third novel (translated into Italian) is on the shortlist for a prize he knows he will not win. He stays in a lavish hotel and meets the finalists. As the ceremony drags on, Less worries about the quality of his work. He is snapped out of his reminiscences by the news that he has, in fact, won first prize. Next he goes to Germany to teach a short writing course. On his first night he meets a young man named Bastian, and the two begin a relationship. Less spends five weeks teaching and being with Bastian, which distracts him from Freddy’s upcoming wedding. Around him, people fall sick. One night he takes a pill with Bastian and stays up all night dancing. Less leaves Bastian behind and journeys to Morocco to work on his novel. From there he travels to India for a writers’ retreat. He arrives to find that it is a Christian retreat and that it is too loud and bothersome a place to get any writing done. On to Japan to review the local food for an article. He loses his luggage en route and is too early to see the cherry blossoms. In Tahiti, Freddy wakes up on his honeymoon and realizes that he has made a terrible mistake. Less travels back to San Francisco, and Freddy is there to meet him.
If this sounds like a somewhat tedious journey from place to place Denise said she really enjoyed the novel and the way it lampoons the literary establishment. She also said it’s a bit like Jules Verne’s Around The World in 80 days. She particularly liked Greer’s writing style. It is comic and episodic. The Guardian reviewer states that ‘Greer mercilessly skewers the insecurity of authors as well as the vanity of the literary industry’s self-absorption in the face of its irrelevance to most people’s lives. The stealthy genius of this novel is that it simultaneously tells the life story of a basically sweet man whom the industry has eaten alive.’
Simon read a selection of short stories by Shirley Jackson from her collection Dark Tales reissued as a Penguin Modern Classic in 2017. She was a major influence on subsequent writers in the genre such as Stephen King and others. Simon liked the way the author exposes the weird way in which people think and their relationships. He felt the description was very good and not macabre. For example includes stories dealing with nasty goings on in suburbia, a daily commute which turns into a nightmarish game of hide and seek, a loving wife hides homicidal thoughts and a concerned citizen who might just be an infamous serial killer.
Alan read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and published in 1818. It tells the story of victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. The book was published anonymously when Shelley was 20. Her name first appear in the second edition which was published in Paris in 1821. ‘A very good novel’, says Alan, who was also interested in Mary Shelley’s life. Coming from radically minded parents, William Godwin and the female rights campaigner, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley ran away with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and lived abroad. This extraordinary novel combines the romantic, the Gothic, politics. The eponymous ‘monster’ is one of the most sympathetic characters and his monstrous behaviour is justified on the grounds that he has been mistreated. He is actually educated and cultured quoting Paradise Lost and Plutarch’s lives. Alan had no inkling of what was in the book as he points out since we are so by the mediated images of this monster and his story. It is an epistolary novel with lots of references to literature and history, a novel of ideas, which Alan very much enjoyed.
Apologies: Di, Sue, Vanessa
Christine read (but has not completed) The Mirror and The Light which is the final book in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. It was published in 2020 and made it to final six in the Booker Prize. The first two novels in the series Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies take the story of Cromwell’s rise from his humble beginnings as the son of a blacksmith to becoming King Henry VIII’s Chancellor . The second volume ends immediately after the beheading of Anne Boleyn and the hurry for the marriage of the King to Katherine Seymour, always with the prime motivation of getting a son and heir. This novel takes us to Cromwell’s fall but Christine hasn’t completed the book yet – not by a long way. A very heavy 900 page book, she’s find it a physical challenging read and feels she can only read it in bed so slow progress is being made. She wishes she had downloaded it on to her Kindle. Having said that she says she is enjoying it tremendously and is finding Mantel’s use of language fascinating. Although there is a glossary at the front of the book listing the many characters and their purpose in the book, Mantel mostly refers to Cromwell as ‘he’ (although he is addressed by his name by other characters.) This particular trope is fascinating as it seems to bestow a special almost
God-like quality on the central character. Will this change?
Denise read: Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2017). Greer is an American author who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 with this novel. She describes it as both a love story and a satirical novel. It portrays the journey of Arthur Less who is approaching fifty, who after a difficult breakup plans a round-the-world trip to better understand himself but primarily to avoid attending the wedding of his former lover Freddy, whom he dated for 15 years. Dissatisfied and sad, Arthur then travels to Mexico to a literary festival which is conducted in Spanish, so he spends his time being shown around the city by a local man named Arturo. Arthur then flies to Italy, where his third novel (translated into Italian) is on the shortlist for a prize he knows he will not win. He stays in a lavish hotel and meets the finalists. As the ceremony drags on, Less worries about the quality of his work. He is snapped out of his reminiscences by the news that he has, in fact, won first prize. Next he goes to Germany to teach a short writing course. On his first night he meets a young man named Bastian, and the two begin a relationship. Less spends five weeks teaching and being with Bastian, which distracts him from Freddy’s upcoming wedding. Around him, people fall sick. One night he takes a pill with Bastian and stays up all night dancing. Less leaves Bastian behind and journeys to Morocco to work on his novel. From there he travels to India for a writers’ retreat. He arrives to find that it is a Christian retreat and that it is too loud and bothersome a place to get any writing done. On to Japan to review the local food for an article. He loses his luggage en route and is too early to see the cherry blossoms. In Tahiti, Freddy wakes up on his honeymoon and realizes that he has made a terrible mistake. Less travels back to San Francisco, and Freddy is there to meet him.
If this sounds like a somewhat tedious journey from place to place Denise said she really enjoyed the novel and the way it lampoons the literary establishment. She also said it’s a bit like Jules Verne’s Around The World in 80 days. She particularly liked Greer’s writing style. It is comic and episodic. The Guardian reviewer states that ‘Greer mercilessly skewers the insecurity of authors as well as the vanity of the literary industry’s self-absorption in the face of its irrelevance to most people’s lives. The stealthy genius of this novel is that it simultaneously tells the life story of a basically sweet man whom the industry has eaten alive.’
Simon read a selection of short stories by Shirley Jackson from her collection Dark Tales reissued as a Penguin Modern Classic in 2017. She was a major influence on subsequent writers in the genre such as Stephen King and others. Simon liked the way the author exposes the weird way in which people think and their relationships. He felt the description was very good and not macabre. For example includes stories dealing with nasty goings on in suburbia, a daily commute which turns into a nightmarish game of hide and seek, a loving wife hides homicidal thoughts and a concerned citizen who might just be an infamous serial killer.
Alan read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and published in 1818. It tells the story of victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. The book was published anonymously when Shelley was 20. Her name first appear in the second edition which was published in Paris in 1821. ‘A very good novel’, says Alan, who was also interested in Mary Shelley’s life. Coming from radically minded parents, William Godwin and the female rights campaigner, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley ran away with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and lived abroad. This extraordinary novel combines the romantic, the Gothic, politics. The eponymous ‘monster’ is one of the most sympathetic characters and his monstrous behaviour is justified on the grounds that he has been mistreated. He is actually educated and cultured quoting Paradise Lost and Plutarch’s lives. Alan had no inkling of what was in the book as he points out since we are so by the mediated images of this monster and his story. It is an epistolary novel with lots of references to literature and history, a novel of ideas, which Alan very much enjoyed.
NOTES FROM THE BOOKLOVERS MEETING HELD VIA ZOOM ON 19TH NOVEMBER 2020
Present : Denise, Simon, Sue, Vanessa, Di, Alan Christine
Christine read: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (2019). This novel shared the Booker Prize in 2019. Christine had read The Handmaid’s Tale when it first came out in 1985 and this book is its sequel. Despite the plaudits, some people were critical of the novel seeing it as ‘contrived’ but Christine felt it was incredibly cleverly plotted with its three narrators, one the familiar character of Aunt Lydia from the first book, and two much younger women. One of the latter is from inside ‘Gilead’ (the fictional version of the USA minus a few states) and the other is from Canada who, for a specific reason has been smuggled into Gilead. The characterisation of all three women is extremely well done with them each being the first person narrator of different sections of the book. The nation state of Gilead continues to appal by its totalitarian actions which are especially aimed at women, and it is gratifying to learn quite early in the book that it is ‘rotting’ in its centre. This dystopian world manages, as the first novel did in 1985, to hint at regimes currently operating in the world of today. As the plot unfolds its becomes interesting to guess at its final outcome.
Christine found it a compulsive read and although she had some sense of where it was going, the journey was fascinating and she particularly like the ‘afterword’ which consists of the fictional papers at an academic conference held some two hundred years later. It makes some interesting points about history and she would strongly recommend it.
Di read 2019’s other Booker Prize winner Girl, Woman, Other (2019) by Bernadine Evaristo and found it a fascinating read. For a start, there is almost no punctuation but this does not impede your reading of it. It’s a contemporary story which follows the lives of 12 characters, mostly women – black and British characters from different faiths, classes, politics and heritages, - in the United Kingdom over the course of several decades. There is no overarching story but there is a connectedness between all the characters even if it is simply that two of them attend the same theatre performance. The book is about struggle, but it is also about love, joy and imagination. It ends with all the characters coming together at a party for a soap opera-style grand finale. Evaristo’s world is not idealised, but there is something uniquely beautiful about it. Di liked the way the author brings her characters to life showing people from to many readers an unfamiliar world and feels very contemporary and serious and conveys Britain as it is now. She didn’t feel the author was that sympathetic about men. She described the book as ‘light and melodic.’
Sue read: The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante (2020). Sue found this a very enjoyable read exploring how the central character makes sense of how she saw things as a child and how she comes to terms with the way she sees them as an almost adult – the book covers her years from twelve to seventeen. The protagonist is the daughter of academics in Naples and starts when she is twelve when her father likens her to an estranged aunt whom he describes as ‘ugly’. She becomes fascinated by this aunt and discovers that she is from a very different social scene from that of her parents. (Here there are connections with Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet) . This affects her perception of herself and sees her trying to balance her friendships and family relationships. The things she was brought up to believe beautiful such as her parents’ relationship and the institution of marriage and romantic ideals are rapidly dispensed with and she discovers through her new relationship with her Aunt Vittoria that her so called ugliness is in fact thrilling. Ultimately conventional beauty or goodness or purity are the lies that the adults in this novel tell themselves to stay on top of the calm surface of life. Ferrante concludes that ‘Ugliness may hurt, but it is a hurt that strikes clean and true; ugliness may not be pretty, but sometimes it is unbearably beautiful.” (LA Review of Books.)
Vanessa read: The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall (2015) The idea behind this title comes from the Finnish and refers to the area between urban civilisation and the wild. The author, a wildlife biologist, comes from the Lake District in England but has spent much time in the US where she worked on a wolf recovery project. Her passion for this region is evident in her writing. Upon her return to the UK to tend to her dying mother she is asked by a landowner, to set up a wolf reserve in Cumbria aimed at culling the deer. She manages to show all sides of the issue. However, wolves are only part of the story. The plot focuses on Rachel, her pregnancy and dysfunctional family along with a myriad of other personal challenges. Ultimately this is a compelling story about personal and political borders (it touches on the Scottish independence issue) and Vanessa found it gripping and very well written with its tight prose.
Alan read Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The book’s alternative title is “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years, All Alone in an Un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, Near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having Been Cast on Shore by Shipwreck, Wherein All the Men Perished but Himself. With an Account of how he was at last as Strangely Deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by Himself.”! Last year was the 300th anniversary of the book’s publication. Alan described it as an “amazing“ work of fiction and says that Defoe has a brilliant way of squeezing excitement from the mundane.” The story is based on real events and the hero is based on one Alexander Selkirk, very much an English entrepreneur. In the novel Crusoe who has become a wealthy plantation owner in Brazil sets sail and is shipwrecked. On the island he encounters Friday having seen his foot print and eventually he converts ‘My Man Friday’ into a Christian. Various encounters with local peoples and Europeans ensue. After almost three decades on the island, Crusoe departs (with Friday and a group of pirates) for England. Crusoe settles there for a time after selling his plantation in Brazil, but, as he explains, “I could not resist the strong Inclination I had to see my Island.” He eventually returns and learns what happened after the Spanish took control of it.
At one point in his life Defoe was pilloried for the crime of “seditious libel”, after publishing a pamphlet satirising contemporary politicians. The public, however, expressed support for Defoe's opinions by pelting him with flowers rather than rotten fruit! Sounds as if he would be popular today. During this event his friends fed and watered him. He is the Protestant work ethic incarnate and imperialist in his ambition. Robinson Crusoe has become a modern myth. The novel is both a gripping tale and a sober wide-ranging reflection on ambition, self-reliance, civilization, and power.
Simon read: Peril at End House by Agatha Christie (1932), a work of detective fiction about inheritance and murder which Simon found ‘very enjoyable.’ The story has at its heart Christie’s private detective Hercule Poirot and his best friend and former army captain Arthur Hastings, as well as Chief Inspector Japp. It is the sixth novel featuring Poirot. Poirot and Hastings are holidaying in Cornwall where they meet young Magdala "Nick" Buckley and her friends. Poirot is persuaded that someone is out to kill her. They meet all of her friends at her home called End House. Though he aims to protect Nick, a murder happens that provokes Poirot to mount a serious investigation. The novel was well received when first published, with the plot remarked as unusually ingenious and diabolically clever by reviewers. Writing in 1990, Robert Barnard found it “cunning, but not one of Christie's very best.“ It has been adapted to stage, radio, film, television, graphic novel, and a computer game, and translated into many other languages as a book. Di found Poirot’s interactions with various characters very funny. He is an amusing cynic, whereas Hastings is very brave and upright and Captain Jack ‘straight down the line’. Simon felt the conclusion was good as it introduces some new characters.
Denise read: Known to Social Services by Freya Barrington (2015).This work of non-fiction gives us a frighteningly realistic insight into the harrowing world of the child protection social worker. Based on her own experiences (a former social worker, she writes under a pen name), the book was a revelation and occupied the number one spot for social work books on Amazon UK within weeks of release and went on to win numerous plaudits including The London Book Award for autobiography / memoirs. Based on her own caseload and mostly set on a housing estate the book makes for tough reading as it is full of domestic violence, shattered fragile couples and set against a background of horrendous bureaucracy. The lives of the different people in the book are mostly known to each other. Denise had some experience of these sorts of clients in the world of social work and found it a good way of keeping up with what is going on.
Christine read: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (2019). This novel shared the Booker Prize in 2019. Christine had read The Handmaid’s Tale when it first came out in 1985 and this book is its sequel. Despite the plaudits, some people were critical of the novel seeing it as ‘contrived’ but Christine felt it was incredibly cleverly plotted with its three narrators, one the familiar character of Aunt Lydia from the first book, and two much younger women. One of the latter is from inside ‘Gilead’ (the fictional version of the USA minus a few states) and the other is from Canada who, for a specific reason has been smuggled into Gilead. The characterisation of all three women is extremely well done with them each being the first person narrator of different sections of the book. The nation state of Gilead continues to appal by its totalitarian actions which are especially aimed at women, and it is gratifying to learn quite early in the book that it is ‘rotting’ in its centre. This dystopian world manages, as the first novel did in 1985, to hint at regimes currently operating in the world of today. As the plot unfolds its becomes interesting to guess at its final outcome.
Christine found it a compulsive read and although she had some sense of where it was going, the journey was fascinating and she particularly like the ‘afterword’ which consists of the fictional papers at an academic conference held some two hundred years later. It makes some interesting points about history and she would strongly recommend it.
Di read 2019’s other Booker Prize winner Girl, Woman, Other (2019) by Bernadine Evaristo and found it a fascinating read. For a start, there is almost no punctuation but this does not impede your reading of it. It’s a contemporary story which follows the lives of 12 characters, mostly women – black and British characters from different faiths, classes, politics and heritages, - in the United Kingdom over the course of several decades. There is no overarching story but there is a connectedness between all the characters even if it is simply that two of them attend the same theatre performance. The book is about struggle, but it is also about love, joy and imagination. It ends with all the characters coming together at a party for a soap opera-style grand finale. Evaristo’s world is not idealised, but there is something uniquely beautiful about it. Di liked the way the author brings her characters to life showing people from to many readers an unfamiliar world and feels very contemporary and serious and conveys Britain as it is now. She didn’t feel the author was that sympathetic about men. She described the book as ‘light and melodic.’
Sue read: The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante (2020). Sue found this a very enjoyable read exploring how the central character makes sense of how she saw things as a child and how she comes to terms with the way she sees them as an almost adult – the book covers her years from twelve to seventeen. The protagonist is the daughter of academics in Naples and starts when she is twelve when her father likens her to an estranged aunt whom he describes as ‘ugly’. She becomes fascinated by this aunt and discovers that she is from a very different social scene from that of her parents. (Here there are connections with Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet) . This affects her perception of herself and sees her trying to balance her friendships and family relationships. The things she was brought up to believe beautiful such as her parents’ relationship and the institution of marriage and romantic ideals are rapidly dispensed with and she discovers through her new relationship with her Aunt Vittoria that her so called ugliness is in fact thrilling. Ultimately conventional beauty or goodness or purity are the lies that the adults in this novel tell themselves to stay on top of the calm surface of life. Ferrante concludes that ‘Ugliness may hurt, but it is a hurt that strikes clean and true; ugliness may not be pretty, but sometimes it is unbearably beautiful.” (LA Review of Books.)
Vanessa read: The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall (2015) The idea behind this title comes from the Finnish and refers to the area between urban civilisation and the wild. The author, a wildlife biologist, comes from the Lake District in England but has spent much time in the US where she worked on a wolf recovery project. Her passion for this region is evident in her writing. Upon her return to the UK to tend to her dying mother she is asked by a landowner, to set up a wolf reserve in Cumbria aimed at culling the deer. She manages to show all sides of the issue. However, wolves are only part of the story. The plot focuses on Rachel, her pregnancy and dysfunctional family along with a myriad of other personal challenges. Ultimately this is a compelling story about personal and political borders (it touches on the Scottish independence issue) and Vanessa found it gripping and very well written with its tight prose.
Alan read Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The book’s alternative title is “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years, All Alone in an Un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, Near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having Been Cast on Shore by Shipwreck, Wherein All the Men Perished but Himself. With an Account of how he was at last as Strangely Deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by Himself.”! Last year was the 300th anniversary of the book’s publication. Alan described it as an “amazing“ work of fiction and says that Defoe has a brilliant way of squeezing excitement from the mundane.” The story is based on real events and the hero is based on one Alexander Selkirk, very much an English entrepreneur. In the novel Crusoe who has become a wealthy plantation owner in Brazil sets sail and is shipwrecked. On the island he encounters Friday having seen his foot print and eventually he converts ‘My Man Friday’ into a Christian. Various encounters with local peoples and Europeans ensue. After almost three decades on the island, Crusoe departs (with Friday and a group of pirates) for England. Crusoe settles there for a time after selling his plantation in Brazil, but, as he explains, “I could not resist the strong Inclination I had to see my Island.” He eventually returns and learns what happened after the Spanish took control of it.
At one point in his life Defoe was pilloried for the crime of “seditious libel”, after publishing a pamphlet satirising contemporary politicians. The public, however, expressed support for Defoe's opinions by pelting him with flowers rather than rotten fruit! Sounds as if he would be popular today. During this event his friends fed and watered him. He is the Protestant work ethic incarnate and imperialist in his ambition. Robinson Crusoe has become a modern myth. The novel is both a gripping tale and a sober wide-ranging reflection on ambition, self-reliance, civilization, and power.
Simon read: Peril at End House by Agatha Christie (1932), a work of detective fiction about inheritance and murder which Simon found ‘very enjoyable.’ The story has at its heart Christie’s private detective Hercule Poirot and his best friend and former army captain Arthur Hastings, as well as Chief Inspector Japp. It is the sixth novel featuring Poirot. Poirot and Hastings are holidaying in Cornwall where they meet young Magdala "Nick" Buckley and her friends. Poirot is persuaded that someone is out to kill her. They meet all of her friends at her home called End House. Though he aims to protect Nick, a murder happens that provokes Poirot to mount a serious investigation. The novel was well received when first published, with the plot remarked as unusually ingenious and diabolically clever by reviewers. Writing in 1990, Robert Barnard found it “cunning, but not one of Christie's very best.“ It has been adapted to stage, radio, film, television, graphic novel, and a computer game, and translated into many other languages as a book. Di found Poirot’s interactions with various characters very funny. He is an amusing cynic, whereas Hastings is very brave and upright and Captain Jack ‘straight down the line’. Simon felt the conclusion was good as it introduces some new characters.
Denise read: Known to Social Services by Freya Barrington (2015).This work of non-fiction gives us a frighteningly realistic insight into the harrowing world of the child protection social worker. Based on her own experiences (a former social worker, she writes under a pen name), the book was a revelation and occupied the number one spot for social work books on Amazon UK within weeks of release and went on to win numerous plaudits including The London Book Award for autobiography / memoirs. Based on her own caseload and mostly set on a housing estate the book makes for tough reading as it is full of domestic violence, shattered fragile couples and set against a background of horrendous bureaucracy. The lives of the different people in the book are mostly known to each other. Denise had some experience of these sorts of clients in the world of social work and found it a good way of keeping up with what is going on.
Notes from the Booklovers Meeting 15th October 2020 (Held via Zoom)
Vanessa (who was unable to attend) sent us the following notes on the book she’d read, namely,
Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Published in 2018 this book as been a great success in America and in the UK where it has featured in The Times best seller list for thirty weeks.
This is Owens’ first novel, although she has written several non-fiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa as well as various natural history publications. This interest is shown in the beautifully crafted descriptions of the setting of the novel. Set on the coast / marshlands of North Caroline, Delia paints an imaginative picture of the landscape and wildlife of that area.
The story centres around a young girl, Kya, whose violently abused mother finally walks out on the family, leaving the last two of her five children (the older ones having already left the home to escape their father) to fend for themselves. Her brother soon leaves as well and Kya is left alone with her father learning to escape his drunken rages by hiding herself in the surrounding marsh area and befriending the gulls and other birds. Eventually her father too disappears and she is totally alone in the shack. Shunned by the local townsfolk as ‘white trash’ her only friend is a black trader who helps her survive. However, the story takes lighten and then darker turns when she is befriended by two local boys, one of whom dies. She is suspected of his murder and arrested. The following telling of her trial is a masterly piece of “did she? didn’t she?” writing. The end is unexpected with several surprises. Vanessa loved this book and practically read it in one sitting. She would really recommend it.
Sue had also recently read it and described it as ‘a really good story’ and enjoyed the wonderful descriptions of natural history. She felt the author was ‘writing it to work out how people can survive in extraordinary conditions.’
Sue also read: On The Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin. The book was written in 1982 and was and the winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for that year. In 1987 it was made into a film, directed by Andrew Grieve. Somewhat unusually for an author best known for his travel writing (e.g. Voyage to Patagonia) On the Black Hill is the tale of identical twin brothers, Benjamin and Lewis, who grow up on a farm in the border country between Wales and England – indeed we are told early in the book that the Welsh/English border runs through the middle of the house, to be exact through the middle of the staircase! They never leave home and their relationship is like that of a married couple; they move into their parents’ double better after the latter die. They till the rough soil and sleep in the same bed. One of them, Lewis is the stronger of the two. The novel portrays themes such as unrequited love, sexual repression and confusion, social, religious and cultural repression, hate and the historic social values of that era.
Alan read: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke author of the bestseller Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Alan thought this was an extraordinary book though at times found it difficult to know what to make of it. It is the story of a person who has been given the name ‘Piranesi’ and who lives in a house which he has never fully explored and whose space seems endless. Spending his time researching it, he never actually leaves it. He knows that he is the 15th human being to have lived there because he has found fourteen skeletons in various rooms. Many of the rooms contain classical statues and are reminiscent of the etchings produced by the famous artist, Piranesi. There is someone else in the house whom he calls ‘The Other’ and during the course of the book a sixteenth person arrives who becomes known as ‘16’ a character who supplies the narrator with multivitamins. The narrator has a very systematic mind and describes in great detail the wildlife surrounding the house, particularly the birds. His diet consists mainly of fish and shellfish.
According to one reviewer, like a book, the House is a closed-in, private world, filled with symbols—statues, the flight of birds—which can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Many of Piranesi’s observations on the nature of the House are also observations on the nature of fiction. “The search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted,” Piranesi thinks. But then he realizes, “The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of itself. It is not the means to an end.” Art and beauty—the statues, Clarke’s novel—are valuable as art and beauty, not because they lead to power or dominion.
Fascinated? Alan was. He found the book totally hypnotic and very moving.
Denise read: London Incognita by Garry Budden. This Arts Council sponsored book ‘chronicles the City of London through the eyes of a desperate and troubled inhabitants, a city caught in the cycle of perpetual decline and continuous renewal: the English capital, groaning under the weight of two thousand years of history. A malicious presence from the 1970s resurfaces in the fevered alleyways of the city; an amnesiac goddess offers brittle comfort to the spirits of murdered shop-girls; and an obscure and forgotten London writer holds the key to a thing known as the emperor worm. As bombs detonate and building burn down, the City’s selfish inhabitants hunt the ghosts of friends, family and lovers to the urban limits of the metropolis, uncovering the dark secrets of the capital’. (Review from The Broadway Bookshop.)
Denise describes the book as being full of ‘angry people, people thrown by the wayside’ and often using ‘some very ugly language’. She concluded that it’s a ‘very weird book but utterly compelling’.
Christine read: The Choice by Edith Eger. Although this could be described as ‘another Holocaust account’, it is much more than that since although the first third of the book describes in detail the author’s year in Auschwitz at the age of fifteen, the instantaneous slaughter of her parents, her troubled time there alongside one of her sisters, and her eventual release which makes for harrowing reading, the main premise of the book derives from the remaining two thirds. Here Eger recalls her husband and her family’s flight from Europe, an aspect of this period of history often overlooked – riding on the roofs of trains until they final reach a port and sail for America although they had thought they would be going to Israel. Indeed all their household belongings ended up there. Once in the US, they struggle despite their training and skills, to make a live doing menial jobs, but eventually they succeed in building a good life for themselves. Eger trains first as a psychiatrist and becomes a doctor with a very successful practice and works with people, who like her have suffered great traumas. The key message which the book promotes is that we all have a choice as to how we actually deal with life traumas and it is only relatively late in life (she is still alive, now aged 81) that she comes to understand this fully following a personally very difficult but essential return to Auschwitz. There is a universal message of hope coming from this book and Christine felt that it was a ‘wonderful read’.
Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Published in 2018 this book as been a great success in America and in the UK where it has featured in The Times best seller list for thirty weeks.
This is Owens’ first novel, although she has written several non-fiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa as well as various natural history publications. This interest is shown in the beautifully crafted descriptions of the setting of the novel. Set on the coast / marshlands of North Caroline, Delia paints an imaginative picture of the landscape and wildlife of that area.
The story centres around a young girl, Kya, whose violently abused mother finally walks out on the family, leaving the last two of her five children (the older ones having already left the home to escape their father) to fend for themselves. Her brother soon leaves as well and Kya is left alone with her father learning to escape his drunken rages by hiding herself in the surrounding marsh area and befriending the gulls and other birds. Eventually her father too disappears and she is totally alone in the shack. Shunned by the local townsfolk as ‘white trash’ her only friend is a black trader who helps her survive. However, the story takes lighten and then darker turns when she is befriended by two local boys, one of whom dies. She is suspected of his murder and arrested. The following telling of her trial is a masterly piece of “did she? didn’t she?” writing. The end is unexpected with several surprises. Vanessa loved this book and practically read it in one sitting. She would really recommend it.
Sue had also recently read it and described it as ‘a really good story’ and enjoyed the wonderful descriptions of natural history. She felt the author was ‘writing it to work out how people can survive in extraordinary conditions.’
Sue also read: On The Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin. The book was written in 1982 and was and the winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for that year. In 1987 it was made into a film, directed by Andrew Grieve. Somewhat unusually for an author best known for his travel writing (e.g. Voyage to Patagonia) On the Black Hill is the tale of identical twin brothers, Benjamin and Lewis, who grow up on a farm in the border country between Wales and England – indeed we are told early in the book that the Welsh/English border runs through the middle of the house, to be exact through the middle of the staircase! They never leave home and their relationship is like that of a married couple; they move into their parents’ double better after the latter die. They till the rough soil and sleep in the same bed. One of them, Lewis is the stronger of the two. The novel portrays themes such as unrequited love, sexual repression and confusion, social, religious and cultural repression, hate and the historic social values of that era.
Alan read: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke author of the bestseller Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Alan thought this was an extraordinary book though at times found it difficult to know what to make of it. It is the story of a person who has been given the name ‘Piranesi’ and who lives in a house which he has never fully explored and whose space seems endless. Spending his time researching it, he never actually leaves it. He knows that he is the 15th human being to have lived there because he has found fourteen skeletons in various rooms. Many of the rooms contain classical statues and are reminiscent of the etchings produced by the famous artist, Piranesi. There is someone else in the house whom he calls ‘The Other’ and during the course of the book a sixteenth person arrives who becomes known as ‘16’ a character who supplies the narrator with multivitamins. The narrator has a very systematic mind and describes in great detail the wildlife surrounding the house, particularly the birds. His diet consists mainly of fish and shellfish.
According to one reviewer, like a book, the House is a closed-in, private world, filled with symbols—statues, the flight of birds—which can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Many of Piranesi’s observations on the nature of the House are also observations on the nature of fiction. “The search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted,” Piranesi thinks. But then he realizes, “The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of itself. It is not the means to an end.” Art and beauty—the statues, Clarke’s novel—are valuable as art and beauty, not because they lead to power or dominion.
Fascinated? Alan was. He found the book totally hypnotic and very moving.
Denise read: London Incognita by Garry Budden. This Arts Council sponsored book ‘chronicles the City of London through the eyes of a desperate and troubled inhabitants, a city caught in the cycle of perpetual decline and continuous renewal: the English capital, groaning under the weight of two thousand years of history. A malicious presence from the 1970s resurfaces in the fevered alleyways of the city; an amnesiac goddess offers brittle comfort to the spirits of murdered shop-girls; and an obscure and forgotten London writer holds the key to a thing known as the emperor worm. As bombs detonate and building burn down, the City’s selfish inhabitants hunt the ghosts of friends, family and lovers to the urban limits of the metropolis, uncovering the dark secrets of the capital’. (Review from The Broadway Bookshop.)
Denise describes the book as being full of ‘angry people, people thrown by the wayside’ and often using ‘some very ugly language’. She concluded that it’s a ‘very weird book but utterly compelling’.
Christine read: The Choice by Edith Eger. Although this could be described as ‘another Holocaust account’, it is much more than that since although the first third of the book describes in detail the author’s year in Auschwitz at the age of fifteen, the instantaneous slaughter of her parents, her troubled time there alongside one of her sisters, and her eventual release which makes for harrowing reading, the main premise of the book derives from the remaining two thirds. Here Eger recalls her husband and her family’s flight from Europe, an aspect of this period of history often overlooked – riding on the roofs of trains until they final reach a port and sail for America although they had thought they would be going to Israel. Indeed all their household belongings ended up there. Once in the US, they struggle despite their training and skills, to make a live doing menial jobs, but eventually they succeed in building a good life for themselves. Eger trains first as a psychiatrist and becomes a doctor with a very successful practice and works with people, who like her have suffered great traumas. The key message which the book promotes is that we all have a choice as to how we actually deal with life traumas and it is only relatively late in life (she is still alive, now aged 81) that she comes to understand this fully following a personally very difficult but essential return to Auschwitz. There is a universal message of hope coming from this book and Christine felt that it was a ‘wonderful read’.
Notes from the Booklovers Meeting held via Zoom
On Thursday, 17th September 2020
Present: Sue, Denise, Christine, Alan, Simon
1. Sue read American Wife (2009) by Curtis Sittenfeld. Sittenfeld is a successful American author who has recently published Rodham which explores what might have been if Hilary hadn’t married Bill. American Wife is the story of the personal and political life of a woman (loosely based on the life of Laura Bush), Alice Blackwell, who one day marries the President of the US, Charlie Blackwell. She grows up learning the virtues of politeness but when she is seventeen a tragic car accident in which her best friend is killed, shatters her identity. Her marriage is a combination of love for her husband, the charismatic son of a powerful Republican family and a fundamental disagreement with his beliefs and values which include racism and sexism As her husband’s presidency enters its second term Alice finds she has to confront contradictions in her life. The book explores both the personal and the political and Sue would definitely recommend it for its insights into relationships and other issues.
2. Denise read Down And Out In Paris And London (1933) by George Orwell. The book is a mixture of memoir and fiction on the theme of poverty. There are two parts to it. Initially a passionate young British man in 1928 (based on Orwell ) finds himself out of money and working as a casual labourer in a Parisian restaurant alongside his co-workers, all in reduced straits. The second half is a travelogue of life on the road in and around London from a tramp’s perspective with descriptions of hostel accommodation and again with characters living on the margins. Denise very much enjoyed the characterisation in the novel: Boris, Valentine, Maria, Paddy and Mozo. This was Orwell’s first full length work. It reveals the near impossibility of getting out of the poverty trap, a good example being the struggle he has to get food from the Salvation Army. Denise is a fan of Orwell’s language for which he is well known and which he uses to good political effect. Orwell may not currently be fashionable but he continues to have something worth saying and expresses it eloquently.
3. Simon continued his reading of Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman which was written up in our last set of notes. This eight hundred page book which was banned by the Soviets and not published until after the author’s death is a timely reminder of the dangers of a totalitarian state (here Stalinist). Simon sees it as a remarkable book and this is summed up in the following comments by writers: "Life and Fate . . . has been widely hailed as one of the greatest books of the 20th century and for my money, is one of the greatest books, period.”(Becca Rothfeld, Jewish Currents) and "Vassily Grossman is the Tolstoy of the USSR." (Martin Amis).
4. Alan read The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendahl (1839). The book is mainly set in Italy and it’s easy to think of its hero, Fabrizzio, as an Italian though he is a young French aristocrat. It is contemporary to the period or slightly before since Stendahl did not want his ‘veiled’ criticisms of King Louis Philippe of France to be too obvious for fear of retribution. The book combines the themes of support for Napoleon and for the rise of Italian nationalism. It narrates Fabrizzio’s adventures in Napoleon's army and in the court of Parma, illuminating in the process the whole fabric of European history. Balzac wrote of it, "Never before have the hearts of princes, ministers, courtiers, and women been depicted like this...one sees perfection in every detail." Alan was particularly taken with the description of the Battle of Waterloo which really brings home what it was like to be there (unlike Thackeray’s depiction in Vanity Fair). Later Fabrizzio is imprisoned in a fictitious tower in Parma for killing his lover’s partner. He found the whole novel captivating. It is long and much more than a historical romance as Balzac’s quote implies.
5. Christine read Travels With a Donkey In The Cevennes (1879) by Robert Louis Stevenson. She had read the book aged 14 at school and now questions whether it was a suitable novel for that age group. Although it starts with a fascinating and entertaining account of the author’s preparations for his 120 mile trek through the Cevennes including the purchase of his travel companion, the donkey Modestine, and his attempt to train her to walk at a sensible pace to ensure the journey is done within three weeks. The later part of the novel following an engrossing chapter of a night spent in the monastery of ‘Our Lady of the Snows, tends to the polemical discussing at length the history of religious wars in that part of France. However, it stands as an excellent early example of travel writing and is engrossing for its descriptions of the region, the nights Stevenson spends under the stars and his camping equipment and dilemmas, the characters he meets, the rough and ready inns he occasionally stays in and, in Christine’s view, on balance is a wonderful piece of writing about a very small area of France.
1. Sue read American Wife (2009) by Curtis Sittenfeld. Sittenfeld is a successful American author who has recently published Rodham which explores what might have been if Hilary hadn’t married Bill. American Wife is the story of the personal and political life of a woman (loosely based on the life of Laura Bush), Alice Blackwell, who one day marries the President of the US, Charlie Blackwell. She grows up learning the virtues of politeness but when she is seventeen a tragic car accident in which her best friend is killed, shatters her identity. Her marriage is a combination of love for her husband, the charismatic son of a powerful Republican family and a fundamental disagreement with his beliefs and values which include racism and sexism As her husband’s presidency enters its second term Alice finds she has to confront contradictions in her life. The book explores both the personal and the political and Sue would definitely recommend it for its insights into relationships and other issues.
2. Denise read Down And Out In Paris And London (1933) by George Orwell. The book is a mixture of memoir and fiction on the theme of poverty. There are two parts to it. Initially a passionate young British man in 1928 (based on Orwell ) finds himself out of money and working as a casual labourer in a Parisian restaurant alongside his co-workers, all in reduced straits. The second half is a travelogue of life on the road in and around London from a tramp’s perspective with descriptions of hostel accommodation and again with characters living on the margins. Denise very much enjoyed the characterisation in the novel: Boris, Valentine, Maria, Paddy and Mozo. This was Orwell’s first full length work. It reveals the near impossibility of getting out of the poverty trap, a good example being the struggle he has to get food from the Salvation Army. Denise is a fan of Orwell’s language for which he is well known and which he uses to good political effect. Orwell may not currently be fashionable but he continues to have something worth saying and expresses it eloquently.
3. Simon continued his reading of Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman which was written up in our last set of notes. This eight hundred page book which was banned by the Soviets and not published until after the author’s death is a timely reminder of the dangers of a totalitarian state (here Stalinist). Simon sees it as a remarkable book and this is summed up in the following comments by writers: "Life and Fate . . . has been widely hailed as one of the greatest books of the 20th century and for my money, is one of the greatest books, period.”(Becca Rothfeld, Jewish Currents) and "Vassily Grossman is the Tolstoy of the USSR." (Martin Amis).
4. Alan read The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendahl (1839). The book is mainly set in Italy and it’s easy to think of its hero, Fabrizzio, as an Italian though he is a young French aristocrat. It is contemporary to the period or slightly before since Stendahl did not want his ‘veiled’ criticisms of King Louis Philippe of France to be too obvious for fear of retribution. The book combines the themes of support for Napoleon and for the rise of Italian nationalism. It narrates Fabrizzio’s adventures in Napoleon's army and in the court of Parma, illuminating in the process the whole fabric of European history. Balzac wrote of it, "Never before have the hearts of princes, ministers, courtiers, and women been depicted like this...one sees perfection in every detail." Alan was particularly taken with the description of the Battle of Waterloo which really brings home what it was like to be there (unlike Thackeray’s depiction in Vanity Fair). Later Fabrizzio is imprisoned in a fictitious tower in Parma for killing his lover’s partner. He found the whole novel captivating. It is long and much more than a historical romance as Balzac’s quote implies.
5. Christine read Travels With a Donkey In The Cevennes (1879) by Robert Louis Stevenson. She had read the book aged 14 at school and now questions whether it was a suitable novel for that age group. Although it starts with a fascinating and entertaining account of the author’s preparations for his 120 mile trek through the Cevennes including the purchase of his travel companion, the donkey Modestine, and his attempt to train her to walk at a sensible pace to ensure the journey is done within three weeks. The later part of the novel following an engrossing chapter of a night spent in the monastery of ‘Our Lady of the Snows, tends to the polemical discussing at length the history of religious wars in that part of France. However, it stands as an excellent early example of travel writing and is engrossing for its descriptions of the region, the nights Stevenson spends under the stars and his camping equipment and dilemmas, the characters he meets, the rough and ready inns he occasionally stays in and, in Christine’s view, on balance is a wonderful piece of writing about a very small area of France.
Notes from the Booklovers Meeting held via Zoom
on Thursday, 28th June 2020
Mary read: Absolute Power by David Baldacci (1996) . This is the author’s first novel which became an instant success. He was born in 1950, became a lawyer, and has since published 37 novels.
Luther Witney was in the process of robbing Walter Sullivan’s house who was one of the wealthiest people in the USA. What he saw confounded him and changed his life.
He watched the President of the United States in a tryst with Sullivan’s wife, which went badly wrong. Both the President and Christine were inebriated. The President, it seemed, liked roughing his victims up, and proceeded to terrify her by attempting to strangle her. She yelled out, attracting the attention of his bodyguards, and in the meantime managed to grab a letter opener with which she stabbed him in the arm. The President’s bodyguards duly entered the room, and to protect the President, shot the woman.
Luther managed to escape with the evidence (the letter opener) whilst a cover-up operation ensued. The rest of the book is devoted to how DI Seth Frank tried to unravel the puzzle. The story is full of twists and turns, and involves Jack Graham, Luther’s daughter Kate Witney’s ex fiancé. He’s presently engaged to Jennifer Baldwin, the spoilt daughter of a multi-millionaire. There were many unexpected twists and turns in this tale, as you would expect from an author such as David Baldacci and Mary found it an enjoyable, page-turning read.
Christine read: The Island by Ana Maria Matute (1959). It’s Spanish title is Primera Memoria. Matute is an award-winning novelist. (the Cervantes Award) There is plenty of biographical material in this book since she did indeed have to go and live with her grandmother following an acute illness and, following the end of the civil war in Spain she was definitely persona non grata whose books were banned by Franco. Iis a story of rebellious adolescence narrated by Matia who is taken to live with her grandmother on the Island of Mallorca during the Spanish Civil war. Although it is essentially a coming of age novel in which we witness the growing of Matia alongside her cousin Borja from childhood to adulthood, this period of her life is set against the conflict of the civil war as it is played out on the Island. The novel reveals her relationships with boys – her mercurial cousin and the mysterious Manuel from the Monarchist / Fascist side of the divide. Never explicit, it is not difficult to identify who are Republicans and who are Monarchists. Indeed why should that be otherwise – it seems to be true of every community, part of human nature. You learn about the Island’s past, specifically the underlying anti-Semitism dating back to the Inquisition’s mass burning of Jews in the 14th century and beyond. In effect the Island is divided. The story reveals a dark, feverish and yet lyrical coming of age novel. Christine loved her prose which at times is breathtaking.
This book reminded Christine of some of the Virago classics – authors like Rosamund Lehmann, Elizabeth Taylor, Antonia White. What do I mean by that ? Perhaps a certain dividence? Ultimately she felt that the plot remains too guarded, too subtle. She’d read a lot of books about the Spanish Civil War so perhaps I’m use to reading about the brutality rather than the implied brutality. A good read though and interesting to be introduced to one of Spain’s greatest novelists.
Denise read Middle England by Jonathan Coe (2018) : this book is the third in his trilogy (The Rotter’s Club The Closed Circle) about modern England. Denise had begun the novel once before but given up so she tried again. She ‘still didn’t warm to the characters and consequently felt underwhelmed by the book and didn’t feel inclined to recommend it while recognising that it is an interesting blend of the personal and the political. The main character is Benjamin Trotter, hero of the previous novels. This is a state-of-the-nation novel that moves from the election of the coalition government in 2010, through the riots of 2011, the brief upswelling of multicultural national pride that was the 2012 Olympics, to the 2016 referendum and its subsequent fallout, ending in 2018. In praise of the book The Guardian’s review said “Coe – a writer of uncommon decency – reminds us that the way out of this mess is through moderation, through compromise, through that age-old English ability to laugh at ourselves.” Other reviews praised the book’s humour, comedy even, with characters who are recognizable copies of some contemporary politicians, e.g. Jacob Rees-Mogg and Jeremy Corbyn
Simon completed his reading of his previous month’s read: Filthy Rich by Woody Allen which he had found informative and interesting. He then moved on to Life And Hate (1960) by Vassily Grossman and seen as the latter’s chef d’oeuvre. It is technically the second of a two part book, the first being For A Just Cause. Where as the first part expresses loyalty to Stalin’s regime at the time, Life And Hate sharply criticizes Stalinism. After being submitted to a magazine for possible publication, Grossman’s flat was raided by the KGB and the manuscript taken. He was informed by a senior government official that it could not be published for two hundred years! Eventually it was smuggled out of the country on microfilm and was published in the West in 1980.
The book deals with interconnected stories about people surviving the battle for Stalingrad. According to Simon the writing is ‘stupendous’ with great description and it’s as if you’re there. It reminded him of The Castle by Franz Kafka. “Despite his acknowledgement of the world's great evil, Grossman believes humanity to be fundamentally good. If mankind is stripped down to its very core, all that will remain is this invincible kernel; therefore, it is this kernel (and perhaps this kernel alone) that is responsible for the basic goodness of humanity.” Grossman died in 1964 never having seen this book published.
Vanessa read: Under A Polar Star (2016) by Stef Penney. The book is set in the Arctic in the early days of polar explorers. The main character is the daughter of a whaler who first crosses the Arctic at the age of twelve on whaling ships. She then sets out to become a scientist and explorer. She struggles to be taken seriously but determination and chance lead her back to northern Greenland at the head of a British expedition, despite the many who believe that a young woman has no place in this harsh world of men.
The story fast forwards to 1948 when Flora who has since studied to become a meteorologist, returns to the Arctic in 1948 at the head of her own expedition when she meets Jakob de Beyn who is on a rival one and falls in love with him - this becomes a fateful liaison . Vanessa described how easy they find it to tell lies about their explorations. At the novel’s heart is Flora’s all-consuming love for explorer and rival Jakob, a man who will ultimately reap the terrible consequence of his own ambition.
Alan read: Arabian Nights and Days (1979) by Najib Mafouz, the Egyptian writer. The novel serves as a sequel and companion piece for One Thousand and One Nights and includes many of the same characters that appeared in the original work such as Shahryar, Scheherazade, and Aladdin. The author was born in 1911 and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. A prolific writer who published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, hundreds of op-ed columns for Egyptian newspapers, and five plays over a 70-year career, he died in 2006. He was no stranger to controversy and was attacked for his support of artistic liberty at the time the Fatwa was pronounced against Salman Rushdie
Though it is set in an Islamic city in medieval times, the modern reader will find much in this novel that is surprisingly familiar. It depicts a city plagued by widespread corruption among its most powerful citizens, and a pervasive sense of social unrest and insecurity. The chief of police is kept particularly busy dealing with the underground activities of various religious sects that are intent on changing the unscrupulous regime. Amid all of this, as in the Thousand and One Nights, genies appear out of bottles accidentally opened by innocent individuals, affecting their lives in exciting, sometimes detrimental ways.
Famed for his skill as a storyteller, Naguib Mahfouz has here produced a novel that is as colorful and entertaining as the book that inspired it. It is critical of the repressive corrupt regime in Egypt at the time. Alan really liked it especially its universality. There are lots of lovely aphoristic sayings. He would definitely recommend it.
Di read: Therese Raquin (1868) by Emile Zola, his earliest book which shocked audiences at the time it was published. Di said you could describe it as a ‘pot-boiler’. The novel's themes - adultery and murder were considered scandalous and famously described as "putrid" in a review in the newspaper Le Figaro. It’s the story of a bored housewife unhappily married to her first cousin by an overbearing aunt, who may seem to be well-intentioned but in many ways is deeply selfish. Thérèse's husband, Camille, is sickly and egocentric and when the opportunity arises, Thérèse enters into a turbulent and sordidly passionate affair with one of Camille's friends, Laurent. The plot to murder the irritating husband ends badly with both so psychologically affected by their joint act of terror to the point they are know longer able to live with one and another. Shades of the Macbeths!
Di also re-read Madam Bovary by Gustave Flaubert which she described as a ‘beautiful book’. Like Zola, Flaubert indulges in psychological realism and the plots are not entirely dissimilar, i.e. bored housewife and lover relentlessly pursuing their own passions. Emma Bovary chases the dream of being with her lover Rodolphe and wrecks her husband’s living through her selfishness. However, Madame Bovary has come to be recognised as a ‘masterpiece’ whereas Therese Raquin has not.
Luther Witney was in the process of robbing Walter Sullivan’s house who was one of the wealthiest people in the USA. What he saw confounded him and changed his life.
He watched the President of the United States in a tryst with Sullivan’s wife, which went badly wrong. Both the President and Christine were inebriated. The President, it seemed, liked roughing his victims up, and proceeded to terrify her by attempting to strangle her. She yelled out, attracting the attention of his bodyguards, and in the meantime managed to grab a letter opener with which she stabbed him in the arm. The President’s bodyguards duly entered the room, and to protect the President, shot the woman.
Luther managed to escape with the evidence (the letter opener) whilst a cover-up operation ensued. The rest of the book is devoted to how DI Seth Frank tried to unravel the puzzle. The story is full of twists and turns, and involves Jack Graham, Luther’s daughter Kate Witney’s ex fiancé. He’s presently engaged to Jennifer Baldwin, the spoilt daughter of a multi-millionaire. There were many unexpected twists and turns in this tale, as you would expect from an author such as David Baldacci and Mary found it an enjoyable, page-turning read.
Christine read: The Island by Ana Maria Matute (1959). It’s Spanish title is Primera Memoria. Matute is an award-winning novelist. (the Cervantes Award) There is plenty of biographical material in this book since she did indeed have to go and live with her grandmother following an acute illness and, following the end of the civil war in Spain she was definitely persona non grata whose books were banned by Franco. Iis a story of rebellious adolescence narrated by Matia who is taken to live with her grandmother on the Island of Mallorca during the Spanish Civil war. Although it is essentially a coming of age novel in which we witness the growing of Matia alongside her cousin Borja from childhood to adulthood, this period of her life is set against the conflict of the civil war as it is played out on the Island. The novel reveals her relationships with boys – her mercurial cousin and the mysterious Manuel from the Monarchist / Fascist side of the divide. Never explicit, it is not difficult to identify who are Republicans and who are Monarchists. Indeed why should that be otherwise – it seems to be true of every community, part of human nature. You learn about the Island’s past, specifically the underlying anti-Semitism dating back to the Inquisition’s mass burning of Jews in the 14th century and beyond. In effect the Island is divided. The story reveals a dark, feverish and yet lyrical coming of age novel. Christine loved her prose which at times is breathtaking.
This book reminded Christine of some of the Virago classics – authors like Rosamund Lehmann, Elizabeth Taylor, Antonia White. What do I mean by that ? Perhaps a certain dividence? Ultimately she felt that the plot remains too guarded, too subtle. She’d read a lot of books about the Spanish Civil War so perhaps I’m use to reading about the brutality rather than the implied brutality. A good read though and interesting to be introduced to one of Spain’s greatest novelists.
Denise read Middle England by Jonathan Coe (2018) : this book is the third in his trilogy (The Rotter’s Club The Closed Circle) about modern England. Denise had begun the novel once before but given up so she tried again. She ‘still didn’t warm to the characters and consequently felt underwhelmed by the book and didn’t feel inclined to recommend it while recognising that it is an interesting blend of the personal and the political. The main character is Benjamin Trotter, hero of the previous novels. This is a state-of-the-nation novel that moves from the election of the coalition government in 2010, through the riots of 2011, the brief upswelling of multicultural national pride that was the 2012 Olympics, to the 2016 referendum and its subsequent fallout, ending in 2018. In praise of the book The Guardian’s review said “Coe – a writer of uncommon decency – reminds us that the way out of this mess is through moderation, through compromise, through that age-old English ability to laugh at ourselves.” Other reviews praised the book’s humour, comedy even, with characters who are recognizable copies of some contemporary politicians, e.g. Jacob Rees-Mogg and Jeremy Corbyn
Simon completed his reading of his previous month’s read: Filthy Rich by Woody Allen which he had found informative and interesting. He then moved on to Life And Hate (1960) by Vassily Grossman and seen as the latter’s chef d’oeuvre. It is technically the second of a two part book, the first being For A Just Cause. Where as the first part expresses loyalty to Stalin’s regime at the time, Life And Hate sharply criticizes Stalinism. After being submitted to a magazine for possible publication, Grossman’s flat was raided by the KGB and the manuscript taken. He was informed by a senior government official that it could not be published for two hundred years! Eventually it was smuggled out of the country on microfilm and was published in the West in 1980.
The book deals with interconnected stories about people surviving the battle for Stalingrad. According to Simon the writing is ‘stupendous’ with great description and it’s as if you’re there. It reminded him of The Castle by Franz Kafka. “Despite his acknowledgement of the world's great evil, Grossman believes humanity to be fundamentally good. If mankind is stripped down to its very core, all that will remain is this invincible kernel; therefore, it is this kernel (and perhaps this kernel alone) that is responsible for the basic goodness of humanity.” Grossman died in 1964 never having seen this book published.
Vanessa read: Under A Polar Star (2016) by Stef Penney. The book is set in the Arctic in the early days of polar explorers. The main character is the daughter of a whaler who first crosses the Arctic at the age of twelve on whaling ships. She then sets out to become a scientist and explorer. She struggles to be taken seriously but determination and chance lead her back to northern Greenland at the head of a British expedition, despite the many who believe that a young woman has no place in this harsh world of men.
The story fast forwards to 1948 when Flora who has since studied to become a meteorologist, returns to the Arctic in 1948 at the head of her own expedition when she meets Jakob de Beyn who is on a rival one and falls in love with him - this becomes a fateful liaison . Vanessa described how easy they find it to tell lies about their explorations. At the novel’s heart is Flora’s all-consuming love for explorer and rival Jakob, a man who will ultimately reap the terrible consequence of his own ambition.
Alan read: Arabian Nights and Days (1979) by Najib Mafouz, the Egyptian writer. The novel serves as a sequel and companion piece for One Thousand and One Nights and includes many of the same characters that appeared in the original work such as Shahryar, Scheherazade, and Aladdin. The author was born in 1911 and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. A prolific writer who published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, hundreds of op-ed columns for Egyptian newspapers, and five plays over a 70-year career, he died in 2006. He was no stranger to controversy and was attacked for his support of artistic liberty at the time the Fatwa was pronounced against Salman Rushdie
Though it is set in an Islamic city in medieval times, the modern reader will find much in this novel that is surprisingly familiar. It depicts a city plagued by widespread corruption among its most powerful citizens, and a pervasive sense of social unrest and insecurity. The chief of police is kept particularly busy dealing with the underground activities of various religious sects that are intent on changing the unscrupulous regime. Amid all of this, as in the Thousand and One Nights, genies appear out of bottles accidentally opened by innocent individuals, affecting their lives in exciting, sometimes detrimental ways.
Famed for his skill as a storyteller, Naguib Mahfouz has here produced a novel that is as colorful and entertaining as the book that inspired it. It is critical of the repressive corrupt regime in Egypt at the time. Alan really liked it especially its universality. There are lots of lovely aphoristic sayings. He would definitely recommend it.
Di read: Therese Raquin (1868) by Emile Zola, his earliest book which shocked audiences at the time it was published. Di said you could describe it as a ‘pot-boiler’. The novel's themes - adultery and murder were considered scandalous and famously described as "putrid" in a review in the newspaper Le Figaro. It’s the story of a bored housewife unhappily married to her first cousin by an overbearing aunt, who may seem to be well-intentioned but in many ways is deeply selfish. Thérèse's husband, Camille, is sickly and egocentric and when the opportunity arises, Thérèse enters into a turbulent and sordidly passionate affair with one of Camille's friends, Laurent. The plot to murder the irritating husband ends badly with both so psychologically affected by their joint act of terror to the point they are know longer able to live with one and another. Shades of the Macbeths!
Di also re-read Madam Bovary by Gustave Flaubert which she described as a ‘beautiful book’. Like Zola, Flaubert indulges in psychological realism and the plots are not entirely dissimilar, i.e. bored housewife and lover relentlessly pursuing their own passions. Emma Bovary chases the dream of being with her lover Rodolphe and wrecks her husband’s living through her selfishness. However, Madame Bovary has come to be recognised as a ‘masterpiece’ whereas Therese Raquin has not.
Notes from Booklovers (via Zoom) May 2020
Sue read: The Glass Palace (2000) Amitav Ghosh. This is a historical novel set in Burma, Bengal, India and Malaysia. It was a recommendation from her book club and Sue enjoyed it very much especially the scope and diversity of it. At times it was slightly confusing particularly at the beginning where there was quite a lot of repetition and it wasn’t always clear which country you were in or who the characters were... It involves three families and covers the period from 1885 century in Mandalay to the post war era and focuses on the fortunes of a Burmese man, Rajkumar Raha. Exiled from Burma when the British forcibly deposed the Burmese king, it moves from an almost fairy-tale early life to the family’s move to Calcutta and the subsequent joining of multiracial families It covers the wide scope of social and economic change including the growth of rubber wealth, the Japanese invasion of Burma and the losses of family lives. The final part covers the post WWII lives of the scattered families. Sue appreciated the story telling and exploration of racial tensions and intergenerational issues.
Vanessa read Tombland (2000) by C J Sansom: This is the seventh novel in the author’s bestselling Shardlake series and Vanessa is a fan of other books by Sansom. The book is set in 1549 two years after the death of King Henry VIII. Shardlake is a lawyer and is in the service of Henry’s younger daughter Lady Elizabeth. Shardlake and his assistant Nicholas Overton go to Norwich to the summer assizes to investigate the murder of Edith Boleyn, wife of John Boleyn a distant relation of Anne. While there a second murder occurs and Shardlake, reunited with a former assistant Jack Barak, and this leads to the three of them investigating the mystery. Simultaneously there is an outbreak of social rebellion by peasants against enclosures led by Robert Kett. The latter establishes a vast camp outside Norwich and leads a force of thousands to overthow the landlords. Soon the rebels have taken over the city. Jack throws in his lot with the rebels whereas Nicholas, opposed to them, becomes a prisoner in Norwich castle. Shardlake discovers that the murder of Edith Boleyn may have connections reaching into both the heart of the rebel camp and of the Norfolk gentry. Vanessa enjoyed the authenticity of the research - the book contains a fifty page essay of historical research into Kett’s Rebellion. Di, another Sansom fan mentioned that his style is ‘rambling’ whereas one review claims that ‘ eight hundred pages in Shardlake’s company always fly by’!
Denise read Fireflies – A Father’s Tale of Love and Loss (1999) by David Morrell. This is an account of his son’s brave but ultimately unsuccessful struggle with bone cancer. According to Denise, this is a beautifully written book about grief that moves between genres – fiction to non fiction. Best known as the author of novels of suspense where fear is usually the main subject, Morrell said he had never known terror until this dreadful six month period of his son’s illness. He says (on his website) “The book is about despair and loss and God. It's also about eerie experiences that made me believe I was getting some sort of contact from my son. I know that sounds odd, but as the priest/novelist Father Andrew Greeley wrote to me, in his experience more than half the people he has counselled for grief had a similar sensation but didn’t feel free to talk about it for fear of being thought strange.” Although the book is an unusual mixture of the real and the spirtual, Denise said this was not confusing and entirely believable and she thought it would be a very important book for anyone going through a similar experience.
Simon read: Apropos of Nothing the 2020 autobiography of Woody Allen. Simon has always enjoyed his films and was keen to hear his side of events in what has been an often contentious life. The story brings us to the present day and is particularly interesting in its account of film-making. It has a conversational style and gives a comprehensive account of his life moving backwards and forwards in time and including lots of gossip. It covers his early life when he was a stand up comedian. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure. Simon found this a very entertaining, honest, brilliant self-portrait of an artist who is one of the greatest filmmakers of our time.
Mary read: The Queen’s Fool (2017) by Phillipa Gregory. Mary has been enjoying Gregory’s books and this one was no different. The author has the clever idea of putting a fictitious spy, Hannah as the Queen’s Fool, in the midst of the royal household. The time is circa the middle of the 1500’s before and during Queen Mary’s reign. Jewish, Hannah and her father hide their faith and became faux Christians. Hannah was fourteen and dressed as a boy when they escaped from Spain, because her father, a bookseller of unusual books, deemed that she would be safer disguised like that. Her ability to sometimes be able to see into the future and because she spoke fluent Spanish and French attracted attention to her, and she was recruited by John Dee (a real historical person) to be Mary’s Fool before she ascended the throne. John Dee an astrologer and occultist, eventually became an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. Hannah becomes a companion to both Queen Mary and Elizabeth and observed the jealousy between them. She had to walk a tactful fine line in diplomacy to save both her job and her life. She has many adventures and eventually marries another Spanish Jew, Daniel Carpenter, who had also changed his name when he came to England. (Mary says coincidentally that is the name that her grandfather changed his name to when he came to England as a Jewish refugee from Poland.) Many adventures ensue before and after the marriage. A really interesting read which gives you an excellent insight into that turbulent time.
Alan read The Confessions of Felix Krull (1954) by Thomas Mann. Mann began writing this book in 1905 and it took over forty years for it to come to publication during which time the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Even then it remained unfinished as its author died in 1955. It is a comic, picaresque novel and in Alan’s opinion really is very funny. He said he’d always wanted to read a comic German novel. The book is set in the nineteenth century and is the account of the series of adventures that befall the narrator and this provides the unity of the story. Lacking moral scruples, essentially a con man, Felix Krull takes us through a world peopled by bizarre characters from all stratas of society. Krull is able to adapt himself to the situation of the moment and becomes such an effective con man that his victims almost consider themselves privileged. The Encyclopedia Britannica comments: “The story is a good example of Mann’s often-used theme of the immorality of the artist. Krull makes an art of his criminality and is motivated less by greed than by the sheer joy of a job well done.” The book is ultimately severely critical of the bourgeoisie. Alan found it very funny and would heartily recommend it.
Di read: The Power And The Glory (1940) by Graham Green. Di has owned a copy of this novel for some time and during lockdown has decided to read books she owns but hasn’t read before. A classic modern novel, its title coming from The Lord’s Prayer, it is one of the redemption of a Mexican Catholic priest, a so-called ‘whiskey priest’. He is believed to have been based on a real person, Tomas Garrido Canabal, a committed socialist who despised the Church. During the vicious persecution of the clergy in Mexico, this worldly priest, the, an alcoholic is on the run during the Mexican Revolution. Chased by the police his routes of escape are being shut off, his chances getting fewer. But compassion and humanity force him along the road to his destiny, reluctant to abandon those who need him, and those he cares for. In the introduction to the Penguin Modern Classic John Updike wrote: “The Power and the Glory, is Graham Greene’s masterpiece…. The energy and grandeur of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist.” Di found this novel to be very descriptive, lyrical and poetic even – a brilliant book.
Christine read: Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier. She had been given a copy, in French, by a French lady who had stayed with her family and was looking for it recently while thinking about rural France and wishing she could be there. She couldn’t find it but found the Penguin Modern Classic translation and realized that she had never actually read it. It is a classic coming of age novel which every French child reads at school. Recently it figured 6th on Le Monde’s list of the 100 greatest French novels. Christine thoroughly enjoyed the story. The eponymous hero comes to board at a school in a French village and becomes friendly with the son of the schoolmaster, François, who is somewhat in awe of him. Le Grand Meaulnes’ name doesn’t just describe his physical stature but also his dominant character. The plot is based on him setting off driving a carriage to pick up François’ grandparents from a nearby station. He gets lost and that’s essentially where the story begins. He arrives at a chateau ‘the lost domain’ where an engagement party is taking place and there at first sight he falls in love with the daughter of the owner. He is away from the school for three days. The rest of the book deals with his restless search for ‘Yvonne de Galais’ and his desire to find her for Meaulnes. Intertwined is the story of Yvonne’s brother Frantz whose engagement is broken that night. The book is delightful in the way it describes youth and particularly for young males in a small French village. It verges on sentimentalism at times but ultimately it is a beautiful book that captures the essence of what it means to be an adolescent wherever you are. Christine was pleased to have rectified one of the gaps in her life of novel reading.
Vanessa read Tombland (2000) by C J Sansom: This is the seventh novel in the author’s bestselling Shardlake series and Vanessa is a fan of other books by Sansom. The book is set in 1549 two years after the death of King Henry VIII. Shardlake is a lawyer and is in the service of Henry’s younger daughter Lady Elizabeth. Shardlake and his assistant Nicholas Overton go to Norwich to the summer assizes to investigate the murder of Edith Boleyn, wife of John Boleyn a distant relation of Anne. While there a second murder occurs and Shardlake, reunited with a former assistant Jack Barak, and this leads to the three of them investigating the mystery. Simultaneously there is an outbreak of social rebellion by peasants against enclosures led by Robert Kett. The latter establishes a vast camp outside Norwich and leads a force of thousands to overthow the landlords. Soon the rebels have taken over the city. Jack throws in his lot with the rebels whereas Nicholas, opposed to them, becomes a prisoner in Norwich castle. Shardlake discovers that the murder of Edith Boleyn may have connections reaching into both the heart of the rebel camp and of the Norfolk gentry. Vanessa enjoyed the authenticity of the research - the book contains a fifty page essay of historical research into Kett’s Rebellion. Di, another Sansom fan mentioned that his style is ‘rambling’ whereas one review claims that ‘ eight hundred pages in Shardlake’s company always fly by’!
Denise read Fireflies – A Father’s Tale of Love and Loss (1999) by David Morrell. This is an account of his son’s brave but ultimately unsuccessful struggle with bone cancer. According to Denise, this is a beautifully written book about grief that moves between genres – fiction to non fiction. Best known as the author of novels of suspense where fear is usually the main subject, Morrell said he had never known terror until this dreadful six month period of his son’s illness. He says (on his website) “The book is about despair and loss and God. It's also about eerie experiences that made me believe I was getting some sort of contact from my son. I know that sounds odd, but as the priest/novelist Father Andrew Greeley wrote to me, in his experience more than half the people he has counselled for grief had a similar sensation but didn’t feel free to talk about it for fear of being thought strange.” Although the book is an unusual mixture of the real and the spirtual, Denise said this was not confusing and entirely believable and she thought it would be a very important book for anyone going through a similar experience.
Simon read: Apropos of Nothing the 2020 autobiography of Woody Allen. Simon has always enjoyed his films and was keen to hear his side of events in what has been an often contentious life. The story brings us to the present day and is particularly interesting in its account of film-making. It has a conversational style and gives a comprehensive account of his life moving backwards and forwards in time and including lots of gossip. It covers his early life when he was a stand up comedian. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure. Simon found this a very entertaining, honest, brilliant self-portrait of an artist who is one of the greatest filmmakers of our time.
Mary read: The Queen’s Fool (2017) by Phillipa Gregory. Mary has been enjoying Gregory’s books and this one was no different. The author has the clever idea of putting a fictitious spy, Hannah as the Queen’s Fool, in the midst of the royal household. The time is circa the middle of the 1500’s before and during Queen Mary’s reign. Jewish, Hannah and her father hide their faith and became faux Christians. Hannah was fourteen and dressed as a boy when they escaped from Spain, because her father, a bookseller of unusual books, deemed that she would be safer disguised like that. Her ability to sometimes be able to see into the future and because she spoke fluent Spanish and French attracted attention to her, and she was recruited by John Dee (a real historical person) to be Mary’s Fool before she ascended the throne. John Dee an astrologer and occultist, eventually became an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. Hannah becomes a companion to both Queen Mary and Elizabeth and observed the jealousy between them. She had to walk a tactful fine line in diplomacy to save both her job and her life. She has many adventures and eventually marries another Spanish Jew, Daniel Carpenter, who had also changed his name when he came to England. (Mary says coincidentally that is the name that her grandfather changed his name to when he came to England as a Jewish refugee from Poland.) Many adventures ensue before and after the marriage. A really interesting read which gives you an excellent insight into that turbulent time.
Alan read The Confessions of Felix Krull (1954) by Thomas Mann. Mann began writing this book in 1905 and it took over forty years for it to come to publication during which time the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Even then it remained unfinished as its author died in 1955. It is a comic, picaresque novel and in Alan’s opinion really is very funny. He said he’d always wanted to read a comic German novel. The book is set in the nineteenth century and is the account of the series of adventures that befall the narrator and this provides the unity of the story. Lacking moral scruples, essentially a con man, Felix Krull takes us through a world peopled by bizarre characters from all stratas of society. Krull is able to adapt himself to the situation of the moment and becomes such an effective con man that his victims almost consider themselves privileged. The Encyclopedia Britannica comments: “The story is a good example of Mann’s often-used theme of the immorality of the artist. Krull makes an art of his criminality and is motivated less by greed than by the sheer joy of a job well done.” The book is ultimately severely critical of the bourgeoisie. Alan found it very funny and would heartily recommend it.
Di read: The Power And The Glory (1940) by Graham Green. Di has owned a copy of this novel for some time and during lockdown has decided to read books she owns but hasn’t read before. A classic modern novel, its title coming from The Lord’s Prayer, it is one of the redemption of a Mexican Catholic priest, a so-called ‘whiskey priest’. He is believed to have been based on a real person, Tomas Garrido Canabal, a committed socialist who despised the Church. During the vicious persecution of the clergy in Mexico, this worldly priest, the, an alcoholic is on the run during the Mexican Revolution. Chased by the police his routes of escape are being shut off, his chances getting fewer. But compassion and humanity force him along the road to his destiny, reluctant to abandon those who need him, and those he cares for. In the introduction to the Penguin Modern Classic John Updike wrote: “The Power and the Glory, is Graham Greene’s masterpiece…. The energy and grandeur of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist.” Di found this novel to be very descriptive, lyrical and poetic even – a brilliant book.
Christine read: Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier. She had been given a copy, in French, by a French lady who had stayed with her family and was looking for it recently while thinking about rural France and wishing she could be there. She couldn’t find it but found the Penguin Modern Classic translation and realized that she had never actually read it. It is a classic coming of age novel which every French child reads at school. Recently it figured 6th on Le Monde’s list of the 100 greatest French novels. Christine thoroughly enjoyed the story. The eponymous hero comes to board at a school in a French village and becomes friendly with the son of the schoolmaster, François, who is somewhat in awe of him. Le Grand Meaulnes’ name doesn’t just describe his physical stature but also his dominant character. The plot is based on him setting off driving a carriage to pick up François’ grandparents from a nearby station. He gets lost and that’s essentially where the story begins. He arrives at a chateau ‘the lost domain’ where an engagement party is taking place and there at first sight he falls in love with the daughter of the owner. He is away from the school for three days. The rest of the book deals with his restless search for ‘Yvonne de Galais’ and his desire to find her for Meaulnes. Intertwined is the story of Yvonne’s brother Frantz whose engagement is broken that night. The book is delightful in the way it describes youth and particularly for young males in a small French village. It verges on sentimentalism at times but ultimately it is a beautiful book that captures the essence of what it means to be an adolescent wherever you are. Christine was pleased to have rectified one of the gaps in her life of novel reading.
Notes from Booklovers (via Zoom) April 2020
Present: Sue, Christine, Denise, Alan, Vanessa, Simon, Di,
Sue read: Heartburn (1983) by American writer, Nora Ephron. Ephron is best known as a screenwriter having written scripts for several well-known films such as Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle. Her last film was Julie & Julia . Nephron also wrote journalism.
The novel is a fictionalised account of her marriage to and divorce from Carl Bernstein. Sue described the novel as light but funny and perceptive. It is very much writing as therapy since the main aspect of the plot is the story of her husband’s infidelity while Ephron was pregnant with their second child which drove her to put her feelings down on paper. Sue liked the fact that the author refuses to be a victim and doesn’t go skulking around but claims the territory. In writing this novel she ‘reclaimed’ herself.
Simon read: Ohm’s Law (2007) by Dr Alana Jellinek, an Australian author, practising artist and academic specializing in art theory and currently teaching at the University of Hertfordshire. The book is set in the near future where the world is governed by ‘meta-corporations. It addresses issues such as globalization, ‘big pharma’ as well as complicity and 'bad faith'. Ohm's Law tackles the growing convergence of the State and the Market in a highly readable, almost humorous, utterly unfashionable novel. In this world everything is trademarked, the key organization being called BLACCXN. The main character who works in London is bitten by spider and brought back to health by an Ohm (a slave) who is subsequently arrested for corporate treason as she has been using plants (outside the trademarked pharmaceuticals).
The book is set in the near future and Simon felt that we are just at the beginning of the journey which the world described in the novel is foretelling. He found it a thought-provoking and enjoyable novel.
Mary read: Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth (2004) by Philippa Gregory. Mary had not read any of Philippa Gregory’s books before, but would thoroughly recommend these two novels in one book. Gregory is an English historical novelist who won the Parker Romantic Novel award for The Other Boleyn Girl that she has yet to read.
Earthly Joys covers the time of James 1st and Charles the 1st reign in the early to middle 1600s. All Gregory’s characters were real people, the main one being John Tradescant the gardener for Robert Cecil, King James’ advisor. John Tradescant was an intrepid traveller and wherever he went he collected specimens of plants that he brought back to England. It is said that he is responsible for the horse chestnuts in England as well as many other species from all over the world that he took back to The Ark, at Lambeth, the family home that housed ‘the rarities’ and was the first museum in London. Elizabeth died of the plague at the Ark. Mary feels that if you are a gardener, you will love this book as it is excellent and informative read.
She also read the sequel, Virgin Earth, which tells of the adventures of John Tradescant junior and his travels to America at the time of the Civil War Once again, there was much about gardening. He was responsible for bringing the tulip tree to England. Mary said they had planted one in their garden about 20 years ago, and the flowers are beautiful. A compelling read!
Vanessa read An Acre of Barren Ground; Or, the History of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Brick Lane (2005)by Jeremy Gavron
This is the fascinating account, a novel come-social history, which excavates one single London street, the East End's Brick Lane. The author calls it a novel and much of it necessarily admits to being fiction – but according to Vanessa it’s very well researched and that does not get in the way of the fiction. According to the writer Julie Myerson who published an account of the people who lived in her own house in Clapham Gavron has ‘an imagination that has let rip. It is full of detail and covers a very broad range of history from immigrant Jews a century or more ago, through to more recent Bangladeshis, Huguenots, soldiers, medieval and includes as well as straight history, details of characters such as Jack the Ripper alongside a tortured dancing bear. It also, about halfway through the book, includes a cluster of pages of graphic novel. You accept and swallow them unerringly - they make a perfect and neat sort of sense in the context of that part of the story (grasping young square-chinned City guy with mobile phone in search of funding for his dotcom business considers the financial sense of making his base the Old Brewery on Truman Street where his Jewish tailor grandparents lived from hand to mouth). ‘
Vanessa really enjoyed this lively account of the history of one of London’s most famous streets.
She also read No I Want To Join a Book Club (2008) by Virginia Ironside, a funny and poignant story about life beyond middle age.
Alan read: A World Apart by Daphne Rae (1982) which is an account of her own life and her marriage to John Rae who was best known in his role as Headmaster of Westminster School. Alan had a personal interest in the book since he had taught with John Rae at Harrow. He was pleased to find the book in a second hand book shop and was fascinated to read it due to his having known John Rae. The book was very controversial when it was published and caused considerable embarrassment to Daphne’s husband. It is not short on details about homosexuality at Harrow and she has a very modern take on such matters given that this was written during the Thatcher years. It’s an unconventional account and would shock these days, for example, she records that there were ‘very few Jews’ at Harrow. It is also an account of her own upbringing. She was abandoned by her parents and almost left to fend for herself though wound up living with her aunt and uncle who were here legal guardians. The latter was a cruel, inhuman man. Apparently she is still alive and lives in India.
Alan found it a fascinating account of a world he has known, the public school, and felt it gives a good flavour of this.
Di read: The Reformed Soul (2006) by John Stubbs
This is a biography of arguably England’s greatest secular and religious poet who lived in turbulent times. The book vividly shows him to be a complex and contradictory character who was in turns student, lawyer, sex god, husband, writer and preacher.
An extremely clever young man and always one for seeking out the main chance, he joined Elizabeth1’s then favourite the Earl of Essex on a self-publicising raid on Cadiz. The experience of seeing the massacres on both sides stayed with him forever. A glittering career came to a sudden halt when he fell in love ( at aged 30) with a 15 year old Ann More and married her in secret. Cut off from society by her pompous father, he spent the next few years in darkest Mitcham writing and trying to retrieve his career. Eventually and after much networking in the murky world of James 1’s court, Donne joined the church and thanks to the King’s favourite, the Earl of Buckingham, he became the preacher at St Pauls. He didn’t do much for the dilapidated cathedral but his sermons were a must hear for the great and good of London. He was a great advocate of religious tolerance, believing that all men whatever their station were inter connected with each other with a shared purpose in life. His great words in his sonnet ‘No Man Is An Island’ still seem true today:
No man is an island entire of itself, every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main ----
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
He died eventually at an old age for the time-ie 58.
Di said ‘the author has great fun with his charismatic subject and the book is full of entertaining history about the politics and religious turmoil at the time. With the exception of Ann and John’s close friends, none of the protagonists come out well, emerging as corrupt, greedy and downright criminal in an unforgiving society where your status relied on a cobweb of networks.
(Plus ca change). Donne’s frequent changes of mind, religious convictions and fortunes are vividly described and this is an excellent biography without being unnecessarily scholarly.
Christine read: The Man Who Planted Trees (1953), a short story by Jean Giono. She has to confess here that the story is fictional although she was taken in by the fact that the man who encounters the man in the title has the same autobiography as Giono, i.e. he fights in two wars although is essentially a pacifist and was given to doing long walks in the mountains of his home region, Provence. The Man Who Planted Trees (French title: L'homme qui plantait des arbres) is a short story published in 1953 by French author Jean Giono. An allegorical tale, it tells the story of one shepherd's long and successful single-handed effort to re-forest a desolate valley in the foothills of the Alps in Provence throughout the first half of the 20th century. It was written in French, but first published in English.
The story begins in the year 1913, when a young man who is the narrator was travelling alone on a hiking trip through Provence, France, and into the Alps, enjoying the relatively unspoiled wilderness. He runs out of water in a treeless, desolate valley where only wild lavender grows and there is no trace of civilization except old, empty crumbling buildings. He finds only a dried-up well, but is saved by a middle-aged shepherd Elzéard Bouffier who takes him to a spring he knows of. He spends the night in the shepherd’s hut where he is intrigued by the fact that the shepherd is selecting acorns from a large pile and polishing them. The traveller spends the whole of the next day with the shepherd who shows the traveller that he is engaged on a major reforestation project. He watches him making holes in the ground with his straight iron staff and drops into them acorns that collected from miles away. The traveller goes off to fight in the first world war but returns, shell-shocked, on a subsequent occasion and spends time with Bouffier which restores his state of mind and body by now the acorns etc have grown into young saplings. By the end of the story, the valley is vibrant with life and is peacefully settled, with more than 10,000 people living there, not knowing they owe their happiness to Bouffier.
Christine found the story captivating and way ahead of its time with its preoccupation with ecological issues. It is a brief but inspiring read which leaves you with faith in humankind. It has been turned into a film and was narrated on BBC Radio 4 by Bill Paterson.
Sue read: Heartburn (1983) by American writer, Nora Ephron. Ephron is best known as a screenwriter having written scripts for several well-known films such as Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle. Her last film was Julie & Julia . Nephron also wrote journalism.
The novel is a fictionalised account of her marriage to and divorce from Carl Bernstein. Sue described the novel as light but funny and perceptive. It is very much writing as therapy since the main aspect of the plot is the story of her husband’s infidelity while Ephron was pregnant with their second child which drove her to put her feelings down on paper. Sue liked the fact that the author refuses to be a victim and doesn’t go skulking around but claims the territory. In writing this novel she ‘reclaimed’ herself.
Simon read: Ohm’s Law (2007) by Dr Alana Jellinek, an Australian author, practising artist and academic specializing in art theory and currently teaching at the University of Hertfordshire. The book is set in the near future where the world is governed by ‘meta-corporations. It addresses issues such as globalization, ‘big pharma’ as well as complicity and 'bad faith'. Ohm's Law tackles the growing convergence of the State and the Market in a highly readable, almost humorous, utterly unfashionable novel. In this world everything is trademarked, the key organization being called BLACCXN. The main character who works in London is bitten by spider and brought back to health by an Ohm (a slave) who is subsequently arrested for corporate treason as she has been using plants (outside the trademarked pharmaceuticals).
The book is set in the near future and Simon felt that we are just at the beginning of the journey which the world described in the novel is foretelling. He found it a thought-provoking and enjoyable novel.
Mary read: Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth (2004) by Philippa Gregory. Mary had not read any of Philippa Gregory’s books before, but would thoroughly recommend these two novels in one book. Gregory is an English historical novelist who won the Parker Romantic Novel award for The Other Boleyn Girl that she has yet to read.
Earthly Joys covers the time of James 1st and Charles the 1st reign in the early to middle 1600s. All Gregory’s characters were real people, the main one being John Tradescant the gardener for Robert Cecil, King James’ advisor. John Tradescant was an intrepid traveller and wherever he went he collected specimens of plants that he brought back to England. It is said that he is responsible for the horse chestnuts in England as well as many other species from all over the world that he took back to The Ark, at Lambeth, the family home that housed ‘the rarities’ and was the first museum in London. Elizabeth died of the plague at the Ark. Mary feels that if you are a gardener, you will love this book as it is excellent and informative read.
She also read the sequel, Virgin Earth, which tells of the adventures of John Tradescant junior and his travels to America at the time of the Civil War Once again, there was much about gardening. He was responsible for bringing the tulip tree to England. Mary said they had planted one in their garden about 20 years ago, and the flowers are beautiful. A compelling read!
Vanessa read An Acre of Barren Ground; Or, the History of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Brick Lane (2005)by Jeremy Gavron
This is the fascinating account, a novel come-social history, which excavates one single London street, the East End's Brick Lane. The author calls it a novel and much of it necessarily admits to being fiction – but according to Vanessa it’s very well researched and that does not get in the way of the fiction. According to the writer Julie Myerson who published an account of the people who lived in her own house in Clapham Gavron has ‘an imagination that has let rip. It is full of detail and covers a very broad range of history from immigrant Jews a century or more ago, through to more recent Bangladeshis, Huguenots, soldiers, medieval and includes as well as straight history, details of characters such as Jack the Ripper alongside a tortured dancing bear. It also, about halfway through the book, includes a cluster of pages of graphic novel. You accept and swallow them unerringly - they make a perfect and neat sort of sense in the context of that part of the story (grasping young square-chinned City guy with mobile phone in search of funding for his dotcom business considers the financial sense of making his base the Old Brewery on Truman Street where his Jewish tailor grandparents lived from hand to mouth). ‘
Vanessa really enjoyed this lively account of the history of one of London’s most famous streets.
She also read No I Want To Join a Book Club (2008) by Virginia Ironside, a funny and poignant story about life beyond middle age.
Alan read: A World Apart by Daphne Rae (1982) which is an account of her own life and her marriage to John Rae who was best known in his role as Headmaster of Westminster School. Alan had a personal interest in the book since he had taught with John Rae at Harrow. He was pleased to find the book in a second hand book shop and was fascinated to read it due to his having known John Rae. The book was very controversial when it was published and caused considerable embarrassment to Daphne’s husband. It is not short on details about homosexuality at Harrow and she has a very modern take on such matters given that this was written during the Thatcher years. It’s an unconventional account and would shock these days, for example, she records that there were ‘very few Jews’ at Harrow. It is also an account of her own upbringing. She was abandoned by her parents and almost left to fend for herself though wound up living with her aunt and uncle who were here legal guardians. The latter was a cruel, inhuman man. Apparently she is still alive and lives in India.
Alan found it a fascinating account of a world he has known, the public school, and felt it gives a good flavour of this.
Di read: The Reformed Soul (2006) by John Stubbs
This is a biography of arguably England’s greatest secular and religious poet who lived in turbulent times. The book vividly shows him to be a complex and contradictory character who was in turns student, lawyer, sex god, husband, writer and preacher.
An extremely clever young man and always one for seeking out the main chance, he joined Elizabeth1’s then favourite the Earl of Essex on a self-publicising raid on Cadiz. The experience of seeing the massacres on both sides stayed with him forever. A glittering career came to a sudden halt when he fell in love ( at aged 30) with a 15 year old Ann More and married her in secret. Cut off from society by her pompous father, he spent the next few years in darkest Mitcham writing and trying to retrieve his career. Eventually and after much networking in the murky world of James 1’s court, Donne joined the church and thanks to the King’s favourite, the Earl of Buckingham, he became the preacher at St Pauls. He didn’t do much for the dilapidated cathedral but his sermons were a must hear for the great and good of London. He was a great advocate of religious tolerance, believing that all men whatever their station were inter connected with each other with a shared purpose in life. His great words in his sonnet ‘No Man Is An Island’ still seem true today:
No man is an island entire of itself, every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main ----
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
He died eventually at an old age for the time-ie 58.
Di said ‘the author has great fun with his charismatic subject and the book is full of entertaining history about the politics and religious turmoil at the time. With the exception of Ann and John’s close friends, none of the protagonists come out well, emerging as corrupt, greedy and downright criminal in an unforgiving society where your status relied on a cobweb of networks.
(Plus ca change). Donne’s frequent changes of mind, religious convictions and fortunes are vividly described and this is an excellent biography without being unnecessarily scholarly.
Christine read: The Man Who Planted Trees (1953), a short story by Jean Giono. She has to confess here that the story is fictional although she was taken in by the fact that the man who encounters the man in the title has the same autobiography as Giono, i.e. he fights in two wars although is essentially a pacifist and was given to doing long walks in the mountains of his home region, Provence. The Man Who Planted Trees (French title: L'homme qui plantait des arbres) is a short story published in 1953 by French author Jean Giono. An allegorical tale, it tells the story of one shepherd's long and successful single-handed effort to re-forest a desolate valley in the foothills of the Alps in Provence throughout the first half of the 20th century. It was written in French, but first published in English.
The story begins in the year 1913, when a young man who is the narrator was travelling alone on a hiking trip through Provence, France, and into the Alps, enjoying the relatively unspoiled wilderness. He runs out of water in a treeless, desolate valley where only wild lavender grows and there is no trace of civilization except old, empty crumbling buildings. He finds only a dried-up well, but is saved by a middle-aged shepherd Elzéard Bouffier who takes him to a spring he knows of. He spends the night in the shepherd’s hut where he is intrigued by the fact that the shepherd is selecting acorns from a large pile and polishing them. The traveller spends the whole of the next day with the shepherd who shows the traveller that he is engaged on a major reforestation project. He watches him making holes in the ground with his straight iron staff and drops into them acorns that collected from miles away. The traveller goes off to fight in the first world war but returns, shell-shocked, on a subsequent occasion and spends time with Bouffier which restores his state of mind and body by now the acorns etc have grown into young saplings. By the end of the story, the valley is vibrant with life and is peacefully settled, with more than 10,000 people living there, not knowing they owe their happiness to Bouffier.
Christine found the story captivating and way ahead of its time with its preoccupation with ecological issues. It is a brief but inspiring read which leaves you with faith in humankind. It has been turned into a film and was narrated on BBC Radio 4 by Bill Paterson.
Notes from Booklovers March 2020
This month, instead of meeting up, our members contributed their thoughts in writing.
Contributors: Mary, Sue, Simon, Christine, Denise
Welcome to new members Alan, Vanessa and Alessandra
Mary read: Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
I thought this book was going to be heavy going, but it surprised and fascinated me.
The author is an Israeli who was brought up in a secular home. He is a University History Professor who went to Jesus College, Oxford. He is also gay. I had come across him through u-tube and seen his book advertised, so when I saw it in Tesco’s I thought I’d give it a go.
The story of Sapiens goes back 70,000 years, and he takes us back to the time when Homo Erectus, Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens existed at the same time and were then ‘hunter - gatherers’ He covers the evolution of our species and other animals as well as the delusions and myths that helped create our society and asks many questions that he tries to answer, but not definitively. For instance, why do the males of our society dominate the females, when elephants have a matriarchal system that excludes males until they are ready to mate and why does the male seahorse fill his pouch with the eggs and is the main carer of the offspring?
He covers the formations and the demise of Empires throughout the ages, and says that Empires are one of the main reasons for the drastic reduction of human diversity. Religion is, of course discussed, and out of all of them, why did Christianity and the Muslim religions dominate the world? He seems to be attracted to Buddhism that he says is not based on a God but a human being Siddhartha Gautama. He says that the last 300 years are depicted by a growing secularism to be superseded by other ‘isms’ namely Marxism, liberalism, communism, consumerism and capitalism, and now the computer age.
He covers racism, commerce - which he describes in simplistic terms, and the birth of money, colonialism and it’s affects on the world. And then he discusses agriculture in a chapter called ‘Life on the Conveyor Belt’ and posits that we treat animals used in agriculture abominably (he is a vegan.)
The Industrial Revolution gave the market and governments immense new powers and changed the way families and communities worked and weakened their bonds. He discusses war, the welfare state, the pursuit of happiness AI and a whole gamut of fascinating insights.
In his Afterword he says :
“Seventy thousand years ago, Home Sapiens was still an insignificant animal minding its own business in a corner of Africa. In the following millennia it transformed itself into the master of the entire planet and the terror of the ecosystem. Today it stands on the verge of becoming a god, poised to acquire not only eternal youth, but also the divine abilities of creation and destruction.”
I really enjoyed it and will probably read it again. There is so much to take in.
Christine read: The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. One of my favourite landscape / nature writers, Robert McFarlane, who recently chose this book for his lockdown Twitter book club has written the foreword to this book. The extraordinary thing about the book is that it was written in 1944 and not published until 1977. After writing the book Shepherd sent it off to a publisher but it was rejected and left in a drawer until 1977 when Aberdeen University Press printed a small edition. However, a friend introduced it to McFarlane who said “I read it and was changed”.
Nan Shepherd lived her life in Aberdeen, teaching in an education college and spending seemingly most of her spare time exploring the Cairngorms. Well, that’s not strictly true since she also wrote four novels in the Modernist style.
It might sound a bit exaggerated but this book blew me away. From the minute I started it I felt I was in her shoes, experiencing bodily being on the mountain in all seasons and all weathers. Her knowledge of the area is literally as if she has left ‘no stone unturned’.
It’s certainly a book for our extraordinary times of spatial confinement. If you want to be outside in the Scottish highlands go no further. You will be introduced to every aspect of this living mountain, or rather, range of mountains: the geology, the meteorology, the topography, the flora, the fauna, human beings who live and work there, etc. Shepherd’s prose is flowing, meticulous and intense, and pulls you deep into her experience. You will find yourself on the barren peaks or in the dark valleys, peering into deep, dark tarns or icy, tumbling streams.
There is a postscript by Jeannette Winterson which I also enjoyed enormously. In talking about the impact Nan’s book has had on her she moves on to comment on books and reading in general:
“Books work from the inside out. They are private conversations happening somewhere in the soul.
Often then, still, now if I can use the book as a compass, I can right my way. Reading calms me and it clears my head. In the company of a book my mind expands and I find myself less anxious and more aware.”
Simon read: “Billy Budd, Sailor” by Herman Melville, the American writer most famous for writing “Moby Dick”. Melville started writing ‘Billy Budd’ in 1888, revising and expanding it from time to time. Unfortunately ’Billy Budd’ was left unfinished when Melville died in 1891 and the manuscript was left in disarray. It took a number of people to bring it to the general public and finally Melville scholars Harrison and Heyford and Merton Sealts Jr. published what is considered the best transcription and critical reading text in 1962.
Billy Budd is a young seaman ‘press ganged’ from a small merchant ship into service aboard HMS Bellipotent, a large warship 1797. The Royal Navy was reeling from two major mutinies and was threatened by the Revolutionary French Republic’s military ambitions. Billy has an innocence, good looks and a natural charisma that make him popular with the crew. His only physical defect is a stutter which grows worse when under intense emotion. Billy arouses the antagonism of the ship’s master-at-arms, John Claggart, who is envious of Billy, foremost because he is handsome, innocent and generally popular. This leads Claggart to falsely charge Billy with conspiracy to mutiny. Claggart makes the accusation to the ship’s captain, Edward Vere, who makes Claggart repeat his accusation in from of Billy. Billy is astounded and is unable to respond, due to his stutter. In his extreme frustration he punches Claggart, who falls to the ground dead.
Although Vere and the other officers do not believe Claggart's charge of conspiracy, martial law states that the blow itself, fatal or not, is a capital crime. Billy was hanged the following morning.
Simon’s thoughts: A beautifully written, emotionally tense, short novel. Billy is described as an innocent of almost saintly qualities whilst Claggart is described as one “in whom was the mania of an evil nature, not engendered by vicious training or corrupting books or licentious living, but born with him and innate, in short ‘a depravity according to nature’”. When Billy is hanged it is written “At the same moment it chanced that the vapoury fleet hanging low in the East was shot through with a soft glory as of the fleece of the Lamb of God seen in a mystical vision, and simultaneously therewith, watched by the wedged mass of upturned faces, Billy ascended; and, ascending took the full rose of the dawn.”
I saw this as a reflection of the world where good people shrug off the misfortunes that befall them in the final reckoning. A story I will be reading again.
Di read: Earth Abides by George R Stewart, written in 1947. It's classed as post apocalyptic science fiction but I thought it read like a classic.
The story briefly is that the " hero" Ish ( short for Isherwood) a geography PHD gets bitten by a snake when doing a project in the Californian mountains. On recovery, he finds that the American population have been destroyed by a deadly pandemic!!! Ish finds a car and drives to New York and back but finds only a few odd people ( drunks, prostitutes) that he wants to escape from.
He returns to his parents home in Berkeley, California with a dog called Princess who attaches himself to him giving Ish a reason to survive. When scavenging for rabbits, the dog finds Emma, a coloured girl and brings him back to Ish. They fall in love and start a small Tribe with the addition of Esra, who leaves and then returns to them with 2 wives and a mentally retarded girl Evie.
Children follow and the Tribe survive by scavenging off left over food and old tools they find when the electricity supply fails. They're joined by George ( a carpenter) and Maurine and the years pass marked by its most important events( fire, famine, rat and locust infestations, water shortages, births etc).
Ish loves his wife but is discontented because the tribe show only interest in day to day survival rather than his hope of rebuilding a new, improved civilisation. His attempts at making the children read and write are desultory except for his favourite son Joey whom is precocious and curious.
Things come to a head in Year 22 when two of the teenagers drive off ( Ish having worked out how to get a jeep to work) and return with a dishevelled man called Charlie. Ish is immediately suspicious and sees him both as a personal threat to his leadership of the Tribe and to Evie, with whom Charlie flirts. When they learn that Charlie is diseased. the tribe kill him.
It's too late though and the group get typhoid fever which wipes many of them out including Joey.
Ish is in despair and realises that there is no point in reinventing the old civilisation. He has to start anew by teaching the Tribe how to use arrows and to grow corn. He visits San Francisco University library and while revering the books there, realises he is living in a new world with different values.
The book ends with Ish as an old widower looked after by his great grandson jack and friends. The Tribe have now expanded having intermarried with Others living in a similar commune. They now speak a different language and are deeply superstitious. A hammer Ish has kept since his former life assumes a spiritual meaning and the book ends with him dying and handing it over to Jack. The tribe have regressed to using arrows to kill and start to grow their own food as in primeval times. Books and learning no longer feature in their life.
Obviously it's a very prescient book in these times and has a distinctly modern feel. Plague, forest fires, and climate change feature prominently. The women in a "me too" era are rather stodgy and complacent ( except for the strong Emma) but the character of ish is brilliantly drawn. This is a book of ideas which debunks modern civilisation ( what Stewart would have thought of the Internet is anyone's guess) and places the earth and simple survival in a supportive community at its heart. I did wonder why there was an absence of conflict ( apart from Charlie everyone lives very harmoniously) but I suppose what Stewart is trying to tell us is that without the accoutrements of modern civilisation and basic provisions for all there is hope that people can live in peace.
It's far more exciting than the Plague and I thought a brilliant read at any time.
Denise read: “Handle with Care by Jodie Picoult: Mary has read the book (January) so the notes are available on the Crowborough Arts website, but I would like to add:
It was difficult to start reading this book; I have read several of Jodie Picoult’s other books such as Small Great Things and the Storyteller, and felt that perhaps this book would be the same. However I read the last chapter, a tragic accident so beautifully written, and that was it, I had to go back and start at the beginning. As with all her writing, she takes you into the minds of each character embroiled in the sequence of events, each parent, each child, friends, midwife and lawyer, each with their own take on the situation. Willow the Child is the main character a baby born with severe osteogenesis imperfecta, meaning she will suffer hundreds of broken bones as she grows, a lifetime of pain and mounting hospital bills. Every move has to be planned to avoid a break. If their friend the midwife, had spotted earlier in the developing foetus that there was a problem, would they have continued with the pregnancy, but then their funny, smart, now five year old wise little girl would not have existed. Difficult decisions have to be made on whether to sue or not to sue, would it or would it not improve Willows life. The processes and consequences of these decisions unravel before the reader.
I thoroughly enjoyed the read.
Vanessa, one of our new members, read: Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, Melmoth by Sarah Perry and The Binding by Bridget Collins.
Melmoth and The Binding are in a similar vein in that they’re what I’d call gothic (one of my favourite genres - although I do have several favourites) but were different in content. I found Melmoth fascinating and slightly disturbing and prompted me to find out more about the myth. Melmoth herself has been depicted by several writers as both male and female although I understand the more accepted form is a woman who wanders the earth for eternity seeking lonely souls to share her banishment which is how she is drawn in this novel. A thought provoking book
The Binding is a current bestseller and set in an unspecified place and time, except obviously the past, and tells the story of two young men and their crossed paths. Its basically a love story but with several twists and turns and the tragic consequences of their love. It’s written in three parts each character telling their own story but there’s also a great deal of hidden mystery.
Having recently read and enjoyed Circe I moved on to the Silence of the Girls and loved it.
I’m particularly fond of historical novels and have the latest C J Sansom on my pile ready to go next. In between times I also read thrillers and anything that takes my fancy!
Sue read: The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (2018)
The story of Raynor & Moth, a couple in late middle age, who through naivety and good heartedness end up homeless. They have a good marriage but have become disconnected by the stresses of a long court case, where finally the judge chooses to disregard vital evidence which would have reversed his decision. Also Moth - has been diagnosed with a terminal disease - corticobasal degeneration , CBD, this means he is in pain a lot of the time and needs to take very strong painkillers which fog his brain.
They are outdoor people who are used to walking, tending livestock and generally making a living where they can. But they now have no land and no money. They decide to walk the South West Coastal Path, taking their tent and very basic equipment - a brave idea that leads to many revelations about their relationship with the world and the people they meet.
Moth appears to get somewhat stronger as a result of the constant walking, and they run out of his painkillers so his brain is not fogged. Nevertheless he is often in pain.
The book is beautifully written by Raynor with wonderful descriptive passages about the wildlife and also the people they meet. Most are intrigued and full of admiration about their intrepid trip, but attitudes change very quickly when people find they are ‘homeless’. This apparently puts them in the category of ‘vagrant, ne’er-do-wells, feckless’ etc. so they learn not to mention it.
They meet with kindness from some people as they are often hungry and cold, but some are critical. At the end of the summer they have done their walk, and are ready to begin a new life - Moth begins a college course and they find a very small place to live. Raynor carries on writing, and presumably makes some money out of what is a very successful novel. They have re-connected with each other and their optimism about life.
I found this an uplifting novel - they are good people who are making the best of their lives.
Contributors: Mary, Sue, Simon, Christine, Denise
Welcome to new members Alan, Vanessa and Alessandra
Mary read: Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
I thought this book was going to be heavy going, but it surprised and fascinated me.
The author is an Israeli who was brought up in a secular home. He is a University History Professor who went to Jesus College, Oxford. He is also gay. I had come across him through u-tube and seen his book advertised, so when I saw it in Tesco’s I thought I’d give it a go.
The story of Sapiens goes back 70,000 years, and he takes us back to the time when Homo Erectus, Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens existed at the same time and were then ‘hunter - gatherers’ He covers the evolution of our species and other animals as well as the delusions and myths that helped create our society and asks many questions that he tries to answer, but not definitively. For instance, why do the males of our society dominate the females, when elephants have a matriarchal system that excludes males until they are ready to mate and why does the male seahorse fill his pouch with the eggs and is the main carer of the offspring?
He covers the formations and the demise of Empires throughout the ages, and says that Empires are one of the main reasons for the drastic reduction of human diversity. Religion is, of course discussed, and out of all of them, why did Christianity and the Muslim religions dominate the world? He seems to be attracted to Buddhism that he says is not based on a God but a human being Siddhartha Gautama. He says that the last 300 years are depicted by a growing secularism to be superseded by other ‘isms’ namely Marxism, liberalism, communism, consumerism and capitalism, and now the computer age.
He covers racism, commerce - which he describes in simplistic terms, and the birth of money, colonialism and it’s affects on the world. And then he discusses agriculture in a chapter called ‘Life on the Conveyor Belt’ and posits that we treat animals used in agriculture abominably (he is a vegan.)
The Industrial Revolution gave the market and governments immense new powers and changed the way families and communities worked and weakened their bonds. He discusses war, the welfare state, the pursuit of happiness AI and a whole gamut of fascinating insights.
In his Afterword he says :
“Seventy thousand years ago, Home Sapiens was still an insignificant animal minding its own business in a corner of Africa. In the following millennia it transformed itself into the master of the entire planet and the terror of the ecosystem. Today it stands on the verge of becoming a god, poised to acquire not only eternal youth, but also the divine abilities of creation and destruction.”
I really enjoyed it and will probably read it again. There is so much to take in.
Christine read: The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. One of my favourite landscape / nature writers, Robert McFarlane, who recently chose this book for his lockdown Twitter book club has written the foreword to this book. The extraordinary thing about the book is that it was written in 1944 and not published until 1977. After writing the book Shepherd sent it off to a publisher but it was rejected and left in a drawer until 1977 when Aberdeen University Press printed a small edition. However, a friend introduced it to McFarlane who said “I read it and was changed”.
Nan Shepherd lived her life in Aberdeen, teaching in an education college and spending seemingly most of her spare time exploring the Cairngorms. Well, that’s not strictly true since she also wrote four novels in the Modernist style.
It might sound a bit exaggerated but this book blew me away. From the minute I started it I felt I was in her shoes, experiencing bodily being on the mountain in all seasons and all weathers. Her knowledge of the area is literally as if she has left ‘no stone unturned’.
It’s certainly a book for our extraordinary times of spatial confinement. If you want to be outside in the Scottish highlands go no further. You will be introduced to every aspect of this living mountain, or rather, range of mountains: the geology, the meteorology, the topography, the flora, the fauna, human beings who live and work there, etc. Shepherd’s prose is flowing, meticulous and intense, and pulls you deep into her experience. You will find yourself on the barren peaks or in the dark valleys, peering into deep, dark tarns or icy, tumbling streams.
There is a postscript by Jeannette Winterson which I also enjoyed enormously. In talking about the impact Nan’s book has had on her she moves on to comment on books and reading in general:
“Books work from the inside out. They are private conversations happening somewhere in the soul.
Often then, still, now if I can use the book as a compass, I can right my way. Reading calms me and it clears my head. In the company of a book my mind expands and I find myself less anxious and more aware.”
Simon read: “Billy Budd, Sailor” by Herman Melville, the American writer most famous for writing “Moby Dick”. Melville started writing ‘Billy Budd’ in 1888, revising and expanding it from time to time. Unfortunately ’Billy Budd’ was left unfinished when Melville died in 1891 and the manuscript was left in disarray. It took a number of people to bring it to the general public and finally Melville scholars Harrison and Heyford and Merton Sealts Jr. published what is considered the best transcription and critical reading text in 1962.
Billy Budd is a young seaman ‘press ganged’ from a small merchant ship into service aboard HMS Bellipotent, a large warship 1797. The Royal Navy was reeling from two major mutinies and was threatened by the Revolutionary French Republic’s military ambitions. Billy has an innocence, good looks and a natural charisma that make him popular with the crew. His only physical defect is a stutter which grows worse when under intense emotion. Billy arouses the antagonism of the ship’s master-at-arms, John Claggart, who is envious of Billy, foremost because he is handsome, innocent and generally popular. This leads Claggart to falsely charge Billy with conspiracy to mutiny. Claggart makes the accusation to the ship’s captain, Edward Vere, who makes Claggart repeat his accusation in from of Billy. Billy is astounded and is unable to respond, due to his stutter. In his extreme frustration he punches Claggart, who falls to the ground dead.
Although Vere and the other officers do not believe Claggart's charge of conspiracy, martial law states that the blow itself, fatal or not, is a capital crime. Billy was hanged the following morning.
Simon’s thoughts: A beautifully written, emotionally tense, short novel. Billy is described as an innocent of almost saintly qualities whilst Claggart is described as one “in whom was the mania of an evil nature, not engendered by vicious training or corrupting books or licentious living, but born with him and innate, in short ‘a depravity according to nature’”. When Billy is hanged it is written “At the same moment it chanced that the vapoury fleet hanging low in the East was shot through with a soft glory as of the fleece of the Lamb of God seen in a mystical vision, and simultaneously therewith, watched by the wedged mass of upturned faces, Billy ascended; and, ascending took the full rose of the dawn.”
I saw this as a reflection of the world where good people shrug off the misfortunes that befall them in the final reckoning. A story I will be reading again.
Di read: Earth Abides by George R Stewart, written in 1947. It's classed as post apocalyptic science fiction but I thought it read like a classic.
The story briefly is that the " hero" Ish ( short for Isherwood) a geography PHD gets bitten by a snake when doing a project in the Californian mountains. On recovery, he finds that the American population have been destroyed by a deadly pandemic!!! Ish finds a car and drives to New York and back but finds only a few odd people ( drunks, prostitutes) that he wants to escape from.
He returns to his parents home in Berkeley, California with a dog called Princess who attaches himself to him giving Ish a reason to survive. When scavenging for rabbits, the dog finds Emma, a coloured girl and brings him back to Ish. They fall in love and start a small Tribe with the addition of Esra, who leaves and then returns to them with 2 wives and a mentally retarded girl Evie.
Children follow and the Tribe survive by scavenging off left over food and old tools they find when the electricity supply fails. They're joined by George ( a carpenter) and Maurine and the years pass marked by its most important events( fire, famine, rat and locust infestations, water shortages, births etc).
Ish loves his wife but is discontented because the tribe show only interest in day to day survival rather than his hope of rebuilding a new, improved civilisation. His attempts at making the children read and write are desultory except for his favourite son Joey whom is precocious and curious.
Things come to a head in Year 22 when two of the teenagers drive off ( Ish having worked out how to get a jeep to work) and return with a dishevelled man called Charlie. Ish is immediately suspicious and sees him both as a personal threat to his leadership of the Tribe and to Evie, with whom Charlie flirts. When they learn that Charlie is diseased. the tribe kill him.
It's too late though and the group get typhoid fever which wipes many of them out including Joey.
Ish is in despair and realises that there is no point in reinventing the old civilisation. He has to start anew by teaching the Tribe how to use arrows and to grow corn. He visits San Francisco University library and while revering the books there, realises he is living in a new world with different values.
The book ends with Ish as an old widower looked after by his great grandson jack and friends. The Tribe have now expanded having intermarried with Others living in a similar commune. They now speak a different language and are deeply superstitious. A hammer Ish has kept since his former life assumes a spiritual meaning and the book ends with him dying and handing it over to Jack. The tribe have regressed to using arrows to kill and start to grow their own food as in primeval times. Books and learning no longer feature in their life.
Obviously it's a very prescient book in these times and has a distinctly modern feel. Plague, forest fires, and climate change feature prominently. The women in a "me too" era are rather stodgy and complacent ( except for the strong Emma) but the character of ish is brilliantly drawn. This is a book of ideas which debunks modern civilisation ( what Stewart would have thought of the Internet is anyone's guess) and places the earth and simple survival in a supportive community at its heart. I did wonder why there was an absence of conflict ( apart from Charlie everyone lives very harmoniously) but I suppose what Stewart is trying to tell us is that without the accoutrements of modern civilisation and basic provisions for all there is hope that people can live in peace.
It's far more exciting than the Plague and I thought a brilliant read at any time.
Denise read: “Handle with Care by Jodie Picoult: Mary has read the book (January) so the notes are available on the Crowborough Arts website, but I would like to add:
It was difficult to start reading this book; I have read several of Jodie Picoult’s other books such as Small Great Things and the Storyteller, and felt that perhaps this book would be the same. However I read the last chapter, a tragic accident so beautifully written, and that was it, I had to go back and start at the beginning. As with all her writing, she takes you into the minds of each character embroiled in the sequence of events, each parent, each child, friends, midwife and lawyer, each with their own take on the situation. Willow the Child is the main character a baby born with severe osteogenesis imperfecta, meaning she will suffer hundreds of broken bones as she grows, a lifetime of pain and mounting hospital bills. Every move has to be planned to avoid a break. If their friend the midwife, had spotted earlier in the developing foetus that there was a problem, would they have continued with the pregnancy, but then their funny, smart, now five year old wise little girl would not have existed. Difficult decisions have to be made on whether to sue or not to sue, would it or would it not improve Willows life. The processes and consequences of these decisions unravel before the reader.
I thoroughly enjoyed the read.
Vanessa, one of our new members, read: Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, Melmoth by Sarah Perry and The Binding by Bridget Collins.
Melmoth and The Binding are in a similar vein in that they’re what I’d call gothic (one of my favourite genres - although I do have several favourites) but were different in content. I found Melmoth fascinating and slightly disturbing and prompted me to find out more about the myth. Melmoth herself has been depicted by several writers as both male and female although I understand the more accepted form is a woman who wanders the earth for eternity seeking lonely souls to share her banishment which is how she is drawn in this novel. A thought provoking book
The Binding is a current bestseller and set in an unspecified place and time, except obviously the past, and tells the story of two young men and their crossed paths. Its basically a love story but with several twists and turns and the tragic consequences of their love. It’s written in three parts each character telling their own story but there’s also a great deal of hidden mystery.
Having recently read and enjoyed Circe I moved on to the Silence of the Girls and loved it.
I’m particularly fond of historical novels and have the latest C J Sansom on my pile ready to go next. In between times I also read thrillers and anything that takes my fancy!
Sue read: The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (2018)
The story of Raynor & Moth, a couple in late middle age, who through naivety and good heartedness end up homeless. They have a good marriage but have become disconnected by the stresses of a long court case, where finally the judge chooses to disregard vital evidence which would have reversed his decision. Also Moth - has been diagnosed with a terminal disease - corticobasal degeneration , CBD, this means he is in pain a lot of the time and needs to take very strong painkillers which fog his brain.
They are outdoor people who are used to walking, tending livestock and generally making a living where they can. But they now have no land and no money. They decide to walk the South West Coastal Path, taking their tent and very basic equipment - a brave idea that leads to many revelations about their relationship with the world and the people they meet.
Moth appears to get somewhat stronger as a result of the constant walking, and they run out of his painkillers so his brain is not fogged. Nevertheless he is often in pain.
The book is beautifully written by Raynor with wonderful descriptive passages about the wildlife and also the people they meet. Most are intrigued and full of admiration about their intrepid trip, but attitudes change very quickly when people find they are ‘homeless’. This apparently puts them in the category of ‘vagrant, ne’er-do-wells, feckless’ etc. so they learn not to mention it.
They meet with kindness from some people as they are often hungry and cold, but some are critical. At the end of the summer they have done their walk, and are ready to begin a new life - Moth begins a college course and they find a very small place to live. Raynor carries on writing, and presumably makes some money out of what is a very successful novel. They have re-connected with each other and their optimism about life.
I found this an uplifting novel - they are good people who are making the best of their lives.
Notes from Booklovers’ Meeting Held on 20th February 2020
Present: Simon, Sue & Christine
Simon read: ‘Disturbance: Surviving Charlie Hebdo’ by Philippe Lançon. This the account of the personal experience of a writer who survived the assault by a pair of Islamist terrorist brothers who forced their way into the office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Armed with assault rifles, submachine guns and a pump action shotgun, they slaughtered 12 people and injured 11 others, before fleeing in a getaway car. The publication had offended first by publishing Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Allah, and then by a series of caricatures that mocked Muslims (it also mocked Christians, Jews and other religious groups).
Lançon was shot through the jaw and the memoir begins with the attack when amazingly one terrorist saw he was alive but still fled. The book tells of the year following the attack and his slow recovery from it. In French the book is called ‘Le Lambeau’ meaning the shred or scrap which refers to the lower part of his face as it was left after the shooting and which necessitated much surgery. Simon found himself curious about this story and felt huge sympathy for the author as he deals with the psychological fall out from his injury. It is essentially the story of a man trying to make sense of his new world and his identity within it. Simon was struck by the author’s lack of anger and his acceptance of what had happened to him.
Sue read: ‘Days Without End’ by Sebastian Barry. Sue was impressed with this account of two Irishmen and their lives as young men landing in America at a critical period in its history, notably that running up to the Civil War. The two young men team up and after initially being signed up by a pub owner to dress as teenage girls to dance for customers, they join the army fighting first in the Indian wars and then in the Civil War. One of them, Thomas, is sympathetic to the Indians and the two men adopt a young Indian girl, Winona. Finally they become gold diggers and set up a homestead together.
Despite the terrible and often harrowing hardships they encounter, they are entranced by this new world. The novel was described by the critic of the New York Times as ‘dreamlike’ and despite what life can throw at us, Barry reminds us that our recompense comes in those private moments when “love laughs at history a little.”
Christine read: ‘Uncle Vanya’ by Chekhov. She had just seen a live production of this play and wanted to read the script. The stage production had been newly adapted, possibly to bring out certain issues that are key to the present time, i.e. the interest shown by Doctor Astrov in the environment and his determination to plant more trees. Ultimately though, although landowners in nineteenth century Russia live very different lives to ours, the characters are still struggling with how to get meaning from life and they do it in their different ways.
Disappointment is a major theme, particularly as far as Love is concerned since no one seems to find happiness and all are in love with with unavailable people. Work does not seem to bring the satisfaction it could. The estate owner (a self-absorbed retired University Professor) is determined to sell the house and move back to Moscow and l this will seriously affect the lives of those who live there, including Vanya. Wealth is no guarantor of happiness and the play concludes with Vanya and his niece Sonya carrying on with their dreary lives, engaged in the tedious task of doing the accounts of the estate owner. Sonya has a religious belief in the future and better life, whereas Vanya is a depressive with no hope. Sonya tells him he too will see ‘the angels’.
Christine felt that although it would be easy to be critical of these characters who are in many ways blessed in their relatively comfortable station in life, Chekhov manages subtly to convey them as human beings as we all are with our own different ways of making things work and passing our time on this planet.
Simon read: ‘Disturbance: Surviving Charlie Hebdo’ by Philippe Lançon. This the account of the personal experience of a writer who survived the assault by a pair of Islamist terrorist brothers who forced their way into the office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Armed with assault rifles, submachine guns and a pump action shotgun, they slaughtered 12 people and injured 11 others, before fleeing in a getaway car. The publication had offended first by publishing Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Allah, and then by a series of caricatures that mocked Muslims (it also mocked Christians, Jews and other religious groups).
Lançon was shot through the jaw and the memoir begins with the attack when amazingly one terrorist saw he was alive but still fled. The book tells of the year following the attack and his slow recovery from it. In French the book is called ‘Le Lambeau’ meaning the shred or scrap which refers to the lower part of his face as it was left after the shooting and which necessitated much surgery. Simon found himself curious about this story and felt huge sympathy for the author as he deals with the psychological fall out from his injury. It is essentially the story of a man trying to make sense of his new world and his identity within it. Simon was struck by the author’s lack of anger and his acceptance of what had happened to him.
Sue read: ‘Days Without End’ by Sebastian Barry. Sue was impressed with this account of two Irishmen and their lives as young men landing in America at a critical period in its history, notably that running up to the Civil War. The two young men team up and after initially being signed up by a pub owner to dress as teenage girls to dance for customers, they join the army fighting first in the Indian wars and then in the Civil War. One of them, Thomas, is sympathetic to the Indians and the two men adopt a young Indian girl, Winona. Finally they become gold diggers and set up a homestead together.
Despite the terrible and often harrowing hardships they encounter, they are entranced by this new world. The novel was described by the critic of the New York Times as ‘dreamlike’ and despite what life can throw at us, Barry reminds us that our recompense comes in those private moments when “love laughs at history a little.”
Christine read: ‘Uncle Vanya’ by Chekhov. She had just seen a live production of this play and wanted to read the script. The stage production had been newly adapted, possibly to bring out certain issues that are key to the present time, i.e. the interest shown by Doctor Astrov in the environment and his determination to plant more trees. Ultimately though, although landowners in nineteenth century Russia live very different lives to ours, the characters are still struggling with how to get meaning from life and they do it in their different ways.
Disappointment is a major theme, particularly as far as Love is concerned since no one seems to find happiness and all are in love with with unavailable people. Work does not seem to bring the satisfaction it could. The estate owner (a self-absorbed retired University Professor) is determined to sell the house and move back to Moscow and l this will seriously affect the lives of those who live there, including Vanya. Wealth is no guarantor of happiness and the play concludes with Vanya and his niece Sonya carrying on with their dreary lives, engaged in the tedious task of doing the accounts of the estate owner. Sonya has a religious belief in the future and better life, whereas Vanya is a depressive with no hope. Sonya tells him he too will see ‘the angels’.
Christine felt that although it would be easy to be critical of these characters who are in many ways blessed in their relatively comfortable station in life, Chekhov manages subtly to convey them as human beings as we all are with our own different ways of making things work and passing our time on this planet.
Notes from Booklovers’ Meeting Held on 23rd January 2020
Present: Mary, Simon, Di, Denise & Christine
Mary read: “Handle with Care” by Jodie Picoult. She is struck by the diverse subjects that this author writes about and concludes she must have a huge team of researchers to gather all the information required to make them so believable. This book is about a little girl suffering from IO osteogenesis imperfect, a disease with a collagen defect resulting in brittle bones. The story is complicated by the fact that it is Willow’s mother’s (Charlotte) friend Piper who failed to diagnose the disease and and who has sued her. This results in a crisis in Willow’s family which includes the story of her sister Amelia who suffers from bulimia and self-harm through the parental attention being so focused on Willow. Mary describes this as a well-written story covering the highs and the lows – mostly lows, of caring for a child with IO and the toll this has had on family and friends. Mary was impressed by Picoult’s knack of getting into her fictitious character’s mind and wonders how life may have taken its toll on her to be able to write so vividly.
Simon read: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The book is based on Dostoevsky’s own experience of serving 8 years penal servitude for killing a student. The book was initially published in a journal, The Russian Messenger, in twelve monthly instalments during 1866 and subsequently in a single volume. It is considered the first great novel of his mature period of writing.
The book’s hero Raskolnikov sees himself as a superman, a person who is extraordinary and above the moral rules that govern the rest of humanity He justifies his murder of the pawnbroker and it is only in his final surrender to his love for Sonya and the joys resulting from this that he escapes his conception of himself as a superman and the terrible isolation that this belief brought on him. The book reflects the philosophy of Nihilism which rejects family and societal bonds and emotional and aesthetic concerns in favour of utilitariansism, the idea that moral decisions should be based on the greatest happiness for the largest number of people. Thus the murder of Alyona is justified on utilitarian grounds claiming that a louse has been removed from society. The novel condemns Nihilism as an empty philosophy. Simon felt that the novel is very even-handed and a fascinating exploration of ideas prevalent in Russia at the time. It also fits into other nineteenth century novels such as Les Miserables and Oliver Twist, whose worlds show where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil cross.
Di read: This Bleeding City by Alex Preston. The debut novel of a British author, Di describes it as a ‘compelling’ read. It is set during the 2007– 8 financial crisis and its main character is Charlie Wales a new trader involved in a lucrative hedge fund. His intelligence does not prevent him by falling deeply into a life of excess and depravity. He realises that he may end up ruined and seeks redemption following the advice from a boy he is mentoring in Dalston who advises him to escape the moral bankruptcy of high finance to become a journalist. However, this doesn’t pan out as hoped.
A critical comment from one reviewer reflects on the fact that Charlie is not some poor boy polluted by the City, but an example of the greed that pollutes it. And the fact that this story takes such an apparently cock-eyed view of its protagonist's moral universe makes the book itself seem less like a depiction of corruption than an exemplar of it. However, Di found it to be a compelling read and did like the portrayal of Charlie.
Denise Best was reading: The President Is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson. A review of this novel appeared in last month’s notes.
Christine read: Will and Testament by Vigdor Hjorth. This is a Norwegian novel by an acclaimed writer of some twenty books and with several awards to her name. It created a stir when it was published in 2016 because readers identified strong autobiographical elements in it. These upset Hjorth’s sister so much that she wrote her own rebuttal in the form of her own novel which presented a more rosy-coloured view of their shared upbringing.
Christine found the book fascinating both in form and meaning. It is written very much in a ‘stream of consciousness’ style which she said at times could be irritating as there were major repetitions and, rather, than recognisable chapters there were some of only a paragraph long and others of several pages. However, she did feel this was justified given that the protagonist, Bergljot, the eldest daughter in a family of four has been leading a life marred by sexual abuse by her father in her childhood which has been denied by her mother and siblings. She has spent her adult life suffering psychologically not just from the crime of child sexual abuse but of the denial of it by the perpetrator and his wife. It is an excellent account of the power within families regarding a shared story of how they function and what happens when secrecy takes over. Issues about unfair inheritance take centre stage and it is hard to imagine that Berglljot will ever find resolution. She is seriously damaged and only her brother believes her account since he also suffered from his father’s parenting. The Norwegians seem very taken by ‘autofiction’ as the success of the seven volume autobiographical novel ‘My Struggle’ by Karl Ove Knausgaard testifies.
Mary read: “Handle with Care” by Jodie Picoult. She is struck by the diverse subjects that this author writes about and concludes she must have a huge team of researchers to gather all the information required to make them so believable. This book is about a little girl suffering from IO osteogenesis imperfect, a disease with a collagen defect resulting in brittle bones. The story is complicated by the fact that it is Willow’s mother’s (Charlotte) friend Piper who failed to diagnose the disease and and who has sued her. This results in a crisis in Willow’s family which includes the story of her sister Amelia who suffers from bulimia and self-harm through the parental attention being so focused on Willow. Mary describes this as a well-written story covering the highs and the lows – mostly lows, of caring for a child with IO and the toll this has had on family and friends. Mary was impressed by Picoult’s knack of getting into her fictitious character’s mind and wonders how life may have taken its toll on her to be able to write so vividly.
Simon read: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The book is based on Dostoevsky’s own experience of serving 8 years penal servitude for killing a student. The book was initially published in a journal, The Russian Messenger, in twelve monthly instalments during 1866 and subsequently in a single volume. It is considered the first great novel of his mature period of writing.
The book’s hero Raskolnikov sees himself as a superman, a person who is extraordinary and above the moral rules that govern the rest of humanity He justifies his murder of the pawnbroker and it is only in his final surrender to his love for Sonya and the joys resulting from this that he escapes his conception of himself as a superman and the terrible isolation that this belief brought on him. The book reflects the philosophy of Nihilism which rejects family and societal bonds and emotional and aesthetic concerns in favour of utilitariansism, the idea that moral decisions should be based on the greatest happiness for the largest number of people. Thus the murder of Alyona is justified on utilitarian grounds claiming that a louse has been removed from society. The novel condemns Nihilism as an empty philosophy. Simon felt that the novel is very even-handed and a fascinating exploration of ideas prevalent in Russia at the time. It also fits into other nineteenth century novels such as Les Miserables and Oliver Twist, whose worlds show where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil cross.
Di read: This Bleeding City by Alex Preston. The debut novel of a British author, Di describes it as a ‘compelling’ read. It is set during the 2007– 8 financial crisis and its main character is Charlie Wales a new trader involved in a lucrative hedge fund. His intelligence does not prevent him by falling deeply into a life of excess and depravity. He realises that he may end up ruined and seeks redemption following the advice from a boy he is mentoring in Dalston who advises him to escape the moral bankruptcy of high finance to become a journalist. However, this doesn’t pan out as hoped.
A critical comment from one reviewer reflects on the fact that Charlie is not some poor boy polluted by the City, but an example of the greed that pollutes it. And the fact that this story takes such an apparently cock-eyed view of its protagonist's moral universe makes the book itself seem less like a depiction of corruption than an exemplar of it. However, Di found it to be a compelling read and did like the portrayal of Charlie.
Denise Best was reading: The President Is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson. A review of this novel appeared in last month’s notes.
Christine read: Will and Testament by Vigdor Hjorth. This is a Norwegian novel by an acclaimed writer of some twenty books and with several awards to her name. It created a stir when it was published in 2016 because readers identified strong autobiographical elements in it. These upset Hjorth’s sister so much that she wrote her own rebuttal in the form of her own novel which presented a more rosy-coloured view of their shared upbringing.
Christine found the book fascinating both in form and meaning. It is written very much in a ‘stream of consciousness’ style which she said at times could be irritating as there were major repetitions and, rather, than recognisable chapters there were some of only a paragraph long and others of several pages. However, she did feel this was justified given that the protagonist, Bergljot, the eldest daughter in a family of four has been leading a life marred by sexual abuse by her father in her childhood which has been denied by her mother and siblings. She has spent her adult life suffering psychologically not just from the crime of child sexual abuse but of the denial of it by the perpetrator and his wife. It is an excellent account of the power within families regarding a shared story of how they function and what happens when secrecy takes over. Issues about unfair inheritance take centre stage and it is hard to imagine that Berglljot will ever find resolution. She is seriously damaged and only her brother believes her account since he also suffered from his father’s parenting. The Norwegians seem very taken by ‘autofiction’ as the success of the seven volume autobiographical novel ‘My Struggle’ by Karl Ove Knausgaard testifies.
Notes from Booklovers Meeting, 19th December 2019
Present: Mary, Denise, Sue, Di and Christine
Mary read: Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (2018). The author, unknown to Mary, was born in Canada of Gahnanian immigrant parents. The novel is apparently based on a true story. It is an intriguing, well-written tale, told in the first person, of a young, black slave who was born on a sugar plantation in Barbados in the 1830s.
The story tells of the cruelty that slaves had to endure under their British master Erasmus Wilde. The latter’s brother Christopher ‘Titch’ disapproves of slavery and borrows some of his brother’s salves, including the eponymous Washington, to help him beat a path through young to the top of a hill so he can launch his ‘Cloud Cutter’ – seemingly an early hot air balloon. ‘Wash’ because he was young and light in weight, was one to be one of the first to fly in it. Titch becomes friends with Wash and discovers that the slave is not only very intelligent but also a very talented illustrator. Erasmus has to return to England and is replaced by his cousin Phillip who orders Wash to collect something near the balloon. When the latter is ignited, Wash is severely burnt and scarred for life. Cousin Phillip shoots himself in front of wash Wash tells Titch what happened and Titch decides they should both escape in the Cloud Cutter as Wash is bound to be blamed for the accident. They escape in the balloon which ends up crashing onto a ship in a storm and this is the start of many journeys for Wash and Titch, to America, the Arctic, across to England, Amsterdam and Morocco.
Throughout the book you are made aware of the prejudices against black people, and how difficult it was for them, even after slavery had been abolished for any of them to make their way successfully within a largely white population. Mary thought this book was a really good read.
Mary also enjoyed a documentary she found a link to on YouTube: The Hut Six Story which is about a book that destroyed the life of the unknown genius, Gordon Welchman, who helped to crack the Engima Code at Bletchley Park in WWII. Only now when Edward Snowden’s revelations about the ‘the powers that be’ snooping on all our lives, has Gordon Welchman’s part at Bletchley Park been revealed. You can watch this fascinating documentary at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnr4pM-ntdc
Denise read: Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowatt (1963). Denise was enchanted by the details in this book of Mowatt’s time spent watching and interacting with wolves in the far north of Manitoba. At the time (1948) Mowatt accepted an assignment to investigate the regions dwindling population of caribou, believed to be caused by the Tundra’s most notorious predator, the wolf. He expected to find the bloodthirsty beasts of popular conception but instead over the course of a summer spent observing them, he discovered an animal species with a remarkable capacity for loyalty, virtue, and playfulness. This book is celebrated as a classic of nature writing and has been praised for the way it has turned the widespread narrative of the “savage wolf” on its head and inspiring many governments to enact protective legislation for these mysterious creatures.
Denise read: The President Is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson (2018). A political thriller which Denise found very scary not least because of the authenticity lent by having a former president as one of its co-authors who is able to give unique inside information on the workings of the White House. As the novel opens, a threat looms. Enemies are planning an attack of unprecedented scale on America. Uncertainty and fear grip Washington. There are whispers of cyberterror and espionage and a traitor in the cabinet. The President himself becomes a suspect, and then goes missing. Set in real time, over the course of three days, The President Is Missing has been described as one of the most dramatic thrillers in decades. And it could all really happen.
Anthony Lane, a reviewer for The New York, was scurrilous in his comments about James Patterson’s writing skills in this and his many other books. However, his summary of this book suggests that was not immune to its charms, writing: “Let’s be fair, though. Somehow, “The President Is Missing” rises above its blithely forgivable faults. It’s a go-to read. It maximizes its potency and fulfills its mission. There’s a twist or two of which Frederick Forsyth might be proud. So, if you want to make the most of your late-capitalist leisure-time, hit the couch, crack a Bud, punch the book open, focus your squint, and enjoy.”
Sue read Their Eyes Were Watching God, a 1937 novel by African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston. It is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and it is likely Hurston's best known work. Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20th century, the novel was initially poorly received. Since the late 20th century, it has been regarded as influential to both African-American literature and women's literature. TIME magazine included the novel in its 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923.
The epic tale of Janie Crawford, whose quest for identity takes her on a journey during which she learns what love is, experiences life’s joys and sorrows, and come home to herself in peace. With haunting sympathy and piercing immediacy, Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of Janie Crawford’s evolving selfhood through three marriages. Sue writes: “Love has different expressions – five love languages: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time and Physical Touch. Although love is the driving force of Janie’s story, her need to be free to make her own choices and the way she learns to use her own voice are equally important.” And a comment from the website norazealehurston.com states that though Jaine’s story does not end happily, it does draw to a satisfying conclusion. Janie is one black woman who doesn’t have to live lost in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, instead Janie proclaims that she has done “two things everbody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.”
Di read Elinor Oliphant Is Completely Fine: The website Good Reads comments “Elinor struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she'll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all. Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .”
Di thoroughly enjoyed the book and felt that it deserves its popular acclaim.
Mary read: Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (2018). The author, unknown to Mary, was born in Canada of Gahnanian immigrant parents. The novel is apparently based on a true story. It is an intriguing, well-written tale, told in the first person, of a young, black slave who was born on a sugar plantation in Barbados in the 1830s.
The story tells of the cruelty that slaves had to endure under their British master Erasmus Wilde. The latter’s brother Christopher ‘Titch’ disapproves of slavery and borrows some of his brother’s salves, including the eponymous Washington, to help him beat a path through young to the top of a hill so he can launch his ‘Cloud Cutter’ – seemingly an early hot air balloon. ‘Wash’ because he was young and light in weight, was one to be one of the first to fly in it. Titch becomes friends with Wash and discovers that the slave is not only very intelligent but also a very talented illustrator. Erasmus has to return to England and is replaced by his cousin Phillip who orders Wash to collect something near the balloon. When the latter is ignited, Wash is severely burnt and scarred for life. Cousin Phillip shoots himself in front of wash Wash tells Titch what happened and Titch decides they should both escape in the Cloud Cutter as Wash is bound to be blamed for the accident. They escape in the balloon which ends up crashing onto a ship in a storm and this is the start of many journeys for Wash and Titch, to America, the Arctic, across to England, Amsterdam and Morocco.
Throughout the book you are made aware of the prejudices against black people, and how difficult it was for them, even after slavery had been abolished for any of them to make their way successfully within a largely white population. Mary thought this book was a really good read.
Mary also enjoyed a documentary she found a link to on YouTube: The Hut Six Story which is about a book that destroyed the life of the unknown genius, Gordon Welchman, who helped to crack the Engima Code at Bletchley Park in WWII. Only now when Edward Snowden’s revelations about the ‘the powers that be’ snooping on all our lives, has Gordon Welchman’s part at Bletchley Park been revealed. You can watch this fascinating documentary at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnr4pM-ntdc
Denise read: Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowatt (1963). Denise was enchanted by the details in this book of Mowatt’s time spent watching and interacting with wolves in the far north of Manitoba. At the time (1948) Mowatt accepted an assignment to investigate the regions dwindling population of caribou, believed to be caused by the Tundra’s most notorious predator, the wolf. He expected to find the bloodthirsty beasts of popular conception but instead over the course of a summer spent observing them, he discovered an animal species with a remarkable capacity for loyalty, virtue, and playfulness. This book is celebrated as a classic of nature writing and has been praised for the way it has turned the widespread narrative of the “savage wolf” on its head and inspiring many governments to enact protective legislation for these mysterious creatures.
Denise read: The President Is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson (2018). A political thriller which Denise found very scary not least because of the authenticity lent by having a former president as one of its co-authors who is able to give unique inside information on the workings of the White House. As the novel opens, a threat looms. Enemies are planning an attack of unprecedented scale on America. Uncertainty and fear grip Washington. There are whispers of cyberterror and espionage and a traitor in the cabinet. The President himself becomes a suspect, and then goes missing. Set in real time, over the course of three days, The President Is Missing has been described as one of the most dramatic thrillers in decades. And it could all really happen.
Anthony Lane, a reviewer for The New York, was scurrilous in his comments about James Patterson’s writing skills in this and his many other books. However, his summary of this book suggests that was not immune to its charms, writing: “Let’s be fair, though. Somehow, “The President Is Missing” rises above its blithely forgivable faults. It’s a go-to read. It maximizes its potency and fulfills its mission. There’s a twist or two of which Frederick Forsyth might be proud. So, if you want to make the most of your late-capitalist leisure-time, hit the couch, crack a Bud, punch the book open, focus your squint, and enjoy.”
Sue read Their Eyes Were Watching God, a 1937 novel by African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston. It is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and it is likely Hurston's best known work. Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20th century, the novel was initially poorly received. Since the late 20th century, it has been regarded as influential to both African-American literature and women's literature. TIME magazine included the novel in its 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923.
The epic tale of Janie Crawford, whose quest for identity takes her on a journey during which she learns what love is, experiences life’s joys and sorrows, and come home to herself in peace. With haunting sympathy and piercing immediacy, Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of Janie Crawford’s evolving selfhood through three marriages. Sue writes: “Love has different expressions – five love languages: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time and Physical Touch. Although love is the driving force of Janie’s story, her need to be free to make her own choices and the way she learns to use her own voice are equally important.” And a comment from the website norazealehurston.com states that though Jaine’s story does not end happily, it does draw to a satisfying conclusion. Janie is one black woman who doesn’t have to live lost in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, instead Janie proclaims that she has done “two things everbody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.”
Di read Elinor Oliphant Is Completely Fine: The website Good Reads comments “Elinor struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she'll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all. Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .”
Di thoroughly enjoyed the book and felt that it deserves its popular acclaim.
Notes from Booklovers Meeting, 19th December 2019
Present: Mary, Simon, Denise, Di & Christine
Mary read: The Night Of The Fox which she described as a ‘typical Jack Higgins novel, a spy thriller in this case, fast moving and a page turner. ‘On a secret sea maneuver just before D-Day, American Colonel Hugh Kelso goes down in the English Channel. Wounded and adrift for days, he washes ashore on the German-occupied island of Jersey. The news spreads panic through the Allied high command: Kelso knows the time and place of the invasion. He must be rescued -- or silenced. A British professor turned Nazi impersonator and a young Jersey girl posing as his mistress set off to find Kelso in the fiercely guarded island fortress. The pair join a deadly game of wits that they must win....or perish in the darkness of the "Night of the Fox"’ (Goodreads).
Simon read: a book of short stories called Oblivion’ (2004) by the American author David Foster Wallace. Simon said he had owned a copy of Foster Wallace’s best known novel ‘Infinite Jest’ (2008) for some time but hadn’t yet read it. He found that Oblivion was a good way into this author’s work. Foster Wallace was university professor in the discipline of English and Creative writing and his final novel was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Wallace has been described as one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last twenty years and many contemporary writers have described him as an influence, e.g. Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Franzen, George Sanders, etc. He died at the early age of 46 by suicide. Simon particularly enjoyed the story “Mr. Squishy”. The story takes place in November 1995 and follows a focus group in a marketeer's conference room as well as the facilitator of the focus group, Terry Schmidt. The focus group is taste-testing a new chocolate snack, named "Felonies!"while outside a person free climbs up the building's north face. He also enjoyed the story “The Soul is not A Smithy”. In this narrative, an unnamed narrator recounts his experience as a boy in his fourth grade civics class in Columbus, Ohio. The substitute teacher Mr. Johnson suffers a psychotic breakdown, which results in a hostage crisis, but the narrator spends his time daydreaming and looking out of the classroom window. . Simon was very taken with Foster Wallace’s work although the subject matter is often uncompromisingly dark.
Denise read Bill Bryson’s latest offering ‘The Body”. She found it both witty and fascinating. The author shows us how little we know about our own bodies giving us ‘cute’ little stories and sometimes alarming facts about them. He also tackles more serious themes such as the concerns about the increasing ineffectuality of antibiotics and the growth of superbugs which make for scary reading. It has been popularly acclaimed and won the 2019 Science Book of the Year. The Sunday Times describes it as being 'so packed with arresting facts (you eat 60 tons of food in a lifetime) and unlikely anecdotes (such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel's six weeks with a half-sovereign lodged in his throat) that you barely notice the sheer volume of anatomical knowledge you're digesting ...’ Bryson makes complex subjects simple and eminently entertaining.
Di read: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (1989). The book is set in the 12th century in the reign of Stephen and Matilda. The plot centres on the building of a Cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England. The book combines the story of the development of Gothic architecture out of the preceding Romanesque architecture, and the fortunes of the Kingsbridge priory and village against the backdrop of historical events of the time. Previously a thriller writer, Follett turned successfully to historical novels and this one was made into a television series in 2010. It is the first in the ‘Kingsbridge’ series with ‘World Without End’ being set 150 years later and a further one called ‘A Column of Fire’ which is set in Elizabethan England. Di described the book as a “Good read.”
Di also read: Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt (1996) which she described as a moving account of a deprived, Catholic childhood in New York and Ireland. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and Autobiography. In New York Frankie lives in a modern tenement alongside many other immigrant families from Ireland, Italy and the Jewish communities. The family struggles with poverty with the father failing to find work due to his alcoholism. Angela, his wife, tries hard to prevent him frittering his pay away. Eventually they return to Ireland. After his mother’s death and Frank’s attempts to keep his family alive, he returns to the US aged nineteen. After many twists and he turns he eventually enters higher education and becomes a teacher and writer.
The book was much acclaimed and was made into a film and later a musical. Di found it a very moving account of a difficult life.
Di also read: The Secret Life of Bees by It is set in South Carolina and deals with racial segregation in 1964. ‘The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.’ (Goodreads.) Di found it a charming book with a flowing narrative which shows people making the best out of terrible circumstances.
Christine read the second volume in the Philip Pullman trilogy - The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth. She is a great fan of this author and thoroughly enjoyed this mighty tome with its unfolding narrative of the young heroine Lyra whom we first met in His Dark Materials Book 1: Northern Lights. The book has a wide arc of a narrative with Lyra and some other familiar characters travelling across Europe to somewhere beyond modern day Syria. Lyra is essentially in search of her daemon Pantalaimon who has become separated from her – a thing unheard of in Lyra’s world. Pantalaimon (Pan for short) has left Lyra essentially to search for her ‘imagination’ which he believes she has lost in a world of rationalism. The Secret Commonwealth which is a term from Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ refers to the world we can’t see but can sometimes intuit but which we need to stay in touch with. Pullman doesn’t shirk from handling really challenging philosophical themes and in this book there are dramatic episodes which draw closely on events in the world today, such as the sinking of a boat full of refugees. Christine loves the way the book has a huge narrative drive taking us across continents with murder and chases thrown in. She said it reminded her of the thrillers from the 1930s such as The Thirty-Nine Steps and feels it captures some of the politics and ideologies of that era – or, you could say, of today.
Mary read: The Night Of The Fox which she described as a ‘typical Jack Higgins novel, a spy thriller in this case, fast moving and a page turner. ‘On a secret sea maneuver just before D-Day, American Colonel Hugh Kelso goes down in the English Channel. Wounded and adrift for days, he washes ashore on the German-occupied island of Jersey. The news spreads panic through the Allied high command: Kelso knows the time and place of the invasion. He must be rescued -- or silenced. A British professor turned Nazi impersonator and a young Jersey girl posing as his mistress set off to find Kelso in the fiercely guarded island fortress. The pair join a deadly game of wits that they must win....or perish in the darkness of the "Night of the Fox"’ (Goodreads).
Simon read: a book of short stories called Oblivion’ (2004) by the American author David Foster Wallace. Simon said he had owned a copy of Foster Wallace’s best known novel ‘Infinite Jest’ (2008) for some time but hadn’t yet read it. He found that Oblivion was a good way into this author’s work. Foster Wallace was university professor in the discipline of English and Creative writing and his final novel was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Wallace has been described as one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last twenty years and many contemporary writers have described him as an influence, e.g. Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Franzen, George Sanders, etc. He died at the early age of 46 by suicide. Simon particularly enjoyed the story “Mr. Squishy”. The story takes place in November 1995 and follows a focus group in a marketeer's conference room as well as the facilitator of the focus group, Terry Schmidt. The focus group is taste-testing a new chocolate snack, named "Felonies!"while outside a person free climbs up the building's north face. He also enjoyed the story “The Soul is not A Smithy”. In this narrative, an unnamed narrator recounts his experience as a boy in his fourth grade civics class in Columbus, Ohio. The substitute teacher Mr. Johnson suffers a psychotic breakdown, which results in a hostage crisis, but the narrator spends his time daydreaming and looking out of the classroom window. . Simon was very taken with Foster Wallace’s work although the subject matter is often uncompromisingly dark.
Denise read Bill Bryson’s latest offering ‘The Body”. She found it both witty and fascinating. The author shows us how little we know about our own bodies giving us ‘cute’ little stories and sometimes alarming facts about them. He also tackles more serious themes such as the concerns about the increasing ineffectuality of antibiotics and the growth of superbugs which make for scary reading. It has been popularly acclaimed and won the 2019 Science Book of the Year. The Sunday Times describes it as being 'so packed with arresting facts (you eat 60 tons of food in a lifetime) and unlikely anecdotes (such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel's six weeks with a half-sovereign lodged in his throat) that you barely notice the sheer volume of anatomical knowledge you're digesting ...’ Bryson makes complex subjects simple and eminently entertaining.
Di read: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (1989). The book is set in the 12th century in the reign of Stephen and Matilda. The plot centres on the building of a Cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England. The book combines the story of the development of Gothic architecture out of the preceding Romanesque architecture, and the fortunes of the Kingsbridge priory and village against the backdrop of historical events of the time. Previously a thriller writer, Follett turned successfully to historical novels and this one was made into a television series in 2010. It is the first in the ‘Kingsbridge’ series with ‘World Without End’ being set 150 years later and a further one called ‘A Column of Fire’ which is set in Elizabethan England. Di described the book as a “Good read.”
Di also read: Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt (1996) which she described as a moving account of a deprived, Catholic childhood in New York and Ireland. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and Autobiography. In New York Frankie lives in a modern tenement alongside many other immigrant families from Ireland, Italy and the Jewish communities. The family struggles with poverty with the father failing to find work due to his alcoholism. Angela, his wife, tries hard to prevent him frittering his pay away. Eventually they return to Ireland. After his mother’s death and Frank’s attempts to keep his family alive, he returns to the US aged nineteen. After many twists and he turns he eventually enters higher education and becomes a teacher and writer.
The book was much acclaimed and was made into a film and later a musical. Di found it a very moving account of a difficult life.
Di also read: The Secret Life of Bees by It is set in South Carolina and deals with racial segregation in 1964. ‘The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.’ (Goodreads.) Di found it a charming book with a flowing narrative which shows people making the best out of terrible circumstances.
Christine read the second volume in the Philip Pullman trilogy - The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth. She is a great fan of this author and thoroughly enjoyed this mighty tome with its unfolding narrative of the young heroine Lyra whom we first met in His Dark Materials Book 1: Northern Lights. The book has a wide arc of a narrative with Lyra and some other familiar characters travelling across Europe to somewhere beyond modern day Syria. Lyra is essentially in search of her daemon Pantalaimon who has become separated from her – a thing unheard of in Lyra’s world. Pantalaimon (Pan for short) has left Lyra essentially to search for her ‘imagination’ which he believes she has lost in a world of rationalism. The Secret Commonwealth which is a term from Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ refers to the world we can’t see but can sometimes intuit but which we need to stay in touch with. Pullman doesn’t shirk from handling really challenging philosophical themes and in this book there are dramatic episodes which draw closely on events in the world today, such as the sinking of a boat full of refugees. Christine loves the way the book has a huge narrative drive taking us across continents with murder and chases thrown in. She said it reminded her of the thrillers from the 1930s such as The Thirty-Nine Steps and feels it captures some of the politics and ideologies of that era – or, you could say, of today.
Notes from Booklovers Meeting, 12th September 2019
Present: Sue, Simon, Denise, Mary, Christine & Di.
Sue read Middle England by Jonathan Coe (2019). She was underwhelmed by this contemporary account of the current political situation in the UK. The book, the third in a trilogy the other two being The Rotters Club (2001) and The Closed Circle (2004) covers the period from 2010 and 2018 and such events as Gordon Brown’s encounter with “that bigoted woman”, the Coalition Government, the London riots, the murder of Jo Cox, Nigel Farage’s notorious “Breaking Point” poster, the London Olympics, etc. The book shows different takes on the current crisis, different people with different ideas. One review suggests that the book is at it’s most successful when it moves away from politics and deals with relationships. To quote the therapist of one couple in the book “What’s interesting about both of these answers is that neither of you mentioned politics. As if the referendum wasn’t about Europe at all. Maybe something much more fundamental and personal was going on. Which is why this might be a difficult problem to resolve.” Sue gave it a ‘thumbs down’.
Simon read The Gorse Trilogy (1947 – 1952) by Patrick Hamilton, an author who explored the inter-war and early post WWII years and perhaps best-known for Hangover Square (1941) and his play Gaslight (1938). He was born in Hassocks. The novels in The Gorse Trilogy are The Slaves of Solitude (1947), the first one, and was described as ‘the best book written about Brighton’, the second Mr. Stimpson and Mr Gorse is regarded as a comic masterpiece and the final one is The West Pier (1952). The books are about Mr Gorse, a psychological fraudster who preys on women and people’s aspirations. Wikipedia’s entry states that Hamilton developed in his writing a misanthropic authorial voice which became more disillusioned, cynical and bleak as time passed’. The Gorse trilogy was not well thought of critically compared to Hamilton’s other works but Simon enjoyed elements of the books and considered them to be very well written. He felt there were parallels with the kind of exploitation that goes on today on the internet.
Mary read Occupation Prizefighter: The Freddie Welsh Story by Andrew Gallimore (2006)
This is the story of a Welshman who left his comfortable family life (his parents owned a hotel) in Pontypridd and went to Canada to improve his health, ultimately becoming a world champion. Mary said that she was lent the book by a friend who was interested in boxing which is not really her interest.
Freddie left Wales at 17 in the company of three friends. He became a hobo, train hopping across North America and mixing with a pretty rough crowd. He learnt to fight from his mates and found he was good enough to become a professional boxer culminating in him becoming the World champion at Olympia in London. Mary felt that for anyone interested in boxing this is a fascinating book as it explains in detail almost every fight he had and the highs and lows of his career. He became friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald and the latter’s book ‘The Great Gatsby’ is supposed to be modeled on Freddie’s life. His life had a sad ending. Having gone bust, he became depressed and took to drink, dying in a hotel room of a heart attack at the early age of 41. Mary said “Sad, but my goodness he had a full and exciting life.”
Denise read The New Men by C P Snow – the sixth novel of the author’s Strangers and Brothers sequence. In brief the book is a meticulous study of the public issues and private problems of post-war Britain. The time frame is quite special – the end of World War II and the development of nuclear weapons, told quietly from the inside. The book is a fascinating account of the moral ambiguity felt by a group of Cambridge nuclear scientists and the Government as they raced to build the bomb during World War II. The book also relives a time when a majority of the British intelligentsia were close to Communism . It is set in Barford, Stratford and Warwick. The hero, Lewis Eliot, becomes entangled in the ethics and practicalities of nuclear warfare. His scientist brother, Martin, and a brilliant Cambridge fellow, Walter Luke are trying to develop a war-winning bomb. Around them civil servants are jostling for position, ageing politicians are trying to stay relevant and the military are pressuring for results. And all the time they must wrestle with reconciling the advancement of science with the creation of a weapon they hope will never be used.
Denise really enjoyed reading the book – it is a quiet portrait of ordinary, fallible human beings caught up in the most terrifying research of all time. The evolving nature of the relationship between Lewis and his brother Martin as the backdrop to the novel is fascinating. The New Men is told with a simplicity and measure and lack of sensationalism.
Christine read: Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison. This is a book in the increasingly popular nature writing genre (c.f. Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin, Dominic Tyler etc. ) The author is prolific young writer and Christine was drawn to read this book when she read that three of the four walks mentioned taking place at Wicken Fen, in Shropshire around the Wrekin, in the Darent Valley in Kent and on Dartmoor , were all places she had walked in recently.
This is just the sort of book that takes you far from the problematic associations of nationalism and closer to a more deeply felt and older connection with our native landscape. The author has an intricate knowledge of the seasons, the weather, the landscape, the flora and fauna of our country and she shares this knowledge in a way that makes the reader feel as if they are accompanying her on her walks.
Christine felt that this is a fairly slight book but one she would read again for comfort. Harrison concludes “My year of getting wet… has broadened and deepened my feeling for the outside world. I’m no longer just a fair-weather walker”. And Christine said that she’d found herself thinking the same way when the raindrops start to fall.
Christine also read: Christine also read “Sarah Thornhill’ by Kate Grenville. Grenville is best known for her novel The Secret River which she’d recently seen dramatized at the National Theatre following a run at the Edinburgh Festival. She’d read the latter book just after it was published in 2006 after she’d been to Australia and visited the ‘secret’ river Hawkesbury, fifty miles from Sydney. It’s the story of William Thornhill and his journey, as a convict for a petty theft, from London to the other side of the world. This book has become a set text for Australian schoolchildren. Sarah Thornhill is the daughter of the aforementioned William and this book focuses on her undying love for a half aboriginal man whose mixed race makes it impossible for her to marry him. The novel charts Sarah’s journey from childhood to maturity and like The Secret River charts the history of Australian colonialism. What she particularly liked is the way Grenville captures the voice of an illiterate young woman who nevertheless is emotionally extremely literate. Along the way we inevitably meet prejudice not just against the native Australians but also class prejudice as incomers vie to find an acceptable rung on the social ladder. The acquisition of property is all important – not just of land, and of property but also of material objects that will tell the world that you have made it socially. As well as this you have a very clear image of the challenges that the early settlers had to find their place in Australia’s vastness and create a viable economic life where they can feed their children and improve their lot. Above all it is a love story but by no means a soppy one. A review in The Guardian said : ‘Sarah is well inhabited by her creator, and through the eyes of this young woman, the physical and cultural strangenesses of a nation still clambering into existence spring richly to life.’
Di read: Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel (2012). This is the second in Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s Chancellor, and deals with the downfall of Anne Boleyn and the Norfolk family. It shows how Cromwell, now the power behind the throne is an arch-manipulator. Di felt this is primarily a book about power with echoes of the current state of politics in our country. In fact, renowned author Margaret Atwood reviewing the book back in May 2012 said:
“But Cromwell also has corners of tenderness, and sees these in others: he's deep, not merely dark. And through him we experience the texture of how it feels to be sliding into a perilous dictatorship, where power is arbitrary, spies are everywhere, and one wrong word can mean your death. It's a reflection, perhaps, of our times, when democracies appear to be slipping back into the dungeon-filled shadowland of arbitrary power.”
The book ends as it begins with an image of blood-soaked feathers. Cromwell’s enemies are mustering and he is balanced on a tightrope. The final book in the trilogy is due out in early 2020.
Sue read Middle England by Jonathan Coe (2019). She was underwhelmed by this contemporary account of the current political situation in the UK. The book, the third in a trilogy the other two being The Rotters Club (2001) and The Closed Circle (2004) covers the period from 2010 and 2018 and such events as Gordon Brown’s encounter with “that bigoted woman”, the Coalition Government, the London riots, the murder of Jo Cox, Nigel Farage’s notorious “Breaking Point” poster, the London Olympics, etc. The book shows different takes on the current crisis, different people with different ideas. One review suggests that the book is at it’s most successful when it moves away from politics and deals with relationships. To quote the therapist of one couple in the book “What’s interesting about both of these answers is that neither of you mentioned politics. As if the referendum wasn’t about Europe at all. Maybe something much more fundamental and personal was going on. Which is why this might be a difficult problem to resolve.” Sue gave it a ‘thumbs down’.
Simon read The Gorse Trilogy (1947 – 1952) by Patrick Hamilton, an author who explored the inter-war and early post WWII years and perhaps best-known for Hangover Square (1941) and his play Gaslight (1938). He was born in Hassocks. The novels in The Gorse Trilogy are The Slaves of Solitude (1947), the first one, and was described as ‘the best book written about Brighton’, the second Mr. Stimpson and Mr Gorse is regarded as a comic masterpiece and the final one is The West Pier (1952). The books are about Mr Gorse, a psychological fraudster who preys on women and people’s aspirations. Wikipedia’s entry states that Hamilton developed in his writing a misanthropic authorial voice which became more disillusioned, cynical and bleak as time passed’. The Gorse trilogy was not well thought of critically compared to Hamilton’s other works but Simon enjoyed elements of the books and considered them to be very well written. He felt there were parallels with the kind of exploitation that goes on today on the internet.
Mary read Occupation Prizefighter: The Freddie Welsh Story by Andrew Gallimore (2006)
This is the story of a Welshman who left his comfortable family life (his parents owned a hotel) in Pontypridd and went to Canada to improve his health, ultimately becoming a world champion. Mary said that she was lent the book by a friend who was interested in boxing which is not really her interest.
Freddie left Wales at 17 in the company of three friends. He became a hobo, train hopping across North America and mixing with a pretty rough crowd. He learnt to fight from his mates and found he was good enough to become a professional boxer culminating in him becoming the World champion at Olympia in London. Mary felt that for anyone interested in boxing this is a fascinating book as it explains in detail almost every fight he had and the highs and lows of his career. He became friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald and the latter’s book ‘The Great Gatsby’ is supposed to be modeled on Freddie’s life. His life had a sad ending. Having gone bust, he became depressed and took to drink, dying in a hotel room of a heart attack at the early age of 41. Mary said “Sad, but my goodness he had a full and exciting life.”
Denise read The New Men by C P Snow – the sixth novel of the author’s Strangers and Brothers sequence. In brief the book is a meticulous study of the public issues and private problems of post-war Britain. The time frame is quite special – the end of World War II and the development of nuclear weapons, told quietly from the inside. The book is a fascinating account of the moral ambiguity felt by a group of Cambridge nuclear scientists and the Government as they raced to build the bomb during World War II. The book also relives a time when a majority of the British intelligentsia were close to Communism . It is set in Barford, Stratford and Warwick. The hero, Lewis Eliot, becomes entangled in the ethics and practicalities of nuclear warfare. His scientist brother, Martin, and a brilliant Cambridge fellow, Walter Luke are trying to develop a war-winning bomb. Around them civil servants are jostling for position, ageing politicians are trying to stay relevant and the military are pressuring for results. And all the time they must wrestle with reconciling the advancement of science with the creation of a weapon they hope will never be used.
Denise really enjoyed reading the book – it is a quiet portrait of ordinary, fallible human beings caught up in the most terrifying research of all time. The evolving nature of the relationship between Lewis and his brother Martin as the backdrop to the novel is fascinating. The New Men is told with a simplicity and measure and lack of sensationalism.
Christine read: Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison. This is a book in the increasingly popular nature writing genre (c.f. Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin, Dominic Tyler etc. ) The author is prolific young writer and Christine was drawn to read this book when she read that three of the four walks mentioned taking place at Wicken Fen, in Shropshire around the Wrekin, in the Darent Valley in Kent and on Dartmoor , were all places she had walked in recently.
This is just the sort of book that takes you far from the problematic associations of nationalism and closer to a more deeply felt and older connection with our native landscape. The author has an intricate knowledge of the seasons, the weather, the landscape, the flora and fauna of our country and she shares this knowledge in a way that makes the reader feel as if they are accompanying her on her walks.
Christine felt that this is a fairly slight book but one she would read again for comfort. Harrison concludes “My year of getting wet… has broadened and deepened my feeling for the outside world. I’m no longer just a fair-weather walker”. And Christine said that she’d found herself thinking the same way when the raindrops start to fall.
Christine also read: Christine also read “Sarah Thornhill’ by Kate Grenville. Grenville is best known for her novel The Secret River which she’d recently seen dramatized at the National Theatre following a run at the Edinburgh Festival. She’d read the latter book just after it was published in 2006 after she’d been to Australia and visited the ‘secret’ river Hawkesbury, fifty miles from Sydney. It’s the story of William Thornhill and his journey, as a convict for a petty theft, from London to the other side of the world. This book has become a set text for Australian schoolchildren. Sarah Thornhill is the daughter of the aforementioned William and this book focuses on her undying love for a half aboriginal man whose mixed race makes it impossible for her to marry him. The novel charts Sarah’s journey from childhood to maturity and like The Secret River charts the history of Australian colonialism. What she particularly liked is the way Grenville captures the voice of an illiterate young woman who nevertheless is emotionally extremely literate. Along the way we inevitably meet prejudice not just against the native Australians but also class prejudice as incomers vie to find an acceptable rung on the social ladder. The acquisition of property is all important – not just of land, and of property but also of material objects that will tell the world that you have made it socially. As well as this you have a very clear image of the challenges that the early settlers had to find their place in Australia’s vastness and create a viable economic life where they can feed their children and improve their lot. Above all it is a love story but by no means a soppy one. A review in The Guardian said : ‘Sarah is well inhabited by her creator, and through the eyes of this young woman, the physical and cultural strangenesses of a nation still clambering into existence spring richly to life.’
Di read: Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel (2012). This is the second in Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s Chancellor, and deals with the downfall of Anne Boleyn and the Norfolk family. It shows how Cromwell, now the power behind the throne is an arch-manipulator. Di felt this is primarily a book about power with echoes of the current state of politics in our country. In fact, renowned author Margaret Atwood reviewing the book back in May 2012 said:
“But Cromwell also has corners of tenderness, and sees these in others: he's deep, not merely dark. And through him we experience the texture of how it feels to be sliding into a perilous dictatorship, where power is arbitrary, spies are everywhere, and one wrong word can mean your death. It's a reflection, perhaps, of our times, when democracies appear to be slipping back into the dungeon-filled shadowland of arbitrary power.”
The book ends as it begins with an image of blood-soaked feathers. Cromwell’s enemies are mustering and he is balanced on a tightrope. The final book in the trilogy is due out in early 2020.
Notes from Booklovers Meeting, 25th July 2019
Present: Simon, Denise, Christine, Sue & Mary
Simon read: The Lady in the Lake (1943) a detective novel by Raymond Chandler featuring the los Angeles private investigator Philip Marlow. He had never read any of Chandler’s work before and was interested in the the fact that he didn’t start writing until he was 44 after he lost his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His prose has been much admired by writers including W H Auden, Evelyn Waugh and Ian Fleming. He is reputed to have redefined the private eye fiction genre.
The plot deals with the case of a missing woman in a small mountain town some 80 miles from Los Angeles The discovery of the body in Little Fawn Lake at first seems unrelated to Philip Marlowe's search for the wife of perfume tycoon Derace Kingsley. However, as the plot progresses this gruesome discovery soon helps Marlowe to solve a chain of seemingly unrelated murders. Not only does Marlowe solve these murders, he also uncovers a dirty police officer and the woman the officer has been trying to protect. The story was written shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbour and makes several references to America’s recent involvment in World War II.
Simon felt it was a great book for a commute.
Denise read: The Secret Barrister: Stories Of The Law And How It’s Broken. (2018) This is a first hand account by a junior barrister covering both prosecution and defence and specializing in criminal law. ‘I’m a barrister, a job which requires the skills of a social worker, relationship counsellor, arm-twister, hostage negotiator, named driver, bus fare-provider, accountant, suicide watchman, coffee-supplier, surrogate parent and, on one memorable occasion, whatever the official term is for someone tasked with breaking the news to a prisoner that his girlfriend has been diagnosed with gonorrhoea.’ (from the cover flap). Denise found it fascinating and somewhat horrifying. Itcovers many important topics including the importance of legal aid, the notion of a ‘fair trial’. The Daily Mail reviewer wrote “Everyone who has any interest in public life should read it...this is a book of some brilliance, clearly explained, cogently argued . Denise said that it can seem depressing and highlights how much reform of the law is needed.
Sue read: My Dear I wanted To Tell You by Louisa Young (2011). She said that she had read several chapters and came to one that didn’t quite meld with the others, which were well-written and captivating. The chapter she referred to was written in a rather jerky, jarring fashion and she thought she wouldn’t enjoy the book. However, she persevered and found it soon returned to the previous style which was a relief. The book had in fact been co-authored with Young’s daughter. The book is set before, during and immediately after WW1 the author draws on family stories, her grandmother having worked with the surgeon who reconstructed faces at the hospital in Sidcup in which the hero ends up having suffered a severe facial injury. Moving between Ypres, London, and Paris, this emotionally rich and evocative novel is both a powerful exploration of the lasting effects of war on those who fight—and those who don't—and a poignant testament to the power of enduring love.
Sue read: The Black Widow by Daniel Silva (2016) who is an American investigative journalist. This is a book about the present day political situation in the Middle East and Europe and gives a terrifying insight into what could happen if ISIS manage to achieve their aims and serves as a stark warning. Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon is poised to become the chief of Israel’s secret intelligence service. But on the eve of his promotion, events conspire to lure him into the field for one final operation. ISIS has detonated a massive bomb in the Marais district of Paris, and a desperate French government wants Gabriel to eliminate the man responsible before he can strike again. At Allon’s behest Dr Natalie Mizrahi, a French Jew, who speaks Arabic is asked to pose as an ISIS recruit in waiting infiltrate the Caliphate in order to discover Saladin, the organiser’s true identify, after a bombing spree in Paris and Amsterdam.
Sue says she always finds Daniel Silver’s books gripping reads with a strong semblance of realism. He tells his readers in an afterword what was actually true and what was fictitious.
In his opinion the failure to leave a residual American presence in Iraq after the war has created the seedbed from which ISIS has sprung, and that Western Europe and the USA is woefully unprepared for what is coming.
Sue also read: Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann (1901), a classic of German literature about four generations of one North German family facing modernity. It draws on the history of Mann’s own family. The Buddenbrooks of successive generations experience a gradual decline of their finances and family ideals, finding happiness increasingly elusive as values change and old hierarchies are challenged by Germany's rapid industrialisation. The characters who subordinate their personal happiness to the welfare of the family firm encounter reverses, as do those who do not. This work contributed significantly to Thomas Mann being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Sue found it an absorbing read
Mary read: The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind by William Kamkwamba
When a terrible drought strikes William Kamkwamba's tiny village in Malawi in the 1990s, his family loose all of the season's crops, leaving them with nothing to eat and nothing to sell. William began to explore science books in his village library, looking for a solution. There, he came up with the idea that would change his family's life forever: he could build a windmill. Made out of scrap metal and old bicycle parts, William's windmill brought electricity to his home and helped his family pump the water they needed to farm the land.
Retold for a younger audience, this exciting memoir shows how, even in a desperate situation, one boy's brilliant idea can light up the world. Complete with photographs, illustrations, and an epilogue that will bring readers up to date on William's story, this is the perfect edition to read and share with the whole family.
Christine had started to read: Station Eleven by Canadian Emily St. John Mandel. This is a book about a dystopian future where the earth has been ravaged by a deadly virus. It starts intriguingly in a theatre in Toronto with the death of a famous actor wile performing the role of King Lear. As the night wears on we are alerted to the appalling news of the swift spread of the virus. Fast forward to twenty years on and survivors are living in small settlements and the group of actors we were first introduced to are still a travelling band who have difficulty in finding safe places in which to perform since people in their communes are anxious to protect themselves from further infection and death.
Simon read: The Lady in the Lake (1943) a detective novel by Raymond Chandler featuring the los Angeles private investigator Philip Marlow. He had never read any of Chandler’s work before and was interested in the the fact that he didn’t start writing until he was 44 after he lost his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His prose has been much admired by writers including W H Auden, Evelyn Waugh and Ian Fleming. He is reputed to have redefined the private eye fiction genre.
The plot deals with the case of a missing woman in a small mountain town some 80 miles from Los Angeles The discovery of the body in Little Fawn Lake at first seems unrelated to Philip Marlowe's search for the wife of perfume tycoon Derace Kingsley. However, as the plot progresses this gruesome discovery soon helps Marlowe to solve a chain of seemingly unrelated murders. Not only does Marlowe solve these murders, he also uncovers a dirty police officer and the woman the officer has been trying to protect. The story was written shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbour and makes several references to America’s recent involvment in World War II.
Simon felt it was a great book for a commute.
Denise read: The Secret Barrister: Stories Of The Law And How It’s Broken. (2018) This is a first hand account by a junior barrister covering both prosecution and defence and specializing in criminal law. ‘I’m a barrister, a job which requires the skills of a social worker, relationship counsellor, arm-twister, hostage negotiator, named driver, bus fare-provider, accountant, suicide watchman, coffee-supplier, surrogate parent and, on one memorable occasion, whatever the official term is for someone tasked with breaking the news to a prisoner that his girlfriend has been diagnosed with gonorrhoea.’ (from the cover flap). Denise found it fascinating and somewhat horrifying. Itcovers many important topics including the importance of legal aid, the notion of a ‘fair trial’. The Daily Mail reviewer wrote “Everyone who has any interest in public life should read it...this is a book of some brilliance, clearly explained, cogently argued . Denise said that it can seem depressing and highlights how much reform of the law is needed.
Sue read: My Dear I wanted To Tell You by Louisa Young (2011). She said that she had read several chapters and came to one that didn’t quite meld with the others, which were well-written and captivating. The chapter she referred to was written in a rather jerky, jarring fashion and she thought she wouldn’t enjoy the book. However, she persevered and found it soon returned to the previous style which was a relief. The book had in fact been co-authored with Young’s daughter. The book is set before, during and immediately after WW1 the author draws on family stories, her grandmother having worked with the surgeon who reconstructed faces at the hospital in Sidcup in which the hero ends up having suffered a severe facial injury. Moving between Ypres, London, and Paris, this emotionally rich and evocative novel is both a powerful exploration of the lasting effects of war on those who fight—and those who don't—and a poignant testament to the power of enduring love.
Sue read: The Black Widow by Daniel Silva (2016) who is an American investigative journalist. This is a book about the present day political situation in the Middle East and Europe and gives a terrifying insight into what could happen if ISIS manage to achieve their aims and serves as a stark warning. Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon is poised to become the chief of Israel’s secret intelligence service. But on the eve of his promotion, events conspire to lure him into the field for one final operation. ISIS has detonated a massive bomb in the Marais district of Paris, and a desperate French government wants Gabriel to eliminate the man responsible before he can strike again. At Allon’s behest Dr Natalie Mizrahi, a French Jew, who speaks Arabic is asked to pose as an ISIS recruit in waiting infiltrate the Caliphate in order to discover Saladin, the organiser’s true identify, after a bombing spree in Paris and Amsterdam.
Sue says she always finds Daniel Silver’s books gripping reads with a strong semblance of realism. He tells his readers in an afterword what was actually true and what was fictitious.
In his opinion the failure to leave a residual American presence in Iraq after the war has created the seedbed from which ISIS has sprung, and that Western Europe and the USA is woefully unprepared for what is coming.
Sue also read: Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann (1901), a classic of German literature about four generations of one North German family facing modernity. It draws on the history of Mann’s own family. The Buddenbrooks of successive generations experience a gradual decline of their finances and family ideals, finding happiness increasingly elusive as values change and old hierarchies are challenged by Germany's rapid industrialisation. The characters who subordinate their personal happiness to the welfare of the family firm encounter reverses, as do those who do not. This work contributed significantly to Thomas Mann being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Sue found it an absorbing read
Mary read: The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind by William Kamkwamba
When a terrible drought strikes William Kamkwamba's tiny village in Malawi in the 1990s, his family loose all of the season's crops, leaving them with nothing to eat and nothing to sell. William began to explore science books in his village library, looking for a solution. There, he came up with the idea that would change his family's life forever: he could build a windmill. Made out of scrap metal and old bicycle parts, William's windmill brought electricity to his home and helped his family pump the water they needed to farm the land.
Retold for a younger audience, this exciting memoir shows how, even in a desperate situation, one boy's brilliant idea can light up the world. Complete with photographs, illustrations, and an epilogue that will bring readers up to date on William's story, this is the perfect edition to read and share with the whole family.
Christine had started to read: Station Eleven by Canadian Emily St. John Mandel. This is a book about a dystopian future where the earth has been ravaged by a deadly virus. It starts intriguingly in a theatre in Toronto with the death of a famous actor wile performing the role of King Lear. As the night wears on we are alerted to the appalling news of the swift spread of the virus. Fast forward to twenty years on and survivors are living in small settlements and the group of actors we were first introduced to are still a travelling band who have difficulty in finding safe places in which to perform since people in their communes are anxious to protect themselves from further infection and death.
Notes from Booklovers Meeting, 27th June 2019
Present: Christine & Denise.
For various reasons attendance was low this month but that didn’t deter Denise and I talking about the books we’d read and other issues!
Denise read ‘The Shadow Of The Wind: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books 1’ by the Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafon, a very relevant choice for any booklover. She describes it as ‘a page turner’ and said she fell upon it by chance in downloading numerous samples, and was instantly drawn in.
Denise was captivated by this story which has been a bestseller since it first appeared in 2001. It is about a boy’s quest through the secrets and shadows of post-war Barcelona for a mysterious author whose book as has proved as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget. A quote abou the library by the father from the book reads: “Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and those who read it and lived and dreamed with it.” One aspect that Denise liked was that you do get a feel of what post-war Barcelona was like, the remains of grand buildings, the sinister aftermath of shadows.
The events take place in 1945 when Barcelona is nursing its wounds. Daniel wakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he cannot remember his mother’s face. His widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by the Guild of Rare Book Dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel’s father coaxes him to choose a volume, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects - The Shadow of the Wind - by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love. And before long he realises that if he doesn’t find out the truth about Julian Carax he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.
One review (The Guardian) states that ‘Zafón convincingly conjures two worlds here. The main setting is Daniel's Barcelona, grumbling its way through the postwar dictatorship. But gradually Daniel uncovers Julián's prewar world, where aristocracy and family honour are paramount. In both, unfortunately, it is the scum who rise effortlessly to the top. As a counterpoint, Zafón celebrates the ordinary people's sense of community - of solidarity in the face of an unjust system, as when the police brutalise the local watchmaker, or hunt down Fermín himself.’
There are two other books in this series The Cemetery of Forgotten Books; the second is The Angel’s Game, and the third ‘The Prisoner of Heaven’.
Christine read How To Be Right in A World Gone Wrong by LBC journalist/presenter James O’Brien, noted as something of a master of the form of the loaded question. He’s forever asking questions aimed at uncovering a caller’s underlying prejudices, the better to put them right.
Daily listeners ring in seeming happy to expose their prejudices on air and to have them revealed as lacking logical argument and certainly valid evidence. O’Brien’s skill, apart from being well versed in the topic itself, is to get people to look again at where their opinions come from. According to O’Brien this is mainly from the right wing media whose interest in feeding ‘fake news’ to a gullible public is second to the need to make a money; so at no point does he blame his callers for swallowing distortions and unsupported headlines. He maintains a friendly and occasionally humorous stance (although occasionally expressing exaggerated surprise) and always uses examples that are relevant to the person he’s speaking to. The book has key themes for each chapter such as ‘Political Correctness’, ‘Islamophobia’, ‘LGBT’, ‘Brexit ‘, and ‘Trump’. He is not ashamed to reveal his own gullibility and misunderstanding of certain issues. Christine found this book enjoyable to read since it avoids pomposity and polemic and uses a structure which engages, namely insertions of transcripts from his programme from which you feel you can get to know both caller and presenter.
Christine also read ‘A Modern Family’ a novel by Helga Flatland, a very popular Norwegian author who has been likened to the American writer Anne Tyler in her choice of subject matter, i.e. the family. The book was written in 2017 and first published here this year, her first book to be translated into English. The story begins when, on the occasion of the 70th birthday party of the father, the family gather at a house in Italy for the celebration, the mother announces that she and her husband are getting divorced. The book then goes on by means of dedicating each of its chapters to the narrative point of view of the siblings of that family: Liv, Ellen and Hakan to explore ‘what happened next’. Through their reactions to the family news, we hear how they and their parents’ lives have changed. Each character naturally reacts differently but all three are affected strongly by the news. For Ellen the middle child, who has problems of her own conceiving and bearing a child and the strain this is putting on her relationship with her partner, the news persuades her that her entire life as been a lie. Liv is in her own routine, seemingly happily married although with that marriage on rocky ground, and to some extent blinding herself to the news and its impact. Finally, Hakan, the third child and much younger than his sisters, find his ‘free love’ philosophy to life and relationships changes in the wake of his parents’ rupture and discovers himself to have the emotional needs that he previously spurned.
Christine felt that the characterization of these siblings was very well handled. Each of them tends to adhere to the familial role they group up with and find themselves challenged by the news and particularly its impact on the interplay between the three of them. To Christine the parents seemed drawn a little sketchily and they do ultimately remain (for her) frustratingly in the background. However, with its focus on the two sisters and the brother and their roles as the older children of a divorcing couple, the novel successfully tackles relationships from the angle of birth order and she found this unusual and fascinating.
For various reasons attendance was low this month but that didn’t deter Denise and I talking about the books we’d read and other issues!
Denise read ‘The Shadow Of The Wind: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books 1’ by the Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafon, a very relevant choice for any booklover. She describes it as ‘a page turner’ and said she fell upon it by chance in downloading numerous samples, and was instantly drawn in.
Denise was captivated by this story which has been a bestseller since it first appeared in 2001. It is about a boy’s quest through the secrets and shadows of post-war Barcelona for a mysterious author whose book as has proved as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget. A quote abou the library by the father from the book reads: “Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and those who read it and lived and dreamed with it.” One aspect that Denise liked was that you do get a feel of what post-war Barcelona was like, the remains of grand buildings, the sinister aftermath of shadows.
The events take place in 1945 when Barcelona is nursing its wounds. Daniel wakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he cannot remember his mother’s face. His widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by the Guild of Rare Book Dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel’s father coaxes him to choose a volume, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects - The Shadow of the Wind - by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love. And before long he realises that if he doesn’t find out the truth about Julian Carax he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.
One review (The Guardian) states that ‘Zafón convincingly conjures two worlds here. The main setting is Daniel's Barcelona, grumbling its way through the postwar dictatorship. But gradually Daniel uncovers Julián's prewar world, where aristocracy and family honour are paramount. In both, unfortunately, it is the scum who rise effortlessly to the top. As a counterpoint, Zafón celebrates the ordinary people's sense of community - of solidarity in the face of an unjust system, as when the police brutalise the local watchmaker, or hunt down Fermín himself.’
There are two other books in this series The Cemetery of Forgotten Books; the second is The Angel’s Game, and the third ‘The Prisoner of Heaven’.
Christine read How To Be Right in A World Gone Wrong by LBC journalist/presenter James O’Brien, noted as something of a master of the form of the loaded question. He’s forever asking questions aimed at uncovering a caller’s underlying prejudices, the better to put them right.
Daily listeners ring in seeming happy to expose their prejudices on air and to have them revealed as lacking logical argument and certainly valid evidence. O’Brien’s skill, apart from being well versed in the topic itself, is to get people to look again at where their opinions come from. According to O’Brien this is mainly from the right wing media whose interest in feeding ‘fake news’ to a gullible public is second to the need to make a money; so at no point does he blame his callers for swallowing distortions and unsupported headlines. He maintains a friendly and occasionally humorous stance (although occasionally expressing exaggerated surprise) and always uses examples that are relevant to the person he’s speaking to. The book has key themes for each chapter such as ‘Political Correctness’, ‘Islamophobia’, ‘LGBT’, ‘Brexit ‘, and ‘Trump’. He is not ashamed to reveal his own gullibility and misunderstanding of certain issues. Christine found this book enjoyable to read since it avoids pomposity and polemic and uses a structure which engages, namely insertions of transcripts from his programme from which you feel you can get to know both caller and presenter.
Christine also read ‘A Modern Family’ a novel by Helga Flatland, a very popular Norwegian author who has been likened to the American writer Anne Tyler in her choice of subject matter, i.e. the family. The book was written in 2017 and first published here this year, her first book to be translated into English. The story begins when, on the occasion of the 70th birthday party of the father, the family gather at a house in Italy for the celebration, the mother announces that she and her husband are getting divorced. The book then goes on by means of dedicating each of its chapters to the narrative point of view of the siblings of that family: Liv, Ellen and Hakan to explore ‘what happened next’. Through their reactions to the family news, we hear how they and their parents’ lives have changed. Each character naturally reacts differently but all three are affected strongly by the news. For Ellen the middle child, who has problems of her own conceiving and bearing a child and the strain this is putting on her relationship with her partner, the news persuades her that her entire life as been a lie. Liv is in her own routine, seemingly happily married although with that marriage on rocky ground, and to some extent blinding herself to the news and its impact. Finally, Hakan, the third child and much younger than his sisters, find his ‘free love’ philosophy to life and relationships changes in the wake of his parents’ rupture and discovers himself to have the emotional needs that he previously spurned.
Christine felt that the characterization of these siblings was very well handled. Each of them tends to adhere to the familial role they group up with and find themselves challenged by the news and particularly its impact on the interplay between the three of them. To Christine the parents seemed drawn a little sketchily and they do ultimately remain (for her) frustratingly in the background. However, with its focus on the two sisters and the brother and their roles as the older children of a divorcing couple, the novel successfully tackles relationships from the angle of birth order and she found this unusual and fascinating.
Notes from Booklovers Meeting, 16th May 2019
Present: Sue, Mary & Denise
Sue Read: My Dear I Wanted to Tell You a novel by Louisa Young. A letter, two lovers, a terrible lie.
While Riley Purefoy and Peter Locke fight for their country, their survival and their sanity in the trenches of Flanders, Nadine Waveney, Julia Locke and Rose Locke do what they can at home. Beautiful, obsessive Julia and gentle, eccentric Peter are married: each day Julia goes through rituals to prepare for her beloved husband’s return. Nadine and Riley, only eighteen when the war starts, and with problems of their own already, want above all to make promises - but how can they when the future is not in their hands? And Rose? Well, what did happen to the traditionally brought-up women who lost all hope of marriage, because all the young men were dead?
Moving between Ypres, London and Paris, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You is a deeply affecting, moving and brilliant novel of love and war, and how they affect those left behind as well as those who fight.
Sue also read Sacred Country by Rose Tremaine published in 1992. At the age of six, Mary Ward, the child of a poor farming family in Suffolk, has a revelation: she isn't Mary, she's a boy. So begins Mary's heroic struggle to change gender, while around her others also strive to find a place of safety and fulfilment in a savage and confusing world. A very topical novel!
Mary read a true story by Milan George Vesely , Some Fear Spiders – I Fear the Ghosts in my mind
This book was the telling account of one man and his family and their life and eventual escape from Africa, and the PTSD that they experienced due to the situations that they survived. Not a war story, but having some very similar elements, this is definitely an inspirational recounting of Vesely's life. Vesely wrote “If life is an open book, then mine is a battle-scarred autobiography of exhilarating highs and suicidal lows, all rolled up in a cauldron of terror”. Some Fear Spiders is the recounting of such. A white Kenyan of Czech refugees. Jungle fighter, bush pilot, airline pilot and businessman, Vesely was good at all. Youve got balls, my military trainer said as he taught me to kill men, and they will serve you well. In 1978 military training, bush flying and airline piloting culminated in his Nairobi based reinforced plastics business. Furniture, gasoline tanks, boats and landing craft; all made money. His ocean-going yacht Samantha 39 surpassed all, became his pride and in his own words gave him “wall to wall arrogance”. Then the world caved in. Arrested, accused of theft he was hit by a two by four called corruption and greed. A puppet on a string, tortured and driven to the edge of suicide he all but threw in the towel. He wrote “Torture doesn’t just damage your body, it also scars your mind”
Denise read The Runaways by Fatima Bhutto.
The novel deals with Islamist radicalization through three characters: Monty, Anita Rose and Sunny. The novel follows these three young adults, all from vastly different backgrounds, who, for various reasons, decide to run away from their homes and join the Islamic State.
Anita lives in Karachi's biggest slum. Her elderly neighbour’s shelves of books promise an escape to a different world, and helps her believe that a larger destiny awaits her. When her brother, acquiring wealth in shady ways, sends her to a good school she changes her name to Lala and meets Monty
On the other side of Karachi lives Monty, a rich boy from Karachi, whose father owns half the city and expects great things of him. But when Lala shows up at his school, so different, so rebellious, Monty falls hopelessly in love with her. When Lala disappears, he has to find her at any cost
The other main character is Sunny, whose father left India and went to England for a better life. Unfortunately, Sunny’s mother neither loved her husband, her son, or England, and died when Sunny was young leaving Sunny in the care of his father. His father went to great lengths to be accepted as British, but Sunny is a second generation closet gay teenager living a dead-end life in twenty-first Britain, humiliated and isolated). His charismatic cousin persuades Sunny to make something of himself and join the fighters, and even when his cousin abandons him, Sunny takes up the batten and runs willingly and enthusiastically to become a fighter.
These three lives will cross in the desert, a place where life and death walk hand in hand, and where their closely guarded secrets will force them to make a terrible choice.
Denise also read Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, published in 1948
It tells the story of a father’s journey, a Zulu pastor called Stephen Kumalo from rural South Africa to and through the city of Johannesburg in search of his son. Stephen Kumalo’s tortuous journey and discoveries he makes in Johannesburg is felt deeply by the reader. It is in a prison cell that Kumalo eventually finds his son, Absalom, who is facing trial for the murder of a white man—a man who ironically cared deeply about the plight of the native South African population and had been a voice for change until his untimely death. Here we meet another father, that of the victim, whose own journey to understand his son eventually leads to his life and grief becoming strangely entwined with Kumalo’s. This is a very powerful novel.
Sue Read: My Dear I Wanted to Tell You a novel by Louisa Young. A letter, two lovers, a terrible lie.
While Riley Purefoy and Peter Locke fight for their country, their survival and their sanity in the trenches of Flanders, Nadine Waveney, Julia Locke and Rose Locke do what they can at home. Beautiful, obsessive Julia and gentle, eccentric Peter are married: each day Julia goes through rituals to prepare for her beloved husband’s return. Nadine and Riley, only eighteen when the war starts, and with problems of their own already, want above all to make promises - but how can they when the future is not in their hands? And Rose? Well, what did happen to the traditionally brought-up women who lost all hope of marriage, because all the young men were dead?
Moving between Ypres, London and Paris, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You is a deeply affecting, moving and brilliant novel of love and war, and how they affect those left behind as well as those who fight.
Sue also read Sacred Country by Rose Tremaine published in 1992. At the age of six, Mary Ward, the child of a poor farming family in Suffolk, has a revelation: she isn't Mary, she's a boy. So begins Mary's heroic struggle to change gender, while around her others also strive to find a place of safety and fulfilment in a savage and confusing world. A very topical novel!
Mary read a true story by Milan George Vesely , Some Fear Spiders – I Fear the Ghosts in my mind
This book was the telling account of one man and his family and their life and eventual escape from Africa, and the PTSD that they experienced due to the situations that they survived. Not a war story, but having some very similar elements, this is definitely an inspirational recounting of Vesely's life. Vesely wrote “If life is an open book, then mine is a battle-scarred autobiography of exhilarating highs and suicidal lows, all rolled up in a cauldron of terror”. Some Fear Spiders is the recounting of such. A white Kenyan of Czech refugees. Jungle fighter, bush pilot, airline pilot and businessman, Vesely was good at all. Youve got balls, my military trainer said as he taught me to kill men, and they will serve you well. In 1978 military training, bush flying and airline piloting culminated in his Nairobi based reinforced plastics business. Furniture, gasoline tanks, boats and landing craft; all made money. His ocean-going yacht Samantha 39 surpassed all, became his pride and in his own words gave him “wall to wall arrogance”. Then the world caved in. Arrested, accused of theft he was hit by a two by four called corruption and greed. A puppet on a string, tortured and driven to the edge of suicide he all but threw in the towel. He wrote “Torture doesn’t just damage your body, it also scars your mind”
Denise read The Runaways by Fatima Bhutto.
The novel deals with Islamist radicalization through three characters: Monty, Anita Rose and Sunny. The novel follows these three young adults, all from vastly different backgrounds, who, for various reasons, decide to run away from their homes and join the Islamic State.
Anita lives in Karachi's biggest slum. Her elderly neighbour’s shelves of books promise an escape to a different world, and helps her believe that a larger destiny awaits her. When her brother, acquiring wealth in shady ways, sends her to a good school she changes her name to Lala and meets Monty
On the other side of Karachi lives Monty, a rich boy from Karachi, whose father owns half the city and expects great things of him. But when Lala shows up at his school, so different, so rebellious, Monty falls hopelessly in love with her. When Lala disappears, he has to find her at any cost
The other main character is Sunny, whose father left India and went to England for a better life. Unfortunately, Sunny’s mother neither loved her husband, her son, or England, and died when Sunny was young leaving Sunny in the care of his father. His father went to great lengths to be accepted as British, but Sunny is a second generation closet gay teenager living a dead-end life in twenty-first Britain, humiliated and isolated). His charismatic cousin persuades Sunny to make something of himself and join the fighters, and even when his cousin abandons him, Sunny takes up the batten and runs willingly and enthusiastically to become a fighter.
These three lives will cross in the desert, a place where life and death walk hand in hand, and where their closely guarded secrets will force them to make a terrible choice.
Denise also read Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, published in 1948
It tells the story of a father’s journey, a Zulu pastor called Stephen Kumalo from rural South Africa to and through the city of Johannesburg in search of his son. Stephen Kumalo’s tortuous journey and discoveries he makes in Johannesburg is felt deeply by the reader. It is in a prison cell that Kumalo eventually finds his son, Absalom, who is facing trial for the murder of a white man—a man who ironically cared deeply about the plight of the native South African population and had been a voice for change until his untimely death. Here we meet another father, that of the victim, whose own journey to understand his son eventually leads to his life and grief becoming strangely entwined with Kumalo’s. This is a very powerful novel.
Notes from Booklovers Meeting, 21st March 2019
Present: Sue, Simon Mary, Denise, Christine
Simon read: Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)
Simon hadn’t quite finished the book but was very much enjoying this classic US novel about American socialites and their world. Primarily set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s. It recounts the love affair between Hollywood actress Rosemary Hoyt and the ‘charming’ Dick Diver. Dick is a psychiatrist who marries one of the patients at his clinic, Nicole, who remains mentally fragile. Rosemary becomes part of the Diver set. She falls under the spell of the glamorous couple and embarks on a reckless affair with Dick The story charts the downfall of the initially successful Dick. His life and career slowly unravel throughout the book.
Fitzgerald skilfully recreates the sensual and emotional pleasures of the Divers' lifestyle. His most persuasive characters are complex self-reflective creations; glamorous, but with a questioning intelligence, a sense of irony and the possibility of true integrity which makes it all the more tragic when they sacrifice themselves for cheap pleasures or worldly effect. Of Dick's exquisite manners, Fitzgerald notes wryly, "often he used them and just as often he despised them because they were not a protest against how unpleasant selfishness was, but against how unpleasant it looked". This dichotomy results in his own downfall although Nicole survives, partly due to her own wealth.
Denise read: We by Yevgeny Zamyatine (1923)
This book is a dystopian novel written by a Russian and set 1,000 years after a revolution that brought the One State into being. It was banned by the Soviet censors and was first published in English in the States in 1924. Denise found it very hard to put down and felt that it gives a very clear sense of what a totalitarian system is like.
The story’s protagonist is D-503 (all humans are known by numbers) and is an engineer working on a spaceship that aims to bring the principles of the Revolution to space. The world is ruled by The Benefactor and presided over by the Guardians. Citizens live in apartments made of glass so that they can be spied on at all times. Equality is enforced, to the point of disfiguring the physically beautiful. Beauty and art are a heresy in the One State – to be original is to violate the principles of equality. However, many of the ancient human instincts are still there even though the citizens are lobotomized if they rebel. Falling in love is not part of the plan and ends badly.
The author spent two years working in England and became known for his satires on English life. He became an editor and translator or many famous authors, e.g. H. G. Wells. Denise concluded by saying that she felt the book was “clumsily put together, though it was hard to put down.”
Christine read: Outline by Rachel Cusk. This novel is the first in a trilogy and Christine found it innovative and engaging. The book is set in Greece (apart from the opening chapter which is set on the plane going there.) It is written in the first person, the narrator being a writer who is going to Athens to teach on a writing summer school. Each chapter introduces one or more characters whom the narrator, Faye, encounters during her time there. A rich Greek gentleman she met on the plane subsequently takes her out on his boat and divulges the successes and failures of his life; a group of the students in engage in a writing exercise and in so doing reveal much about their own worlds; then there is her landlady, and another writing tutor. The point about each chapter is that each of the characters talks extensively about their lives, their loves, their ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives, whereas of the narrator we learn very little. She has obviously been through some personal trauma, possibly divorce, has two children, and is questioning who she is in this ‘new’ life she finds herself leading. Above all, as a reader, you cannot help but admire her listening skills and the way she draws out information about the characters she meets. She is an observer and interpreter of these people lives.
The book is innovative in that it is almost a writing exercise in character building. Each of the people the narrator meets is drawn in detail and you enter their lives almost as a therapist might with a client. The one loosely sketched out character is Faye’s own. At its conclusion Christine felt really keen to read the next novel in the series : Transit.
Mary read Fever by Robin Cook (2000)
Robin Cook, MD, physician and writer, is the author of more than 30 books and is credited with popularizing the ‘medical thriller’ with his groundbreaking and wildly successful 1977 novel, Coma.
The protagonist of this novel is a doctor, Charles Martel, who following the death of his first wife from cancer, turns to research into immunology only to find that his daughter is struck down with leukaemia. The cause: a chemical plant conspiracy that not only promises to kill her, but will destroy him as a doctor and a man if he tries to fight it... Fighting almost everyone including his second wife who has been tricked by the authorities into signing an affidavit preventing him from interfering with his daughter’s treatment, he engages in some criminal acts. For example he abducts his daughter from hospital in order to treat her himself with antigens from his own body, a very complicated procedure. All’s well that ends well, however, and Charles is offered his job back, and the recycling plant is ‘sorted’.
Mary had a particular interest in the treatment Charles is attempting to save his daughter. She found, through internet research, that it might prove just as successful as other more conventional solutions and the story ends by saying that there was no proof as to which treament worked better – the oncologist’s chemotherapy treatment in the hospital or Charles’s self-devised treatment plan. Mary thought this was a good read and said she would probably look out for more of Robin Cook’s novels.
Sue read 4321: by Paul Auster (2018)
Sue summed up this semi-autobiographical novel as ‘rather indulgent’ and thought that ‘it should have been much shorter’. Other critics have agreed with her. It is the first new Auster novel in seven years. It tells of the four parallel lives of the protagonist , one Archibald Isaac Ferguson born in New Jersey in 1947. Sue found it hard to disentangle the separate lives as she moved from one version of the character to another and to help herself with this, she had used the device of post-its as bookmarks to keep track of each of them. She did, however, consider each of the four lives to be interesting.
One of Auster’s central premises seems to be that that the essential core of our character gets fixed early in life and remains relatively impervious to the fluctuations of circumstance. What does change with each scenario are the people Ferguson comes in contact with and the influence they exert on his life. Some of these individuals exist in only a single narrative pathway, while others pop up repeatedly, playing different roles in different contexts. The most important of these recurring characters is Amy Schneiderman. So there are multiple love stories about these two though Amy does get away.
Sue is not alone in thinking the novel is too long – four books in one claims the reviewer from The New York Times who considers the book ‘flawed’ but nevertheless ‘a work of outsize ambition and remarkable craft, a monumental assemblage of competing and complementary fictions, a novel that contains multitudes.’
Sue also read The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne (2017)
This is the story of a young man growing up gay in Ireland. Born to a young mother of 16, he is twice adopted by people who don’t seem very interested in him and doesn’t seem to have been scarred by his childhood. His mother has been shamed by the local priest into acknowledging her pregnancy in front of the congregation of the local church. We later learn that the hypocritical priest himself has fathered two illegitimate children. The book covers the period from the forties to the present time showing the developments in Irish society and culture.
“Fortunately as the novel moves through various events in his life he encounters characters the first is with his childhood friend Maurice Woodbead, who possesses all the boldness and beauty Cyril feels he lacks; the second is with the Dutch doctor Bastiaan, whom Cyril meets when he goes to live in Amsterdam. Bastiaan is a liberator, drawn entirely in light: warm, humorous, self‑accepting, loving and true towards Cyril during their years together. The book rages against the treatment of illegitimacy and homosexuality. Even after the referendum is passed, the ghosts of the past are still present. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel about the search for a sense of self in a changing world and the ultimate, redemptive power of the human spirit.”
(from a review in The Guardian.)
Simon read: Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)
Simon hadn’t quite finished the book but was very much enjoying this classic US novel about American socialites and their world. Primarily set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s. It recounts the love affair between Hollywood actress Rosemary Hoyt and the ‘charming’ Dick Diver. Dick is a psychiatrist who marries one of the patients at his clinic, Nicole, who remains mentally fragile. Rosemary becomes part of the Diver set. She falls under the spell of the glamorous couple and embarks on a reckless affair with Dick The story charts the downfall of the initially successful Dick. His life and career slowly unravel throughout the book.
Fitzgerald skilfully recreates the sensual and emotional pleasures of the Divers' lifestyle. His most persuasive characters are complex self-reflective creations; glamorous, but with a questioning intelligence, a sense of irony and the possibility of true integrity which makes it all the more tragic when they sacrifice themselves for cheap pleasures or worldly effect. Of Dick's exquisite manners, Fitzgerald notes wryly, "often he used them and just as often he despised them because they were not a protest against how unpleasant selfishness was, but against how unpleasant it looked". This dichotomy results in his own downfall although Nicole survives, partly due to her own wealth.
Denise read: We by Yevgeny Zamyatine (1923)
This book is a dystopian novel written by a Russian and set 1,000 years after a revolution that brought the One State into being. It was banned by the Soviet censors and was first published in English in the States in 1924. Denise found it very hard to put down and felt that it gives a very clear sense of what a totalitarian system is like.
The story’s protagonist is D-503 (all humans are known by numbers) and is an engineer working on a spaceship that aims to bring the principles of the Revolution to space. The world is ruled by The Benefactor and presided over by the Guardians. Citizens live in apartments made of glass so that they can be spied on at all times. Equality is enforced, to the point of disfiguring the physically beautiful. Beauty and art are a heresy in the One State – to be original is to violate the principles of equality. However, many of the ancient human instincts are still there even though the citizens are lobotomized if they rebel. Falling in love is not part of the plan and ends badly.
The author spent two years working in England and became known for his satires on English life. He became an editor and translator or many famous authors, e.g. H. G. Wells. Denise concluded by saying that she felt the book was “clumsily put together, though it was hard to put down.”
Christine read: Outline by Rachel Cusk. This novel is the first in a trilogy and Christine found it innovative and engaging. The book is set in Greece (apart from the opening chapter which is set on the plane going there.) It is written in the first person, the narrator being a writer who is going to Athens to teach on a writing summer school. Each chapter introduces one or more characters whom the narrator, Faye, encounters during her time there. A rich Greek gentleman she met on the plane subsequently takes her out on his boat and divulges the successes and failures of his life; a group of the students in engage in a writing exercise and in so doing reveal much about their own worlds; then there is her landlady, and another writing tutor. The point about each chapter is that each of the characters talks extensively about their lives, their loves, their ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives, whereas of the narrator we learn very little. She has obviously been through some personal trauma, possibly divorce, has two children, and is questioning who she is in this ‘new’ life she finds herself leading. Above all, as a reader, you cannot help but admire her listening skills and the way she draws out information about the characters she meets. She is an observer and interpreter of these people lives.
The book is innovative in that it is almost a writing exercise in character building. Each of the people the narrator meets is drawn in detail and you enter their lives almost as a therapist might with a client. The one loosely sketched out character is Faye’s own. At its conclusion Christine felt really keen to read the next novel in the series : Transit.
Mary read Fever by Robin Cook (2000)
Robin Cook, MD, physician and writer, is the author of more than 30 books and is credited with popularizing the ‘medical thriller’ with his groundbreaking and wildly successful 1977 novel, Coma.
The protagonist of this novel is a doctor, Charles Martel, who following the death of his first wife from cancer, turns to research into immunology only to find that his daughter is struck down with leukaemia. The cause: a chemical plant conspiracy that not only promises to kill her, but will destroy him as a doctor and a man if he tries to fight it... Fighting almost everyone including his second wife who has been tricked by the authorities into signing an affidavit preventing him from interfering with his daughter’s treatment, he engages in some criminal acts. For example he abducts his daughter from hospital in order to treat her himself with antigens from his own body, a very complicated procedure. All’s well that ends well, however, and Charles is offered his job back, and the recycling plant is ‘sorted’.
Mary had a particular interest in the treatment Charles is attempting to save his daughter. She found, through internet research, that it might prove just as successful as other more conventional solutions and the story ends by saying that there was no proof as to which treament worked better – the oncologist’s chemotherapy treatment in the hospital or Charles’s self-devised treatment plan. Mary thought this was a good read and said she would probably look out for more of Robin Cook’s novels.
Sue read 4321: by Paul Auster (2018)
Sue summed up this semi-autobiographical novel as ‘rather indulgent’ and thought that ‘it should have been much shorter’. Other critics have agreed with her. It is the first new Auster novel in seven years. It tells of the four parallel lives of the protagonist , one Archibald Isaac Ferguson born in New Jersey in 1947. Sue found it hard to disentangle the separate lives as she moved from one version of the character to another and to help herself with this, she had used the device of post-its as bookmarks to keep track of each of them. She did, however, consider each of the four lives to be interesting.
One of Auster’s central premises seems to be that that the essential core of our character gets fixed early in life and remains relatively impervious to the fluctuations of circumstance. What does change with each scenario are the people Ferguson comes in contact with and the influence they exert on his life. Some of these individuals exist in only a single narrative pathway, while others pop up repeatedly, playing different roles in different contexts. The most important of these recurring characters is Amy Schneiderman. So there are multiple love stories about these two though Amy does get away.
Sue is not alone in thinking the novel is too long – four books in one claims the reviewer from The New York Times who considers the book ‘flawed’ but nevertheless ‘a work of outsize ambition and remarkable craft, a monumental assemblage of competing and complementary fictions, a novel that contains multitudes.’
Sue also read The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne (2017)
This is the story of a young man growing up gay in Ireland. Born to a young mother of 16, he is twice adopted by people who don’t seem very interested in him and doesn’t seem to have been scarred by his childhood. His mother has been shamed by the local priest into acknowledging her pregnancy in front of the congregation of the local church. We later learn that the hypocritical priest himself has fathered two illegitimate children. The book covers the period from the forties to the present time showing the developments in Irish society and culture.
“Fortunately as the novel moves through various events in his life he encounters characters the first is with his childhood friend Maurice Woodbead, who possesses all the boldness and beauty Cyril feels he lacks; the second is with the Dutch doctor Bastiaan, whom Cyril meets when he goes to live in Amsterdam. Bastiaan is a liberator, drawn entirely in light: warm, humorous, self‑accepting, loving and true towards Cyril during their years together. The book rages against the treatment of illegitimacy and homosexuality. Even after the referendum is passed, the ghosts of the past are still present. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel about the search for a sense of self in a changing world and the ultimate, redemptive power of the human spirit.”
(from a review in The Guardian.)
19th February 2019
Present: Sue, Simon Mary, Denise, Christine
Sue read: Ways of Seeing by John Berger: Ways of Seeing is a 1972 television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. It was broadcast on BBC Two in January 1972 and adapted into a book of the same name. Sue found this book very interesting criticising as it does traditional Western cultural aesthetics and highlighting hidden ideologies in visual images. She felt it is particularly good in respect of the ways in which women have been presented in art, as objects, and exploring the relationships between viewer and viewed. The book is a modern classic and Sue thought it contained some amazing images.
Simon read: Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks. This is a book of short stories by the well-known film actor. A common feature of all the stories is a typewriter which plays a sometimes major role, sometimes minor. Simon enjoyed the stories which explore the human condition with ‘affection, humour and insight’ (Amazon page) and which display an excellent variety of themes including friendships, families, love and normal everyday behaviour and writes with great skill in a diversity of styles. Simon rated it 9/10.
Mary read: Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer. This is a fictionalized biography of the famous mountaineer George Mallory who climbed Everest twice but lost his life at the second attempt. As a boy Mallory always got into mischief and on one occasion with his lifelong friend George Finch while on a school trip to Scotland managed to ascend a peak ahead of his teacher by a different route. After university he became a teacher so that he could sustain his challenging hobby. On his first ascent George pipped him to the post since he was using oxygen. The same climb saw an avalanche taking the lives of several climbers. Ultimately it is not known if he succeeded in his second attempt (as before trying to outdo his chum George). His body was not found at the time but in 1999 a body thought to be his was found at 27000. Archer claims him as the first man to reach the summit of Everest but many in New Zealand saw this as a slur against Sir Edmund Hillary. Mary found this a fascinating read.
Denise read: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway was fascinated by war and this book is set during the Spanish Civil War. He was working as a journalist at the time and draws on his own experiences for his main character Robert Jordan. Jordan makes contact with a guerrilla band and the story unfolds over 72 hours in their camp. Hemingway with his stripped back style gives an unsparing account of the cruelty and inhumanity stirred by the civil war.
Honour, courage, endurance and dignity are a set of principles known as ‘The Hemingway Code’. Jordan demonstrates these principles when he forces his comrades to leave him behind with a broken leg as he prepares a last minute resistance to his Nationalist pursuers while attempts to blow up a bridge.
Denise admired this complex, objective book.
Christine read Adele by Leila Slimani. This was the first novel preceding the Prix Goncourt winner ‘Lullaby’ which had great success with the reading public. It is has shocking elements as it recounts the daily life of a middle class woman married to a surgeon who lives in Paris and has a strong addiction to sex with strangers. For example she feels compelled to leave her office in her lunch hours where she works as a journalist to find suitable partners for a brief sexual encounter. Things go wrong when she has an affair with a colleague of her husband. Obviously the book is not just about these dubious activities but sensitively dives deep into her family background and childhood from which facts emerge that help you understand her behaviour and not condemn her. Christine found herself admiring the subtle way in which the writer achieves this.
Sue read: Ways of Seeing by John Berger: Ways of Seeing is a 1972 television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. It was broadcast on BBC Two in January 1972 and adapted into a book of the same name. Sue found this book very interesting criticising as it does traditional Western cultural aesthetics and highlighting hidden ideologies in visual images. She felt it is particularly good in respect of the ways in which women have been presented in art, as objects, and exploring the relationships between viewer and viewed. The book is a modern classic and Sue thought it contained some amazing images.
Simon read: Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks. This is a book of short stories by the well-known film actor. A common feature of all the stories is a typewriter which plays a sometimes major role, sometimes minor. Simon enjoyed the stories which explore the human condition with ‘affection, humour and insight’ (Amazon page) and which display an excellent variety of themes including friendships, families, love and normal everyday behaviour and writes with great skill in a diversity of styles. Simon rated it 9/10.
Mary read: Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer. This is a fictionalized biography of the famous mountaineer George Mallory who climbed Everest twice but lost his life at the second attempt. As a boy Mallory always got into mischief and on one occasion with his lifelong friend George Finch while on a school trip to Scotland managed to ascend a peak ahead of his teacher by a different route. After university he became a teacher so that he could sustain his challenging hobby. On his first ascent George pipped him to the post since he was using oxygen. The same climb saw an avalanche taking the lives of several climbers. Ultimately it is not known if he succeeded in his second attempt (as before trying to outdo his chum George). His body was not found at the time but in 1999 a body thought to be his was found at 27000. Archer claims him as the first man to reach the summit of Everest but many in New Zealand saw this as a slur against Sir Edmund Hillary. Mary found this a fascinating read.
Denise read: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway was fascinated by war and this book is set during the Spanish Civil War. He was working as a journalist at the time and draws on his own experiences for his main character Robert Jordan. Jordan makes contact with a guerrilla band and the story unfolds over 72 hours in their camp. Hemingway with his stripped back style gives an unsparing account of the cruelty and inhumanity stirred by the civil war.
Honour, courage, endurance and dignity are a set of principles known as ‘The Hemingway Code’. Jordan demonstrates these principles when he forces his comrades to leave him behind with a broken leg as he prepares a last minute resistance to his Nationalist pursuers while attempts to blow up a bridge.
Denise admired this complex, objective book.
Christine read Adele by Leila Slimani. This was the first novel preceding the Prix Goncourt winner ‘Lullaby’ which had great success with the reading public. It is has shocking elements as it recounts the daily life of a middle class woman married to a surgeon who lives in Paris and has a strong addiction to sex with strangers. For example she feels compelled to leave her office in her lunch hours where she works as a journalist to find suitable partners for a brief sexual encounter. Things go wrong when she has an affair with a colleague of her husband. Obviously the book is not just about these dubious activities but sensitively dives deep into her family background and childhood from which facts emerge that help you understand her behaviour and not condemn her. Christine found herself admiring the subtle way in which the writer achieves this.
18th January 2019
Present: Sue, Mary, Denise, Christine
Mary read: The Africa House by Christina Lamb (1999)
Mary found this a fascinating read which describes the building of a country estate based on the finest anyone could find in England in a remote part of Northern Rhodesia. The man behind this enterprise was Sir Steward Gore-Browne and the house is called Shiwa Ngandu. As a child he had accompanied his aunt to various parts of England and Europe to beautiful castles and villas of which he made detailed drawings. At the end of the First World War where Gore brown achieved the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel he returned to his African estate and re-embarked on his grand plans. The book tells of the trials and tribulations of working with people who had no experience of this type of building. He also ran the farm. The funding for this project mainly came from his Aunt and Uncle who lived at Brooklands in Surrey. He also became much involved in the politics of the region and was the only white man who had ever been given a state funeral.
Many famous people came and went to Shiwa Ngandu flying into its own airstrip and enjoying Gore-Browne’s generous hospitality. These include Denys Finch Hatton (Karen Blixen’s lover), David Sterling who founded the SAS, Lady Astor, Elspeth Huxley. Eventually the estate fell into disrepair as did Zambia which became the world’s most indebted nation. Gore-Browne’s grandson are still struggling to make a commercial success of Shiwa Ngandu as a tourist attraction. Mary has connections with Zambia through her step sister and brother in law and one of Gore-Browne’s grandsons still lives there.
Christina Lamb OBE is a British journalist and author. She is the chief foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times. Lamb the has won fourteen major awards including four British Press Awards and the European Prix Bayeux-Calvados for war correspondents.
Sue read: A Closed Eye by Anita Brookner (1991)
Sue found this book ‘depressing’ dealing as it does with a sad, lonely, depressed heroine, Harriet. She has survived a barren childhood with parents who were not warm to her and who marries an older man a friend of her father’s only to find that the marriage ‘having begun so rapturously, had ended in disappointment.’ Her friend Tessa marries Jack who when introduced to Harriet wakens in her a desire for something outside the bounds of her stoic existence.
Tessa and Jack have a daughter, Lizzie, and Harriet a daughter Imogen. These two are opposites rather in the way that Harriet and Tessa are. Lizzie becomes reclusive and socially ill at ease whereas Imogen is selfish, willful, indulged, and domineering. Harriet admires Lizzie who is a different version of whom Harriet could have become. Someone who knows herself and finds a purpose for her quietness, her desire to remain apart, her love of books, and her talent to observe. The book plays with these opposites. The ‘Closed Eye’ of the title is from Henry James and the phrase could allude to a combination of some innocence and also subtle self-deception which are the essential features of Harriet’s personality. Sue felt she knew more about Anita Brookner having read this book but was not totally convinced that she is an author for her.
Denise read: Listening to Animals: Becoming the Supervet by Professor Noel Fitzpatrick (2018)
Denise was gripped by this autobiography of the celebrity veterinary surgeon and star of the television series The Supervet. It recounts his journey from his birth in 1967 in rural Ireland where he grew up on a farm and tended the animals from an early age to the present day where he expounds his vision of a future where One Medicine serves the needs of humans and animals alike and believes that the bond between animals and humans can make us the very best we can be. He just wants to make humans better animals. He is trying to do this through his charity The Humanimal Trust. Alongside this vision and his practical work the book gives a deep insight into his life story and how he became who he is today. As a child, having won a place at a private school, he felt out of place and was submitted to appalling physical and mental bullying which instilled in him a sense of uselessness. At home his parents were not close and the family believed that you should not get above yourself. However, he was determined to do better and, sustained by his love for the animals, especially his sheepdog Pirate, he ‘studied his socks off’, barely sleeping and remaining extremely focused. As a result he achieved enormous success around the world as a neuro-veterinary surgeon and one who takes on the most challenging cases at his practice FitzPatrick Referrals in Surrey.
As well as the insights into his internal life, he also gives many examples of the fascinating and ground breaking procedures and surgeries that have prolonged and improved the lives of so many animals, as featured on the TV show.
Christine read: Candide by Voltaire (1758)
Christine, in despair at the current state of the nation and indeed the world, returned to this classic which she had read in her youth (a ‘conte philosophique’ as the French call it). The novel essentially deals with the problem of suffering and why ‘in this best of all possible worlds’ mankind is so evil and such terrible disasters both man-made and natural occur. The book is satirizing the prevailing philosophy of the time (based on Leibnitz’s works though mainly through false interpretations of these) as one of extreme optimism believing that evil is necessary in order for good things to happen. It’s an extremely witty romp around the world of young Candide who having been expelled from the estate in Schleswig-Holstein for dallying with the daughter of the Master, Cunegonde. He leaves with his tutor and philosopher Pangloss travelling through Western Europe and witnessing the earthquake in Lisbon where Pangloss is hanged and where Cunegone’s brother is killed by Candide. He then flees to Buenos Aires with Cunegonde who is snatched from him by a wily duke, and gradually travels around the continent including to Eldorado where gold and precious jewels are readily available but spurned by the local population as bering unnecessary to their well-being. Candide and his valet Cacambo at this point leave Eldorado with untold millions (carried by sheep!) and gradually dispose of this money due to careless generosity. Hearing that Cunegonde is in Venice, Candide despatches Cacambo to find her there and continues his travels via Paris and, briefly England. Many contemporary historical events form the background to the novel and Candide records the execution of Admiral Byng in Portsmouth for his ineptitude in battle, an event which gives rise to the famous expression ‘pour encourager les autres’ (i.e. the reason Britain finds it necessary to shoot Admirals from time to time.) After a long period and meeting up, surprisingly with the supposedly hanged Dr Pangloss and Cunegonde’s brother who survived his attempted murder, Candide has now a new philosophical mentor Martin. By now Cunegonde is old and ugly but Candide marries her regardless, staying true to his promise. After consulting a dervish in Istanbul why Man is made to suffer so, and what they all ought to do. The dervish responds by asking rhetorically why Candide is concerned about the existence of evil and good. Returning to their farm, Candide, Pangloss, and Martin meet a Turk whose philosophy is to devote his life only to simple work and not concern himself with external affairs. He and his four children cultivate a small area of land, and the work keeps them "free of three great evils: boredom, vice, and poverty. Candide, Pangloss, Martin, Cunégonde, Paquette, Cacambo, the old woman, and Brother Giroflée all set to work on this "commendable plan” on their farm, each exercising his or her own talents. Candide ignores Pangloss's insistence that all turned out for the best by necessity, instead telling him "we must cultivate our garden" (il faut cultiver notre jardin).
Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, and philosophers. Through Candide, he assaults Leibniz and his optimism. Christine found this a spirited and enjoyable novel, just right for reading through these dark times.
Mary read: The Africa House by Christina Lamb (1999)
Mary found this a fascinating read which describes the building of a country estate based on the finest anyone could find in England in a remote part of Northern Rhodesia. The man behind this enterprise was Sir Steward Gore-Browne and the house is called Shiwa Ngandu. As a child he had accompanied his aunt to various parts of England and Europe to beautiful castles and villas of which he made detailed drawings. At the end of the First World War where Gore brown achieved the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel he returned to his African estate and re-embarked on his grand plans. The book tells of the trials and tribulations of working with people who had no experience of this type of building. He also ran the farm. The funding for this project mainly came from his Aunt and Uncle who lived at Brooklands in Surrey. He also became much involved in the politics of the region and was the only white man who had ever been given a state funeral.
Many famous people came and went to Shiwa Ngandu flying into its own airstrip and enjoying Gore-Browne’s generous hospitality. These include Denys Finch Hatton (Karen Blixen’s lover), David Sterling who founded the SAS, Lady Astor, Elspeth Huxley. Eventually the estate fell into disrepair as did Zambia which became the world’s most indebted nation. Gore-Browne’s grandson are still struggling to make a commercial success of Shiwa Ngandu as a tourist attraction. Mary has connections with Zambia through her step sister and brother in law and one of Gore-Browne’s grandsons still lives there.
Christina Lamb OBE is a British journalist and author. She is the chief foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times. Lamb the has won fourteen major awards including four British Press Awards and the European Prix Bayeux-Calvados for war correspondents.
Sue read: A Closed Eye by Anita Brookner (1991)
Sue found this book ‘depressing’ dealing as it does with a sad, lonely, depressed heroine, Harriet. She has survived a barren childhood with parents who were not warm to her and who marries an older man a friend of her father’s only to find that the marriage ‘having begun so rapturously, had ended in disappointment.’ Her friend Tessa marries Jack who when introduced to Harriet wakens in her a desire for something outside the bounds of her stoic existence.
Tessa and Jack have a daughter, Lizzie, and Harriet a daughter Imogen. These two are opposites rather in the way that Harriet and Tessa are. Lizzie becomes reclusive and socially ill at ease whereas Imogen is selfish, willful, indulged, and domineering. Harriet admires Lizzie who is a different version of whom Harriet could have become. Someone who knows herself and finds a purpose for her quietness, her desire to remain apart, her love of books, and her talent to observe. The book plays with these opposites. The ‘Closed Eye’ of the title is from Henry James and the phrase could allude to a combination of some innocence and also subtle self-deception which are the essential features of Harriet’s personality. Sue felt she knew more about Anita Brookner having read this book but was not totally convinced that she is an author for her.
Denise read: Listening to Animals: Becoming the Supervet by Professor Noel Fitzpatrick (2018)
Denise was gripped by this autobiography of the celebrity veterinary surgeon and star of the television series The Supervet. It recounts his journey from his birth in 1967 in rural Ireland where he grew up on a farm and tended the animals from an early age to the present day where he expounds his vision of a future where One Medicine serves the needs of humans and animals alike and believes that the bond between animals and humans can make us the very best we can be. He just wants to make humans better animals. He is trying to do this through his charity The Humanimal Trust. Alongside this vision and his practical work the book gives a deep insight into his life story and how he became who he is today. As a child, having won a place at a private school, he felt out of place and was submitted to appalling physical and mental bullying which instilled in him a sense of uselessness. At home his parents were not close and the family believed that you should not get above yourself. However, he was determined to do better and, sustained by his love for the animals, especially his sheepdog Pirate, he ‘studied his socks off’, barely sleeping and remaining extremely focused. As a result he achieved enormous success around the world as a neuro-veterinary surgeon and one who takes on the most challenging cases at his practice FitzPatrick Referrals in Surrey.
As well as the insights into his internal life, he also gives many examples of the fascinating and ground breaking procedures and surgeries that have prolonged and improved the lives of so many animals, as featured on the TV show.
Christine read: Candide by Voltaire (1758)
Christine, in despair at the current state of the nation and indeed the world, returned to this classic which she had read in her youth (a ‘conte philosophique’ as the French call it). The novel essentially deals with the problem of suffering and why ‘in this best of all possible worlds’ mankind is so evil and such terrible disasters both man-made and natural occur. The book is satirizing the prevailing philosophy of the time (based on Leibnitz’s works though mainly through false interpretations of these) as one of extreme optimism believing that evil is necessary in order for good things to happen. It’s an extremely witty romp around the world of young Candide who having been expelled from the estate in Schleswig-Holstein for dallying with the daughter of the Master, Cunegonde. He leaves with his tutor and philosopher Pangloss travelling through Western Europe and witnessing the earthquake in Lisbon where Pangloss is hanged and where Cunegone’s brother is killed by Candide. He then flees to Buenos Aires with Cunegonde who is snatched from him by a wily duke, and gradually travels around the continent including to Eldorado where gold and precious jewels are readily available but spurned by the local population as bering unnecessary to their well-being. Candide and his valet Cacambo at this point leave Eldorado with untold millions (carried by sheep!) and gradually dispose of this money due to careless generosity. Hearing that Cunegonde is in Venice, Candide despatches Cacambo to find her there and continues his travels via Paris and, briefly England. Many contemporary historical events form the background to the novel and Candide records the execution of Admiral Byng in Portsmouth for his ineptitude in battle, an event which gives rise to the famous expression ‘pour encourager les autres’ (i.e. the reason Britain finds it necessary to shoot Admirals from time to time.) After a long period and meeting up, surprisingly with the supposedly hanged Dr Pangloss and Cunegonde’s brother who survived his attempted murder, Candide has now a new philosophical mentor Martin. By now Cunegonde is old and ugly but Candide marries her regardless, staying true to his promise. After consulting a dervish in Istanbul why Man is made to suffer so, and what they all ought to do. The dervish responds by asking rhetorically why Candide is concerned about the existence of evil and good. Returning to their farm, Candide, Pangloss, and Martin meet a Turk whose philosophy is to devote his life only to simple work and not concern himself with external affairs. He and his four children cultivate a small area of land, and the work keeps them "free of three great evils: boredom, vice, and poverty. Candide, Pangloss, Martin, Cunégonde, Paquette, Cacambo, the old woman, and Brother Giroflée all set to work on this "commendable plan” on their farm, each exercising his or her own talents. Candide ignores Pangloss's insistence that all turned out for the best by necessity, instead telling him "we must cultivate our garden" (il faut cultiver notre jardin).
Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, and philosophers. Through Candide, he assaults Leibniz and his optimism. Christine found this a spirited and enjoyable novel, just right for reading through these dark times.
20th December, 2018

Present: Denise, Di, Simon and Sue.
Simon read Middlemarch by George Eliot. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by the English author George Eliot, first published in eight instalments in 1871–72. The novel is set in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch during 1829–32, and follows several distinct, intersecting stories with a large cast of characters. Middlemarch is not meant to be entertainment. She wants to deal with real-life issues, not the fantasy world to which women writers were often confined. Her ambition was to create a portrait of the complexity of ordinary human life: quiet tragedies, petty character failings, small triumphs, and quiet moments of dignity. The complexity of her portrait of provincial society is reflected in the complexity of individual characters. The contradictions in the character of the individual person are evident in the shifting sympathies of the reader. One moment, we pity Casaubon, the next we judge him critically.
Middlemarch stubbornly refuses to behave like a typical novel. The novel is a collection of relationships between several major players in the drama, but no single one person occupies the centre of the action. No one person can represent provincial life. It is necessary to include multiple people. Eliot's book is fairly experimental for its time in form and content, particularly because she was a woman writer. Simon found it hard going.
Sue read Milkman by Anna Burns, and written in 2018. A young woman is forced into a relationship with an older man during the Troubles in Northern Ireland in this tale of tribalism and hope. As a character, the milkman is an immensely creepy invention. “I didn’t know whose milkman he was. He wasn’t our milkman. I don’t think he was anybody’s.” Yet he is everywhere. A phalanx of silent men hover in his vicinity. He makes it clear that he will kill the narrator’s boyfriend if she continues seeing him. He works on her until he breaks her down. “I’d been thwarted into a carefully constructed nothingness by that man. Also by the community, by the very mental atmosphere, that minutiae of invasion".
The author was praised for having an utterly distinctive voice that challenges conventional thinking. Anna became the first Northern Irish writer to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize 2018 award for the novel.
Di read Still Alice by Ginova Losa, written in 2007, and set in Boston. When Alice finds herself in the rapidly downward spiral of Alzheimer's Disease, she is just fifty years old. A university professor, wife, and mother of three, she still has so much more to do - books to write, places to see, grandchildren to meet. But when she can't remember how to make her famous Christmas pudding, when she gets lost in her own back yard, when she fails to recognise her actress daughter after a superb performance, she comes up with a desperate plan. But can she see it through? Should she see it through? . Losing her yesterdays, living for each day, her short-term memory is hanging on by a couple of frayed threads. But she is still Alice. It does have a tragic ending.
Denise read Rogue Lawyer written by John Grisham in 2015. The book is about a lawyer named Sebastian Rudd who works out of a bulletproof van after his last "real" office was firebombed. He has one employee, a bodyguard and general assistant, who drives him from appointment to appointment and who attempts to protect him from the large numbers of people on both sides of the law who would like to do him harm. He has an ex-wife to whom he was briefly married before she left him for her gay lover. But the two did manage to conceive a son that Rudd gets to see for a few hours a month, and one of his principal legal challenges is to fend off his vindictive ex-wife who would prefer that Rudd does not get to see their son at all. Although this book was rated on the low side by Grisham followers, I found it a very good read. Grisham gives you a real feel of the American justice system, and is well qualified to do this. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, Grisham went on to practice law for nearly a decade in Southaven, specializing in criminal defence and personal injury litigation. In 1983, he was elected to the state House of Representatives and served until 1990.
Simon read Middlemarch by George Eliot. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by the English author George Eliot, first published in eight instalments in 1871–72. The novel is set in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch during 1829–32, and follows several distinct, intersecting stories with a large cast of characters. Middlemarch is not meant to be entertainment. She wants to deal with real-life issues, not the fantasy world to which women writers were often confined. Her ambition was to create a portrait of the complexity of ordinary human life: quiet tragedies, petty character failings, small triumphs, and quiet moments of dignity. The complexity of her portrait of provincial society is reflected in the complexity of individual characters. The contradictions in the character of the individual person are evident in the shifting sympathies of the reader. One moment, we pity Casaubon, the next we judge him critically.
Middlemarch stubbornly refuses to behave like a typical novel. The novel is a collection of relationships between several major players in the drama, but no single one person occupies the centre of the action. No one person can represent provincial life. It is necessary to include multiple people. Eliot's book is fairly experimental for its time in form and content, particularly because she was a woman writer. Simon found it hard going.
Sue read Milkman by Anna Burns, and written in 2018. A young woman is forced into a relationship with an older man during the Troubles in Northern Ireland in this tale of tribalism and hope. As a character, the milkman is an immensely creepy invention. “I didn’t know whose milkman he was. He wasn’t our milkman. I don’t think he was anybody’s.” Yet he is everywhere. A phalanx of silent men hover in his vicinity. He makes it clear that he will kill the narrator’s boyfriend if she continues seeing him. He works on her until he breaks her down. “I’d been thwarted into a carefully constructed nothingness by that man. Also by the community, by the very mental atmosphere, that minutiae of invasion".
The author was praised for having an utterly distinctive voice that challenges conventional thinking. Anna became the first Northern Irish writer to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize 2018 award for the novel.
Di read Still Alice by Ginova Losa, written in 2007, and set in Boston. When Alice finds herself in the rapidly downward spiral of Alzheimer's Disease, she is just fifty years old. A university professor, wife, and mother of three, she still has so much more to do - books to write, places to see, grandchildren to meet. But when she can't remember how to make her famous Christmas pudding, when she gets lost in her own back yard, when she fails to recognise her actress daughter after a superb performance, she comes up with a desperate plan. But can she see it through? Should she see it through? . Losing her yesterdays, living for each day, her short-term memory is hanging on by a couple of frayed threads. But she is still Alice. It does have a tragic ending.
Denise read Rogue Lawyer written by John Grisham in 2015. The book is about a lawyer named Sebastian Rudd who works out of a bulletproof van after his last "real" office was firebombed. He has one employee, a bodyguard and general assistant, who drives him from appointment to appointment and who attempts to protect him from the large numbers of people on both sides of the law who would like to do him harm. He has an ex-wife to whom he was briefly married before she left him for her gay lover. But the two did manage to conceive a son that Rudd gets to see for a few hours a month, and one of his principal legal challenges is to fend off his vindictive ex-wife who would prefer that Rudd does not get to see their son at all. Although this book was rated on the low side by Grisham followers, I found it a very good read. Grisham gives you a real feel of the American justice system, and is well qualified to do this. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, Grisham went on to practice law for nearly a decade in Southaven, specializing in criminal defence and personal injury litigation. In 1983, he was elected to the state House of Representatives and served until 1990.
1st November 2018

Present: Denise, Simon, Sue, Christine, Mary, Sarah
Sue read: Girl, Balancing and Other Stories by Helen Dunmore.
This volume of short stories was published posthumously following Dunmore’s early death from cancer in June 2017. The stories draw on the themes childhood, motherhood, war, friendship, forgotten lives. Often the women are under siege. It seemed to Sue that these stories were ‘dredged’ up from various parts of Dunmore’s own life. They are often vignettes a fact that Sue found frustrating, and they often end on a poignant note. Sue identified a couple of types of stories, for example, the Nina Stories which follow a character from childhood to teenage years, and others based on historical characters such as one about John Donne and another about Fanny Burney who had both of her breasts cut of, a fact which was close to Dunmore’s own life. A further one about John Keats follows the last seven weeks of his life in Rome seen through the eyes of his friend joseph Severn. There are also what Sue described as ‘creepy ones’.
Simon read: Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens.
This novel is about the Gordon Riots of 1780 and was written in 1841. It is about different characters going about their lives, and, of course about Barnaby Rudge himself
The riots were the product of religious intolerance and stirred up considerable support over six days . The rioters went into prisons including the newly built Newgate Prison where they burnt the doors down. Simon found the descriptions’awesome’ and the book as a whole ‘excellent’ especially in its depictions of the London of that time. He felt it was an easy read.
Mary read: The Enormous Zoo - A Profile of the Uganda National Parks, by Colin Willock
This book was written by the father of a friend of Mary’s. It tells the story of the origins of two national parks in Uganda: the Queen Elizabeth Park and Murchison Park. The story begins in 1963 when Uganda had newly acquired its independence and, in order to encourage tourism, it was realized that they needed to populate the park with animals such as rhino. There were two many hippos in the park and these needed to be culled. They are the most dangerous animal in Africa and they needed to be culled as there was a need to salvage the vegetation which they were destroying. The book also recounts the tales of some extraordinary people including a crazy bush pilot. In reading this book the reader is witness to the birth of an elephant, up-Nile travel, dealing with poachers, the handling of tourists as the warden and staff trying to cope with the day-to-day trials of the preserve and pursue the knowledge they need to run it effectively. It is an interesting inside view of a subject which has generally been treated superficially by passing tourists.
Mary was enthusiastic about this account. The Parks still exist but the animals are being decimated.
Sarah read: The Sympathiser by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2016), a book about the Vietnam war. The author, who won the Pulitzer Prizer for this novel is half-French and half-Vietnamese. The Guardian review of the novel quotes its and comments on its opening paragraph as follows:
‘I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides.” Viet Thanh Nguyen’s new novel begins with a showy riff on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Thereafter, Ellison’s novel offers a template for Nguyen’s; its unnamed narrator-protagonist, like Ellison’s, recounts and attempts to make sense of his variously doubled life from a position of concealment – in this case, as a prisoner forced to make a political confession.
The author helps the militia before needing to flee the country to America. Sarah found the book well-written with its perspective on two different cultures. She appreciated the author’s black sense of humour. The book has resonances with the present day ending as it does on a boat full of refugees.
Denise read The British in India by David Gilmore. Gilmore is an accomplished British writer who sees history through the eyes of the people living it. He explores different lives across 350 years of the British in India and tells us who they were and what drove them to India. According to one review “It is emphatically a social history, not an economic or political one and, as he writes, he “has not tried to … make a particular argument”. Denise felt it was extremely well researched and was convincing in building up people’s lives from the minutiae of that research.
Christine read: Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. Sally Rooney has made quite an impact on the publishing world this year having in her mid-twenties produced two novels set in Dublin which have both won prizes. This, her first novel, was written in three months and led to Rooney winning the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, tells of the friendship between two students and an older husband and wife who live a cultured existence in Dublin. Frances, an English student and budding author, has an affair with the older married actor Nick. This fact can lead the reader to feel ambivalent about the main character but in a sense this is what Rooney does best, sitting on the fence but teasing out the paradoxes that rigid views and actions can create. She is particularly good on the Dublin of the ‘tiger economy’ years and the characters seem to lead a comfortable life, nipping off to France when they want to, owning attractive properties, etc. However, the external details such as setting are less important in Rooney’s work than the central character’s inner thoughts about relationships. Christine found it absorbing but, for her, not as successful or as engaging as her second novel ‘Normal People’ which some reviewers have put on a par with ‘Catcher in the Rye’ – classic coming of age novel.
Sue read: Girl, Balancing and Other Stories by Helen Dunmore.
This volume of short stories was published posthumously following Dunmore’s early death from cancer in June 2017. The stories draw on the themes childhood, motherhood, war, friendship, forgotten lives. Often the women are under siege. It seemed to Sue that these stories were ‘dredged’ up from various parts of Dunmore’s own life. They are often vignettes a fact that Sue found frustrating, and they often end on a poignant note. Sue identified a couple of types of stories, for example, the Nina Stories which follow a character from childhood to teenage years, and others based on historical characters such as one about John Donne and another about Fanny Burney who had both of her breasts cut of, a fact which was close to Dunmore’s own life. A further one about John Keats follows the last seven weeks of his life in Rome seen through the eyes of his friend joseph Severn. There are also what Sue described as ‘creepy ones’.
Simon read: Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens.
This novel is about the Gordon Riots of 1780 and was written in 1841. It is about different characters going about their lives, and, of course about Barnaby Rudge himself
The riots were the product of religious intolerance and stirred up considerable support over six days . The rioters went into prisons including the newly built Newgate Prison where they burnt the doors down. Simon found the descriptions’awesome’ and the book as a whole ‘excellent’ especially in its depictions of the London of that time. He felt it was an easy read.
Mary read: The Enormous Zoo - A Profile of the Uganda National Parks, by Colin Willock
This book was written by the father of a friend of Mary’s. It tells the story of the origins of two national parks in Uganda: the Queen Elizabeth Park and Murchison Park. The story begins in 1963 when Uganda had newly acquired its independence and, in order to encourage tourism, it was realized that they needed to populate the park with animals such as rhino. There were two many hippos in the park and these needed to be culled. They are the most dangerous animal in Africa and they needed to be culled as there was a need to salvage the vegetation which they were destroying. The book also recounts the tales of some extraordinary people including a crazy bush pilot. In reading this book the reader is witness to the birth of an elephant, up-Nile travel, dealing with poachers, the handling of tourists as the warden and staff trying to cope with the day-to-day trials of the preserve and pursue the knowledge they need to run it effectively. It is an interesting inside view of a subject which has generally been treated superficially by passing tourists.
Mary was enthusiastic about this account. The Parks still exist but the animals are being decimated.
Sarah read: The Sympathiser by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2016), a book about the Vietnam war. The author, who won the Pulitzer Prizer for this novel is half-French and half-Vietnamese. The Guardian review of the novel quotes its and comments on its opening paragraph as follows:
‘I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides.” Viet Thanh Nguyen’s new novel begins with a showy riff on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Thereafter, Ellison’s novel offers a template for Nguyen’s; its unnamed narrator-protagonist, like Ellison’s, recounts and attempts to make sense of his variously doubled life from a position of concealment – in this case, as a prisoner forced to make a political confession.
The author helps the militia before needing to flee the country to America. Sarah found the book well-written with its perspective on two different cultures. She appreciated the author’s black sense of humour. The book has resonances with the present day ending as it does on a boat full of refugees.
Denise read The British in India by David Gilmore. Gilmore is an accomplished British writer who sees history through the eyes of the people living it. He explores different lives across 350 years of the British in India and tells us who they were and what drove them to India. According to one review “It is emphatically a social history, not an economic or political one and, as he writes, he “has not tried to … make a particular argument”. Denise felt it was extremely well researched and was convincing in building up people’s lives from the minutiae of that research.
Christine read: Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. Sally Rooney has made quite an impact on the publishing world this year having in her mid-twenties produced two novels set in Dublin which have both won prizes. This, her first novel, was written in three months and led to Rooney winning the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, tells of the friendship between two students and an older husband and wife who live a cultured existence in Dublin. Frances, an English student and budding author, has an affair with the older married actor Nick. This fact can lead the reader to feel ambivalent about the main character but in a sense this is what Rooney does best, sitting on the fence but teasing out the paradoxes that rigid views and actions can create. She is particularly good on the Dublin of the ‘tiger economy’ years and the characters seem to lead a comfortable life, nipping off to France when they want to, owning attractive properties, etc. However, the external details such as setting are less important in Rooney’s work than the central character’s inner thoughts about relationships. Christine found it absorbing but, for her, not as successful or as engaging as her second novel ‘Normal People’ which some reviewers have put on a par with ‘Catcher in the Rye’ – classic coming of age novel.
28th June 2018

Present: Simon, Denise, Sue, Christine
Denise read: Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm
This a book about the rewinding of a country estate, Knepp Castle near West Grinstead in West Sussex. It tells the story of Knepp, the pioneering rewilding project started by her husband, environmentalist Charlie Burrell. They decided to let nature take its course across the 3000 acres of land, ceasing the conventional farming that had been done before and allowing cattle to roam freely and creating new habitats for wildlife.
Denise enjoyed the book for its fascinating account of the ecology of our countryside, Wilding is, above all, an inspiring story of hope. The story is part of a large movement called Rewilding Britain (https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/about/) whose aims are:
Knepp Castle runs safaris and provides camping.
Denise also read: When Red is Black – No 3 in the Inspector Chen novels. This is a crime novel with an unexpected twist set in the 1990s on Shanghai. Then a murder is reported: Chen is loath to shorten his working holiday, so Sergeant Yu is forced to take charge of the investigation. The victim, a middle-aged teacher, has been found dead in her tiny room in a converted multi-family house. The victim was an ex-Red Guard. Only a neighbour could have committed the crime, but there is no motive. It is only when poetry-loving Inspector Chen returns and starts to investigate the past that he finds answers. The book is a critique of the Revolution. Everybody appears to have buried the burden of the past. Denise was taken with the descriptions of Shanghainese food and liked the twist at the end of the story.
Simon read Kotoro by Natsume Soseki, a Japanese author (1867 – 1960). This novel was published in serial form in 1914 and deals with the transition of Japanese society from the Meiji era (1868 – 1912) to contemporary Japan. The first part of the story introduces to a young man who meets an older man on a beach. They get chatting and become acquainted. The young man calls the older man Sensei that means ‘teacher’. The older man maintains a certain distance however and will not divulge what happened to his friend whose graves he visits each month.
In the second part of the story, the Meiji emperor dies and the young man’s father becomes ill and Sensei asks him to visit him but the author can’t go. He receives a letter from Sensei and the remainder of the book, written in Sensei’s voice is an account of his life, his deception of a friend, his withdrawal from society and ultimately his suicide.
Important themes in the novel include the changing times (particularly the modernization of Japan in the Meiji era), the changing roles and ideals of women, and intergenerational change in values, the role of family, the importance of the self versus the group, the cost of weakness, and identity.
It was interesting to hear about two novels both about the Orient and changes in society in the last century.
Sue read: The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West. The author and the way in which she writes to understand her life fascinate Sue.
This 1957 novel tells of the Aubrey family and the father’s genius for instability which blights the lives of his wife and children His new job in the London suburbs promises, for a time at least, reprieve from scandal and the threat of ruin. His wife, a former concert pianist, struggles to keep the family afloat, but then she is something of a high-strung eccentric herself, as is all too clear to her daughter Rose, through whose loving but sometimes cruel eyes events are seen. Still, living on the edge holds the promise of the unexpected, and the Aubreys, get involved with a murderess and with the occult. Sue felt it didn’t end very satisfactorily.
According to the New York Review of Books this is ‘an unvarnished but affectionate picture of an extraordinary family, in which a remarkable stylist and powerful intelligence surveys the elusive boundaries of childhood and adulthood, freedom and dependency, the ordinary and the occult.’
Christine read: A Legacy of Spies by John Le Care. This Le Care’s most recent novel has been described as ‘valedictory’. It certainly marks the passing of the old ‘cold war’ intelligence wars, bringing back characters from the author’s earlier work ‘ Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ and specifically Peter Guillermo. It also takes us back in time via documents to the background to that story and brings us into the twenty-first century of spying, technology and all. You get a sense that the author is not a fan of the way things have gone. The novel has been widely praised but Christine felt dissatisfied by much of it, finding the reliance on pages of documents (which to some extent are material to the story) somewhat stultifying and slow to plough through. She found the character of Guillermo interesting since it is much expanded upon, and also enjoyed the characterisation of the new MI6 characters, the new breed who seem to be self-serving and lacking moral fibre. Much of it is familiar territory and maybe the current Novichok attack in Salisbury requires detective work that is more akin to spying.
Denise read: Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm
This a book about the rewinding of a country estate, Knepp Castle near West Grinstead in West Sussex. It tells the story of Knepp, the pioneering rewilding project started by her husband, environmentalist Charlie Burrell. They decided to let nature take its course across the 3000 acres of land, ceasing the conventional farming that had been done before and allowing cattle to roam freely and creating new habitats for wildlife.
Denise enjoyed the book for its fascinating account of the ecology of our countryside, Wilding is, above all, an inspiring story of hope. The story is part of a large movement called Rewilding Britain (https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/about/) whose aims are:
- Reverse the loss of biodiversity in large core areas of land and sea
- Restore ecosystems to a functional and resilient state
- Reignite people’s passion for the natural world
- Revitalise local economies in ways that work ecologically
- Reintegrate nature and society for the benefit of both
- Reintroduce key missing species where it makes sense
Knepp Castle runs safaris and provides camping.
Denise also read: When Red is Black – No 3 in the Inspector Chen novels. This is a crime novel with an unexpected twist set in the 1990s on Shanghai. Then a murder is reported: Chen is loath to shorten his working holiday, so Sergeant Yu is forced to take charge of the investigation. The victim, a middle-aged teacher, has been found dead in her tiny room in a converted multi-family house. The victim was an ex-Red Guard. Only a neighbour could have committed the crime, but there is no motive. It is only when poetry-loving Inspector Chen returns and starts to investigate the past that he finds answers. The book is a critique of the Revolution. Everybody appears to have buried the burden of the past. Denise was taken with the descriptions of Shanghainese food and liked the twist at the end of the story.
Simon read Kotoro by Natsume Soseki, a Japanese author (1867 – 1960). This novel was published in serial form in 1914 and deals with the transition of Japanese society from the Meiji era (1868 – 1912) to contemporary Japan. The first part of the story introduces to a young man who meets an older man on a beach. They get chatting and become acquainted. The young man calls the older man Sensei that means ‘teacher’. The older man maintains a certain distance however and will not divulge what happened to his friend whose graves he visits each month.
In the second part of the story, the Meiji emperor dies and the young man’s father becomes ill and Sensei asks him to visit him but the author can’t go. He receives a letter from Sensei and the remainder of the book, written in Sensei’s voice is an account of his life, his deception of a friend, his withdrawal from society and ultimately his suicide.
Important themes in the novel include the changing times (particularly the modernization of Japan in the Meiji era), the changing roles and ideals of women, and intergenerational change in values, the role of family, the importance of the self versus the group, the cost of weakness, and identity.
It was interesting to hear about two novels both about the Orient and changes in society in the last century.
Sue read: The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West. The author and the way in which she writes to understand her life fascinate Sue.
This 1957 novel tells of the Aubrey family and the father’s genius for instability which blights the lives of his wife and children His new job in the London suburbs promises, for a time at least, reprieve from scandal and the threat of ruin. His wife, a former concert pianist, struggles to keep the family afloat, but then she is something of a high-strung eccentric herself, as is all too clear to her daughter Rose, through whose loving but sometimes cruel eyes events are seen. Still, living on the edge holds the promise of the unexpected, and the Aubreys, get involved with a murderess and with the occult. Sue felt it didn’t end very satisfactorily.
According to the New York Review of Books this is ‘an unvarnished but affectionate picture of an extraordinary family, in which a remarkable stylist and powerful intelligence surveys the elusive boundaries of childhood and adulthood, freedom and dependency, the ordinary and the occult.’
Christine read: A Legacy of Spies by John Le Care. This Le Care’s most recent novel has been described as ‘valedictory’. It certainly marks the passing of the old ‘cold war’ intelligence wars, bringing back characters from the author’s earlier work ‘ Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ and specifically Peter Guillermo. It also takes us back in time via documents to the background to that story and brings us into the twenty-first century of spying, technology and all. You get a sense that the author is not a fan of the way things have gone. The novel has been widely praised but Christine felt dissatisfied by much of it, finding the reliance on pages of documents (which to some extent are material to the story) somewhat stultifying and slow to plough through. She found the character of Guillermo interesting since it is much expanded upon, and also enjoyed the characterisation of the new MI6 characters, the new breed who seem to be self-serving and lacking moral fibre. Much of it is familiar territory and maybe the current Novichok attack in Salisbury requires detective work that is more akin to spying.
April 19th, 2018
Present: Simon, Denise, Sue, Gaye, Christine
Denise read: ‘London Rules’ by Mick Herron.
This is the fifth in a series of books about the ‘Band of Spies’. Denise hadn’t read any of the previous works but had been engaged by a sample she’d read on her Kindle. In the words of the critic Mark Lawson, writing in The Guardian, the series is ‘essentially a rollicking subversion of John le Carré’s books about George Smiley.’ Denise found the characters hilarious. The key character in this book is Jackson Lamb who due to an earlier misdemeanour has been sent to run Slough House, the ‘naughty step’ for spies.
The book is set in the present against a background of Brexit and terrorism. According to Lawson, Herron is ‘a very funny writer, but also a serious plotter: London Rules smartly turns on the realisation by foreign enemies of how a piece of colonial knowhow, discovered by Britain during its imperial pomp, can be turned against the 21st-century nation.’ Denise was greatly entertained by the novel and will probably read more of the series.
Sue read: The Group by Mary McCarthy. Written in 1963, though set in 1933, the book is concerned with a group of Vassar girls and how their lives progress. At the time of its publication its frank descriptions of sex, contraception and breast-feeding as they affected a group of eight female graduates in 1930s America caused such a scandal that the novel was banned in Australia as an offence to public morals. Norman Mailer dismissed The Group in the New York Review of Books as "a trivial lady writer's novel" Sue found it very interesting and was pleased that the women managed to steer their way through various male chauvinists.
Sue also read: ‘Black Diamonds: the Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty’ by Catherine Bailey.
This book tells the story of the Fitzwilliam family, owners of Wentworth House a huge house with 365 rooms and its 70 neighbouring coalfields in Yorkshire. But it is also the recounting of the ends of two classes, the lower and the very upper. The story of coal lies at its heart. It is very well researched drawing on documents and interviews with remaining members of the Wentworth family. It shows the enormous changes wrought over fifty years in the twentieth century Sue deemed it ‘history written in an accessible way making a very enjoyable read.’
Gaye Read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov – recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt – is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol.
Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely for having written a counter-revolutionary poem. (Penguin Books) Gaye said the book was written with the lightest of touches and the Count’s post-revolutionary life turns out to be much richer than the one he led before his arrest. Despite living in the hotel attic rather than a luxury suite, the count is convinced that “by the smallest of one’s actions one can restore some sense of order to the world.” His character, according to Gaye is optimistic and resilient. He loves the hotel and forms a family within it. Although there is a sense of isolation and grief in the novel, there are also absurd and comic moments.
Overall Gaye found it to be ‘fresh and unpredictable; beautiful and thoughtful. You could never tell what was coming and the ending is unexpected.’
Simon read: The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre (1945). This novel set in 1938, is informed by Sartre’s Existentialist philosophy of life, and recounts three days in the life of a philosophy teacher, Mathieu Delarue. Discovering his girlfriend is pregnant, Mathieu tries to raise money for an abortion. In the background of the novel is the Spanish Civil War (one of the options considered by Mathieu as a solution, i.e, joining up) and beyond that there is also a sense of the approach of WW2. The novel attempts to illustrate the existentialist notion of ultimate freedom showing how each of the characters make decisions. Each of them has some problem and Sartre shows how difficult it can be to take charge of one's own life -- to accept that one has the responsibilities that come with 'the age of reason” -- and none of his characters achieve this. The final sentence uttered by Mathieuto himself is “I have attained the age of reason.” The key message seems to be that people are ultimately all self-interested and that things are ultimately out of your control. Simon enjoyed the novel very much and would be interested to read the other two books in the trilogy.
Christine read: ‘Lullaby’ (‘Chanson Douce’) by Leila Slimane. (2017) Awarded the prestigious Prix Goncourt for this novel, its author has recently been appointed by French President Macron as his “personal representative to French-speaking countries.” Her job, essentially, is to burnish the image of the French language (and thus of France) abroad. She herself was born in Morocco and has dual French-Moroccan nationality although she says her family never truly espoused Moroccan values. They moved to France when she was six and later she studied Literature at Sciences Politiques in Paris. She worked as a journalist before reporting on Northern Africa and the Maghreb.
The novel relates the story of ‘a perfect nanny’ (coincidentally the name given the book in the US). Louise (named by Slimane after Louise Woodward who strangled one of her charges) is appointed by a professional Parisian couple to be nanny to their two small children. The novel begins with the infanticide of these children by Louise. Having got that shocking act out of the way, the story moves back in time in an attempt to explain how this came about.
Christine found it a gripping narrative, a sensitive exploration of current day socio-economic relations in the French capital touching on questions about motherhood, parenthood, social inequality, gentrification. Racism is also touched on: for example Louise, who is white, feels isolated in the parks of the arrondissment since most other carers are black. One idea surfaces strongly - the unknowability of other people. The fact that this confident, well-off Parisian couple have handed their most precious possessions, their children to someone who, although ‘the perfect nanny’ is a mentally unstable isolate, is shocking in itself. The story unfolds and we learn a little more about Louise’s background – none of it edifying, but none of it, in the light of the immaculate care she is providing for her charges, worrying. There is no satisfaction in the ending. Everyone remains mystified as to what has happened to provoke the opening act. Christine found this a haunting novel and would thoroughly recommend it for the way it penetrates the depths of human relationships and social values at the present time.
Denise read: ‘London Rules’ by Mick Herron.
This is the fifth in a series of books about the ‘Band of Spies’. Denise hadn’t read any of the previous works but had been engaged by a sample she’d read on her Kindle. In the words of the critic Mark Lawson, writing in The Guardian, the series is ‘essentially a rollicking subversion of John le Carré’s books about George Smiley.’ Denise found the characters hilarious. The key character in this book is Jackson Lamb who due to an earlier misdemeanour has been sent to run Slough House, the ‘naughty step’ for spies.
The book is set in the present against a background of Brexit and terrorism. According to Lawson, Herron is ‘a very funny writer, but also a serious plotter: London Rules smartly turns on the realisation by foreign enemies of how a piece of colonial knowhow, discovered by Britain during its imperial pomp, can be turned against the 21st-century nation.’ Denise was greatly entertained by the novel and will probably read more of the series.
Sue read: The Group by Mary McCarthy. Written in 1963, though set in 1933, the book is concerned with a group of Vassar girls and how their lives progress. At the time of its publication its frank descriptions of sex, contraception and breast-feeding as they affected a group of eight female graduates in 1930s America caused such a scandal that the novel was banned in Australia as an offence to public morals. Norman Mailer dismissed The Group in the New York Review of Books as "a trivial lady writer's novel" Sue found it very interesting and was pleased that the women managed to steer their way through various male chauvinists.
Sue also read: ‘Black Diamonds: the Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty’ by Catherine Bailey.
This book tells the story of the Fitzwilliam family, owners of Wentworth House a huge house with 365 rooms and its 70 neighbouring coalfields in Yorkshire. But it is also the recounting of the ends of two classes, the lower and the very upper. The story of coal lies at its heart. It is very well researched drawing on documents and interviews with remaining members of the Wentworth family. It shows the enormous changes wrought over fifty years in the twentieth century Sue deemed it ‘history written in an accessible way making a very enjoyable read.’
Gaye Read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov – recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt – is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol.
Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely for having written a counter-revolutionary poem. (Penguin Books) Gaye said the book was written with the lightest of touches and the Count’s post-revolutionary life turns out to be much richer than the one he led before his arrest. Despite living in the hotel attic rather than a luxury suite, the count is convinced that “by the smallest of one’s actions one can restore some sense of order to the world.” His character, according to Gaye is optimistic and resilient. He loves the hotel and forms a family within it. Although there is a sense of isolation and grief in the novel, there are also absurd and comic moments.
Overall Gaye found it to be ‘fresh and unpredictable; beautiful and thoughtful. You could never tell what was coming and the ending is unexpected.’
Simon read: The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre (1945). This novel set in 1938, is informed by Sartre’s Existentialist philosophy of life, and recounts three days in the life of a philosophy teacher, Mathieu Delarue. Discovering his girlfriend is pregnant, Mathieu tries to raise money for an abortion. In the background of the novel is the Spanish Civil War (one of the options considered by Mathieu as a solution, i.e, joining up) and beyond that there is also a sense of the approach of WW2. The novel attempts to illustrate the existentialist notion of ultimate freedom showing how each of the characters make decisions. Each of them has some problem and Sartre shows how difficult it can be to take charge of one's own life -- to accept that one has the responsibilities that come with 'the age of reason” -- and none of his characters achieve this. The final sentence uttered by Mathieuto himself is “I have attained the age of reason.” The key message seems to be that people are ultimately all self-interested and that things are ultimately out of your control. Simon enjoyed the novel very much and would be interested to read the other two books in the trilogy.
Christine read: ‘Lullaby’ (‘Chanson Douce’) by Leila Slimane. (2017) Awarded the prestigious Prix Goncourt for this novel, its author has recently been appointed by French President Macron as his “personal representative to French-speaking countries.” Her job, essentially, is to burnish the image of the French language (and thus of France) abroad. She herself was born in Morocco and has dual French-Moroccan nationality although she says her family never truly espoused Moroccan values. They moved to France when she was six and later she studied Literature at Sciences Politiques in Paris. She worked as a journalist before reporting on Northern Africa and the Maghreb.
The novel relates the story of ‘a perfect nanny’ (coincidentally the name given the book in the US). Louise (named by Slimane after Louise Woodward who strangled one of her charges) is appointed by a professional Parisian couple to be nanny to their two small children. The novel begins with the infanticide of these children by Louise. Having got that shocking act out of the way, the story moves back in time in an attempt to explain how this came about.
Christine found it a gripping narrative, a sensitive exploration of current day socio-economic relations in the French capital touching on questions about motherhood, parenthood, social inequality, gentrification. Racism is also touched on: for example Louise, who is white, feels isolated in the parks of the arrondissment since most other carers are black. One idea surfaces strongly - the unknowability of other people. The fact that this confident, well-off Parisian couple have handed their most precious possessions, their children to someone who, although ‘the perfect nanny’ is a mentally unstable isolate, is shocking in itself. The story unfolds and we learn a little more about Louise’s background – none of it edifying, but none of it, in the light of the immaculate care she is providing for her charges, worrying. There is no satisfaction in the ending. Everyone remains mystified as to what has happened to provoke the opening act. Christine found this a haunting novel and would thoroughly recommend it for the way it penetrates the depths of human relationships and social values at the present time.
15th March, 2018

Present: Simon, Sue, Christine
Sue read: Winter’s Break by Bernard McLaverty. (See previous notes when Christine reported on this book.) Sue described this book as ‘a little gem’ – amusing and accessible. She also read A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson. This book incorporates the same characters as Life After Life which she recently brought to the group.
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson relates the life of Teddy Todd – would be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot husband, father, and grandfather – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have. The book flips backwards and forwards and this disrupting of chronology allows Atkinson to reveal her characters in glimpses over the course of the novel while withholding vital information that creates mysteries at the heart of the story. Sue felt that the key message from this book was that you cannot pass on your own life experiences to other people, including your children. She found it very amusing but was struck by the poignancy of everyone’s lives.
Simon read: Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: This novel tells the story of Prince Dimitri Nekhlyudov who finds himself on the jury of a murder trial. The young female defendant is his two aunts former companion whom he made pregnant. Prince Dimitri feels responsible for the young woman’s situation and tries to redress things. She is sentenced to be sent to a penal colony in Siberia and prior to this, driven by guilt, he visits her in prison where he asks her to marry him and promises to follow her. She refuses his offer saying "You had your pleasure from me in this world, and now you want to get your salvation through me in the world to come!" His journey to Siberia sees him staying in hotels while the prisoners are forced to build rudimentary camps. The book explores social issues such as the deep inequalities in Russian society and also gives clear descriptions of appalling prison conditions and the dreadful marches to penal colonies. "All this happened," Nekhlyudov says to himself, "because all these people... consider that there are circumstances in this world when man owes no humanity to man." He believes that the truth of the penal system is that it corrects evil by being evil. Simon couldn’t put this novel (Tolstoy’s final) down. It was criticized for its outspokenness at the time but is now recognized as a great novel.
Christine read: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. This book has been topping the charts for its poignant account of the loneliness of the central character. It is a first person narrative which gives intimate details of the Eleanor’s view of life – very jaundiced and critical but equally braves as she finds strategies for coping with her lonely existence. However, a developing relationship with a genuinely kind, geeky young man from her place of work gives the opportunity for the reader to understand how she has come to be the person she is. Although set in Glasgow, a sense of place is not key to the novel, and what you do get is a detailed account of pretty much any city and suburban environment in the British Isles. Christine said that she began to get fed up with the unreliable narrator that Eleanor is but despite this she found it a compulsive read.
Christine also read: Exit West by Mohsin Mohamid. She found this book gripping but in very different ways to the last one. It tells of the journey of a young couple, much in love, from a war-torn country – a thinly disguised Syria, to the Greek Island of Mykonos and from there to England and finally San Francisco. If Eleanor Oliphant gives the reader endless detail about daily life, Exit West is sparse in detail, choosing to concentrate more on the emotional experiences of migrants and the tensions inherent in moving from country to country. There is an element of magic realism in the narrative – you are rarely told exactly how their journey unfolds but the metaphor of a ‘door’ is used to indicate the passage from one country to another. It also has an element of fantasy about it, seemingly set in a future which may or may not be far away. Mohamid’s central thesis is that migration is common to all human life, whether it be the exodus of whole populations from one country to another, or the concept of migration from one phase of life to another. Christine was very impressed by this novel, finding it very moving and cleverly managing to achieve this without graphic detail. It forces you to revisit the notion of immigration in a new way.
Sue read: Winter’s Break by Bernard McLaverty. (See previous notes when Christine reported on this book.) Sue described this book as ‘a little gem’ – amusing and accessible. She also read A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson. This book incorporates the same characters as Life After Life which she recently brought to the group.
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson relates the life of Teddy Todd – would be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot husband, father, and grandfather – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have. The book flips backwards and forwards and this disrupting of chronology allows Atkinson to reveal her characters in glimpses over the course of the novel while withholding vital information that creates mysteries at the heart of the story. Sue felt that the key message from this book was that you cannot pass on your own life experiences to other people, including your children. She found it very amusing but was struck by the poignancy of everyone’s lives.
Simon read: Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: This novel tells the story of Prince Dimitri Nekhlyudov who finds himself on the jury of a murder trial. The young female defendant is his two aunts former companion whom he made pregnant. Prince Dimitri feels responsible for the young woman’s situation and tries to redress things. She is sentenced to be sent to a penal colony in Siberia and prior to this, driven by guilt, he visits her in prison where he asks her to marry him and promises to follow her. She refuses his offer saying "You had your pleasure from me in this world, and now you want to get your salvation through me in the world to come!" His journey to Siberia sees him staying in hotels while the prisoners are forced to build rudimentary camps. The book explores social issues such as the deep inequalities in Russian society and also gives clear descriptions of appalling prison conditions and the dreadful marches to penal colonies. "All this happened," Nekhlyudov says to himself, "because all these people... consider that there are circumstances in this world when man owes no humanity to man." He believes that the truth of the penal system is that it corrects evil by being evil. Simon couldn’t put this novel (Tolstoy’s final) down. It was criticized for its outspokenness at the time but is now recognized as a great novel.
Christine read: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. This book has been topping the charts for its poignant account of the loneliness of the central character. It is a first person narrative which gives intimate details of the Eleanor’s view of life – very jaundiced and critical but equally braves as she finds strategies for coping with her lonely existence. However, a developing relationship with a genuinely kind, geeky young man from her place of work gives the opportunity for the reader to understand how she has come to be the person she is. Although set in Glasgow, a sense of place is not key to the novel, and what you do get is a detailed account of pretty much any city and suburban environment in the British Isles. Christine said that she began to get fed up with the unreliable narrator that Eleanor is but despite this she found it a compulsive read.
Christine also read: Exit West by Mohsin Mohamid. She found this book gripping but in very different ways to the last one. It tells of the journey of a young couple, much in love, from a war-torn country – a thinly disguised Syria, to the Greek Island of Mykonos and from there to England and finally San Francisco. If Eleanor Oliphant gives the reader endless detail about daily life, Exit West is sparse in detail, choosing to concentrate more on the emotional experiences of migrants and the tensions inherent in moving from country to country. There is an element of magic realism in the narrative – you are rarely told exactly how their journey unfolds but the metaphor of a ‘door’ is used to indicate the passage from one country to another. It also has an element of fantasy about it, seemingly set in a future which may or may not be far away. Mohamid’s central thesis is that migration is common to all human life, whether it be the exodus of whole populations from one country to another, or the concept of migration from one phase of life to another. Christine was very impressed by this novel, finding it very moving and cleverly managing to achieve this without graphic detail. It forces you to revisit the notion of immigration in a new way.
18th January 2018
Present: Denise, Simon, Sue, Christine
Sue read: Frost in May by Antonia White
This was the first ever Virago Modern Classic and was first published in 1933. It is the loosely fictionalised version of Antonia White’s boarding school period and reveals the implications of inflicting a strict religious regime on young children. Antonia was 10 years old at the time. It’s the first in a quartet covering her life. Frost in May shows how Antonia’s autonomy is stripped away by the dogma of the Roman Catholic church. Sue found it compelling. She also enjoyed the other three books: The Lost Traveller, her second novel which was published in 1950 and is about her relationship with her mother and father; The Sugar House, about her first unconsummated marriage; and Beyond the Glass, about an intense love-affair followed by a breakdown, which is vividly described. The four novels together narrate her life from ages 9 to 23.
Sue also read Hot Milk by Deborah Levy which she found ‘just pontification’. It tells the story of a hypochondriac mother and her daughter. Although it was interesting on the subject of relationships between daughters and mothers, Sue felt little emotional engagement with the characters, especially the daughter Sofia who drifts through life struggling to find out what her ‘independence’ might mean.
Simon read: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (2015)
This novel is about collective memory and how societies cope with traumatic events, a theme Ishiguro has written about before. It was inspired by Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and is set in post-Arthurian Britain. There are two main characters, Axel and Beatrice, who, following a massacre by the Saxons, forget what has happened to them. They then remember that their son died. They seem to be the perfect couple but Beatrice is having an affair and things aren’t great. Simon felt that the dialogue is well written and he was caught up with it, but was frustrated by the ending.
Denise read: Dawn of the New Everything by Jaron Lanier (2017)
This is a memoir set mainly in the mid-sixties. Lanier was a gifted child whose mother, having survived a concentration camp, and made a fortune on the NY stock exchange remotely from the family home in New Mexico, bought a VW and was killed in a crash due to a mechanical fault in the model. Jaron was only 10 at the time. There were many unhappy events in his and his father’s lives: Lanier suffered from antisemitic bullying from neighbours and classmates. Their home was burned down in an arson attack, the pair lived in a tent until Lanier’s father, a teacher, suggested his 13-year-old son design a home for them both to live in. The boy opted for a series of bra-like dome structures, which father and son built together. Lanier’s father there for 30 years, long after his son had left. Eventually Jaron enrolled at the University of New Mexico and was successful as a computer scientist particular in video games and was in at the birth of Virtual Reality. Denise found the book fascinating and beautifully written.
Christine continued reading The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper which she started as a Twitter group read before Christmas but she is unsure whether she will finish it. As fantasy she feels it falls far short of work by her favourite fantasy author, Philip Pulman and she is currently re-reading his Dark Materials trilogy. She is on the second volume, The Subtle Knife and enjoying it greatly, especially the fact that he doesn’t shy away from presenting children with difficult concepts. She is also reading Into The Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them by John Yorke, a well-known script-writer, particularly in television but also film. In it he reveals that there truly is a unifying shape to narrative forms - one that echoes the fairytale journey into the woods and, like any great art, comes from deep within. She’ll talk about this next time.
Sue read: Frost in May by Antonia White
This was the first ever Virago Modern Classic and was first published in 1933. It is the loosely fictionalised version of Antonia White’s boarding school period and reveals the implications of inflicting a strict religious regime on young children. Antonia was 10 years old at the time. It’s the first in a quartet covering her life. Frost in May shows how Antonia’s autonomy is stripped away by the dogma of the Roman Catholic church. Sue found it compelling. She also enjoyed the other three books: The Lost Traveller, her second novel which was published in 1950 and is about her relationship with her mother and father; The Sugar House, about her first unconsummated marriage; and Beyond the Glass, about an intense love-affair followed by a breakdown, which is vividly described. The four novels together narrate her life from ages 9 to 23.
Sue also read Hot Milk by Deborah Levy which she found ‘just pontification’. It tells the story of a hypochondriac mother and her daughter. Although it was interesting on the subject of relationships between daughters and mothers, Sue felt little emotional engagement with the characters, especially the daughter Sofia who drifts through life struggling to find out what her ‘independence’ might mean.
Simon read: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (2015)
This novel is about collective memory and how societies cope with traumatic events, a theme Ishiguro has written about before. It was inspired by Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and is set in post-Arthurian Britain. There are two main characters, Axel and Beatrice, who, following a massacre by the Saxons, forget what has happened to them. They then remember that their son died. They seem to be the perfect couple but Beatrice is having an affair and things aren’t great. Simon felt that the dialogue is well written and he was caught up with it, but was frustrated by the ending.
Denise read: Dawn of the New Everything by Jaron Lanier (2017)
This is a memoir set mainly in the mid-sixties. Lanier was a gifted child whose mother, having survived a concentration camp, and made a fortune on the NY stock exchange remotely from the family home in New Mexico, bought a VW and was killed in a crash due to a mechanical fault in the model. Jaron was only 10 at the time. There were many unhappy events in his and his father’s lives: Lanier suffered from antisemitic bullying from neighbours and classmates. Their home was burned down in an arson attack, the pair lived in a tent until Lanier’s father, a teacher, suggested his 13-year-old son design a home for them both to live in. The boy opted for a series of bra-like dome structures, which father and son built together. Lanier’s father there for 30 years, long after his son had left. Eventually Jaron enrolled at the University of New Mexico and was successful as a computer scientist particular in video games and was in at the birth of Virtual Reality. Denise found the book fascinating and beautifully written.
Christine continued reading The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper which she started as a Twitter group read before Christmas but she is unsure whether she will finish it. As fantasy she feels it falls far short of work by her favourite fantasy author, Philip Pulman and she is currently re-reading his Dark Materials trilogy. She is on the second volume, The Subtle Knife and enjoying it greatly, especially the fact that he doesn’t shy away from presenting children with difficult concepts. She is also reading Into The Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them by John Yorke, a well-known script-writer, particularly in television but also film. In it he reveals that there truly is a unifying shape to narrative forms - one that echoes the fairytale journey into the woods and, like any great art, comes from deep within. She’ll talk about this next time.
21st December 2017
Present: Di, Denise, Christine, Simon
A small but select group (some of us undone by the ‘flu, some busyness) met to celebrate the festive season and these are the books we read:
Simon read: The Trespasser by D H Lawrence
Lawrence’s second novel and based on the diary of his friend Helen Corke, this is the story of Sigmund, a musician, who goes to the Isle of Wight for a week with his lover, Helena. Their week away provides an intense emotional experience which culminates in Sigmund recognizing the impossibility of him ever leaving his wife and family for Helena, and the tragic outcome, i.e. his suicide. Simon liked the descriptive passages in the novel.
Denise read: The Outsider by: My Life in Intrigue by Frederick Forsyth
This book is the autobiography of Frederick Forsyth, perhaps best known for his novel ‘The Day of the Jackal’ a thriller abou tthe plotting of the assassination of Charles de Gaulle. To quote from the book:
‘During the course of my life, I’ve barely escaped the wrath of an arms dealer in Hamburg, been strafed by a MiG during the Nigerian civil war, and landed during a bloody coup in Guinea-Bissau. The Stasi arrested me, the Israelis regaled me, the IRA prompted a quick move from Ireland to England, and a certain attractive Czech secret police agent – well, her actions were a bit more intimate. And that’s just for starters.’
Denise enjoyed his account of an exciting life which started as a pilot and concluded with the writing of thirteen bestselling thrillers.
Di read: Elizabeth Is Missing by by Emma Healey
This is the much trumpeted debut novel of Emma Healey of which the first person narrator, Maud, is a nearly ninety year old woman with Alzheimers (or just senility – it is never made clear.) The Elizabeth in question is Maud’s friend and she has discovered the remains remains of a compact mirror which she recognizes from 70 years ago in her friend’s garden. The narrative moves between the present day and the post war period.
The book was described by Viv Groskop, The Guardian reviewer, as being ‘a novel for readers who love unreliable narrators instead of being infuriated by them’; ‘not quite crime, not quite literary fiction.’
Christine read: Northern Lights by Philip Pullman and is reading ‘The Dark is Rising’ by Susan Cooper
Following The Book of Dust which Christine read last month, she felt compelled to return to the His Dark Materials trilogy and read again book 1: Northern Lights. She loves Pullman’s work for his willingness to expose older children to complex philosophical ideas. In The Book of Dust Lyra, his heroine is only a baby so Christine enjoyed returning to the older Lyra as she fights Mrs Coulter (her mother), polar bears, and encounters witches.
Christine had also begun to read The Dark is Rising a children’s novel published in 1973. This read is part of a Twitter global book group promoted by the writer Robert Macfarlane best known for his works on the British landscape. The novel is reckoned to be a cult classic but Christine hadn’t heard of it. It is set on Midwinter’s Eve and so is very appropriate for the time of year. She’ll say more next session.
Christine Roberts
A small but select group (some of us undone by the ‘flu, some busyness) met to celebrate the festive season and these are the books we read:
Simon read: The Trespasser by D H Lawrence
Lawrence’s second novel and based on the diary of his friend Helen Corke, this is the story of Sigmund, a musician, who goes to the Isle of Wight for a week with his lover, Helena. Their week away provides an intense emotional experience which culminates in Sigmund recognizing the impossibility of him ever leaving his wife and family for Helena, and the tragic outcome, i.e. his suicide. Simon liked the descriptive passages in the novel.
Denise read: The Outsider by: My Life in Intrigue by Frederick Forsyth
This book is the autobiography of Frederick Forsyth, perhaps best known for his novel ‘The Day of the Jackal’ a thriller abou tthe plotting of the assassination of Charles de Gaulle. To quote from the book:
‘During the course of my life, I’ve barely escaped the wrath of an arms dealer in Hamburg, been strafed by a MiG during the Nigerian civil war, and landed during a bloody coup in Guinea-Bissau. The Stasi arrested me, the Israelis regaled me, the IRA prompted a quick move from Ireland to England, and a certain attractive Czech secret police agent – well, her actions were a bit more intimate. And that’s just for starters.’
Denise enjoyed his account of an exciting life which started as a pilot and concluded with the writing of thirteen bestselling thrillers.
Di read: Elizabeth Is Missing by by Emma Healey
This is the much trumpeted debut novel of Emma Healey of which the first person narrator, Maud, is a nearly ninety year old woman with Alzheimers (or just senility – it is never made clear.) The Elizabeth in question is Maud’s friend and she has discovered the remains remains of a compact mirror which she recognizes from 70 years ago in her friend’s garden. The narrative moves between the present day and the post war period.
The book was described by Viv Groskop, The Guardian reviewer, as being ‘a novel for readers who love unreliable narrators instead of being infuriated by them’; ‘not quite crime, not quite literary fiction.’
Christine read: Northern Lights by Philip Pullman and is reading ‘The Dark is Rising’ by Susan Cooper
Following The Book of Dust which Christine read last month, she felt compelled to return to the His Dark Materials trilogy and read again book 1: Northern Lights. She loves Pullman’s work for his willingness to expose older children to complex philosophical ideas. In The Book of Dust Lyra, his heroine is only a baby so Christine enjoyed returning to the older Lyra as she fights Mrs Coulter (her mother), polar bears, and encounters witches.
Christine had also begun to read The Dark is Rising a children’s novel published in 1973. This read is part of a Twitter global book group promoted by the writer Robert Macfarlane best known for his works on the British landscape. The novel is reckoned to be a cult classic but Christine hadn’t heard of it. It is set on Midwinter’s Eve and so is very appropriate for the time of year. She’ll say more next session.
Christine Roberts
28th September 2017
1. Denise read Your Life in My Hands by Rachel Clarke.
This is an account of being a junior doctor in Britain at the present time. The author makes a clear case for the current dispute not being about money but about the impossibility of doing the job safely and putting the patient’s best interest first.
Rachel Clarke is currently a NHS doctor working in palliative care. She was a former journalist producing current affairs documentaries about subjects as diverse as the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Al Qaeda and the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She retrained as a doctor in her late twenties, graduating in 2009.
Denise felt the book was a little on the long side but would definitely recommend it for the insights it gives into the NHS today at a time of crisis. The writer was a former journalist and the book is very readable if worrying.
2. Simon read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Not to be confused with H G Wells’ novel The Invisible Man, this is a novel, published in 1952, about an African-American which addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans early in the twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953. The protagonist lives in a basement wired with 1369 light bulbs. He explains that light is an intellectual necessity for him since "the truth is the light and light is the truth."
Simon found it an interesting account of racism in the mid-twentieth century which has important resonances today. It has become a classic and remains widely read.
4. Simon also read The Whirlpool by George Gissing
Gissing wrote this book to stave off desperate poverty. He was the best friend of H G Wells and was much influenced by Dickens and Zola. It is about a couple of who struggle to lead a meaningful life in a society of remorseless faithlessness and social snobbery. A key figure in the book is Alma Rolfe, torn between an idyll of rural domesticity and her career in London as a musician. For the characters everything in the story goes horribly wrong. It has much to say about the status of women and wives. Simon felt it was ‘a real page-turner.’
5. Christine read The Shape of Water by Andrea Camillieri.
This is the first of the Inspector Montalbano series of crime novels. Christine is a fan of the television series and was new to the novels. She found it very entertaining. The central character is very much the one we know from the TV series and what is hinted at there is more deeply probed in the book. Inspector Montalbano struggles at times to cope with the idiocy of others but ultimately never deflects from his deep humanism and desire for justice. Not a particularly deep read however, but unexpectedly witty and with great characterisation.
6. Christine also read L’Etranger by Albert Camus.
This slim existentialist novel was written in the late 1940s. Camus rejected the term ‘Existentialist’ but it is also considered as representative of the absurd and ‘Kafkaesque’. However, you read it, it is a challenging book presenting us with a protagonist who appears not to show any real love for his fellow humans, including his mother whose death begins the book. However, it is hard not to feel some sympathy for Meursault even though he does commit a murder. He finds it hard to accept the society in which he lives and there are occasional flashes of real sensitivity which sustain your feeling for him as he encounters the workings of the law. Of course you don’t condone his actions but ultimately feel for him as a human being living a particularly bureaucratic and unequal society.
7. Sue read A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale
Sue feels that Gale’s books are always ‘a good read’. As well as being a novelist, he is also known as the writer of the television series ‘Man in an Orange Shirt. This book was short-listed for the Costa Prize in 2015.
Gale often explores the theme of homosexuality and this book is about a young gay man, Harry Cane, who, orphaned with his brother, is led into marrying a young woman. It’s set in the early part of the 20th century. When his sexual orientation is discovered is he forced by his wife’s family to leave his marriage and emigrate to Canada. Winter is a real place in Saskatchewan and the novel tells of his life there having obtained a parcel of land. He falls in with a bad lot personified in the character of Troels Monck and continues to be afflicted by his sexuality and the problems arising from his expression of it. He experiences many events, incarceration in a mental institution, war, flu epidemic etc. The book does not offer resolution but does give a voice to a man who lives with shame.
8. Sue also read Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust.
This is the first volume in the trilogy A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu. (Remembrance Of Things Past.) This volume deals with the story of Charles Swann's (the narrator) love affair with the courtesan Odette de Crécy. He offers ‘a panorama of Parisian life at a time of immense social upheaval, with the aristocracy ceding power to the newly-rich middle class, and an intimate study of a man as he moves from a privileged childhood to a disillusioned middle age.’ (Michael Arditti: The Independent). Sue was interested in the character of Odette who is bisexual. She was also interested in the way the past is explores. Swann is an observer who is obsessed by Odette but doesn’t really live a full life.
Christine Roberts
This is an account of being a junior doctor in Britain at the present time. The author makes a clear case for the current dispute not being about money but about the impossibility of doing the job safely and putting the patient’s best interest first.
Rachel Clarke is currently a NHS doctor working in palliative care. She was a former journalist producing current affairs documentaries about subjects as diverse as the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Al Qaeda and the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She retrained as a doctor in her late twenties, graduating in 2009.
Denise felt the book was a little on the long side but would definitely recommend it for the insights it gives into the NHS today at a time of crisis. The writer was a former journalist and the book is very readable if worrying.
2. Simon read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Not to be confused with H G Wells’ novel The Invisible Man, this is a novel, published in 1952, about an African-American which addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans early in the twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953. The protagonist lives in a basement wired with 1369 light bulbs. He explains that light is an intellectual necessity for him since "the truth is the light and light is the truth."
Simon found it an interesting account of racism in the mid-twentieth century which has important resonances today. It has become a classic and remains widely read.
4. Simon also read The Whirlpool by George Gissing
Gissing wrote this book to stave off desperate poverty. He was the best friend of H G Wells and was much influenced by Dickens and Zola. It is about a couple of who struggle to lead a meaningful life in a society of remorseless faithlessness and social snobbery. A key figure in the book is Alma Rolfe, torn between an idyll of rural domesticity and her career in London as a musician. For the characters everything in the story goes horribly wrong. It has much to say about the status of women and wives. Simon felt it was ‘a real page-turner.’
5. Christine read The Shape of Water by Andrea Camillieri.
This is the first of the Inspector Montalbano series of crime novels. Christine is a fan of the television series and was new to the novels. She found it very entertaining. The central character is very much the one we know from the TV series and what is hinted at there is more deeply probed in the book. Inspector Montalbano struggles at times to cope with the idiocy of others but ultimately never deflects from his deep humanism and desire for justice. Not a particularly deep read however, but unexpectedly witty and with great characterisation.
6. Christine also read L’Etranger by Albert Camus.
This slim existentialist novel was written in the late 1940s. Camus rejected the term ‘Existentialist’ but it is also considered as representative of the absurd and ‘Kafkaesque’. However, you read it, it is a challenging book presenting us with a protagonist who appears not to show any real love for his fellow humans, including his mother whose death begins the book. However, it is hard not to feel some sympathy for Meursault even though he does commit a murder. He finds it hard to accept the society in which he lives and there are occasional flashes of real sensitivity which sustain your feeling for him as he encounters the workings of the law. Of course you don’t condone his actions but ultimately feel for him as a human being living a particularly bureaucratic and unequal society.
7. Sue read A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale
Sue feels that Gale’s books are always ‘a good read’. As well as being a novelist, he is also known as the writer of the television series ‘Man in an Orange Shirt. This book was short-listed for the Costa Prize in 2015.
Gale often explores the theme of homosexuality and this book is about a young gay man, Harry Cane, who, orphaned with his brother, is led into marrying a young woman. It’s set in the early part of the 20th century. When his sexual orientation is discovered is he forced by his wife’s family to leave his marriage and emigrate to Canada. Winter is a real place in Saskatchewan and the novel tells of his life there having obtained a parcel of land. He falls in with a bad lot personified in the character of Troels Monck and continues to be afflicted by his sexuality and the problems arising from his expression of it. He experiences many events, incarceration in a mental institution, war, flu epidemic etc. The book does not offer resolution but does give a voice to a man who lives with shame.
8. Sue also read Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust.
This is the first volume in the trilogy A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu. (Remembrance Of Things Past.) This volume deals with the story of Charles Swann's (the narrator) love affair with the courtesan Odette de Crécy. He offers ‘a panorama of Parisian life at a time of immense social upheaval, with the aristocracy ceding power to the newly-rich middle class, and an intimate study of a man as he moves from a privileged childhood to a disillusioned middle age.’ (Michael Arditti: The Independent). Sue was interested in the character of Odette who is bisexual. She was also interested in the way the past is explores. Swann is an observer who is obsessed by Odette but doesn’t really live a full life.
Christine Roberts