The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Ummm, a difficult book to review, it's slow, restrained and vast - covering a startling period of recent American history - the McCarthy era.  Slowly through the recovered notebooks and snippets of newspapers horded in a bank depositary, Violet Brown,  Harrison William Shepherd's personal assistant pieces together his life. The book we read today, Brown reveals, was assembled by herself in 1959 from Shepherd’s junked notebooks and sealed for 50 years, to be opened in 2009 :  from his early years on the island of Isla Pixol with his flighty Mexican mother.  Through serendipitous happenings Will,  finds his way into the life and happenings of the Khalo/Rivera household, viewing and possibly involved in Trotsky's death.  Will moves to the US, where he keeps to the background, writing observing and commentating while slowly the omnipresent feeling of surveillance, how a word or writing perceived to be 'Un-American' could land you in trouble, despite being so careful the unassuming and quiet Will finds himself at the wrong end of the FBI/McCarthy inquisition.  

An interesting book that easily takes you through the recent history of Mexico and America, mixing fact with fiction.  Not a book to flick through it needed concentration.

Words used to describe it:  nicely crafted, little drama, good descriptions, fascinating
Marks out of 10:  between 6 & 8

Next Book

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Next Meeting

Wednesday 6th January

130 Harbord St

How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran

"After all, how often do we get to hear the inner voice of a fat, funny, literate, working-class teenager from Wolverhampton? Quite." Barbara Ellen - The Guardian

Caitlin Moran has written a humorous coming of age novel, loosely based on her own life of a clever girl who took the chances that her writing offered her to make a life writing about music.  Lose her virginity and transform her perception of herself. With panache and verve she slides through the 80's music scene, London a young girl finding out about herself.  It is crude, it is brash, it is fun.  Moran has a wonderful turn of phrase and use of language.

“Self-harm - the world will come at you with knives anyway. You do not need to beat them to it.”

 “Because I am still learning to walk and talk, and it is a million times easier to be cynical and wield a sword, than it is to be open-hearted and stand there, holding a balloon and a birthday cake, with the infinite potential to look foolish.” 

 “Here’s the amazing thing about sex: you get a whole person to yourself, for the first time since you were a baby. Someone who is looking at you—just you—and thinking about you, and wanting you, and you haven’t even had to lie at the bottom of the stairs and pretend you’re dead to get them to do it.” 

 “I speculate, briefly, on how different the world would be if it were run by women. In that world, if you were a lonely, horny woman - as I am. As I always am- you'd see Blu-tacked postcards by Soho doorways that read 'Nice man in cardigan, 24, will talk to you about The Smiths whilst making you cheese-on-toast+come to parties with you. Apply within'.”

This book generated quite disparate views, some loved its rawness, some disliked its aggressive language, its no nonsense - in your face - take it or leave it - fuck you attitude - and some loved that! 

Marks out of 10:  between 6 & 8

Words used to describe it:  
aggressively teenager, great wordsmith, rude, blatant, liberating.

Next book

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Next Meeting 

Tuesday 17th November

117 Harbord St

The Rosie Project: Don Tillman 1 by Graeme Simsion

Don Tillman, 39, tall, intelligent and employed: "Logically I should be attractive to a wide range of women" (His words) and is an undiagnosed Asperger's type who Simsion uses to explore how a grown autistic man might approach a romantic relationship.  The Wife Project comes out of his perceived need for a wife, and who might be appropriate, to do this he (Don) draws up a tick box questionnaire of necessary or desirable and, as far as he is concerned, undesirable traits (smoking, overweight, vegetarian etc).  This light book deftly illustrates the difficulties one can get into if you cannot see the 'grey' in the world.  If your life is run along dogmatic lines according to the society as you understand it, then trying to navigate friendship and love is obviously difficult.  Life is negotiation, compromise and full of grey areas, which if you don't see them, understand them or are unable to compromise makes for awkward and 'interesting' situations.  Rosie is obviously not appropriate and yet love happens.  Don's two friends Gene and Claudia humanise him and add texture to what could be a one dimensional character. 

Words used to describe it:
Scintillating, different, uplifting, charming, amusing, illuminating

Marks out of 10 between 6 - 8.5

Pauline has read the next book in the series The Rosie Effect and recommends it, thought it even more enjoyable than the first one!

Next Meeting

72 Kingwood Road

Date

Friday 16th October

Next Book 

I have arbitrarily changed the book, as I wanted to read

How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran

Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge

An incisive and stiletto cruel look at a mundane life of a middle manger and his mistress's life, made absurd when robbers burst in on their oh so twee dinner party.  With clever dialogue and sharp observations, Ms Bainbridge manages to bring out the ridiculousness of people and their attitudes and and the social mores that mean so much to some.  Alma the drunk neighbour acts as the catalyst, bringing the other protaganists thoughts to the fore.  None of the charcaters were likeable although there was a harsh black humor in the writing.  There was a play like feel about the story, with well drawn characters, placed in their grey 1970's homes, with all the awfulness of class distinctions being laid bare.  

Words used to describe it:  suprisingly good ending, abrupt ending, good begining - muddled middle - frenetic end, rape scene shockingly graphic, vivid

Marks out of 10:  between 6 - 8

Next Book

The Rosie Project: Don Tilman 1 by Grahme Simison

Next Meeting

126 Harbord St

Friday 18th September

A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore

Another book I hadn't finished by the time of the meeting, but I have finished it now.  A Gothic novel if ever there was one!  The children Rob and Cathy, grow up in their Grandfather's house, their mother having abandoned them to live in France and their father incarcerated in an asylum.  The sore of their mothers abandonment never heals.  Cath and Rob live a cloistered and dysfunctional life in their Grandfathers large country house,  find their love for each other and their need for comfort moves from sibling to lovers.  The novel twists and turns with elegant descriptions of melancholic decaying life in a large house in interwar Britain.  Lacking a character that you could sympathise with, this cold novel fails to engage the reader (my interpretation), although the descriptive prose is in places poetic in its elegance.

Words used to describe it:
great descriptive prose, ultimately unsatisfying, self obsessed, vivid descriptions, lacking resolution, vignettes and no story

Marks out of 10:

between 4 & 8

Next Book

Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge (Maire)

Next Meeting

11 August at 128 Harbord St

Subsequent meetings:

Sept Oxford Road - Carolyn

Oct Harbord St - Rowena

Nov Kingwood Rd - Olivia

Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim

A hidden gem of a book!   Lucy Entwhistle young, naive, hopelessly trusting and recently bereaved of her beloved father, finds comfort in the organising, overbearing recently windowed Everard Wemyss.  This clever careful tale becomes a black comedy as the character of Wemyss develops and we come to understand that Vera (Wemyss's first wife) may have decided that suicide by falling from a window was preferable to life with Wemyss.  This is slowly revealed in intimate detail as the story progresses and Wemyss's character is unveiled in all its awfulness.  A delicious book, which illustrates the lack of power and advocacy women had over their own lives at the turn of the 20th C, either being under the aegis of their father, then their husband.

This book is suppose to have been a reflection of Elizabeth's own disastrous second marriage to Earl Russell and clearly influenced Daphne du Maurier and her writing of Rebecca.

The story provoked a good discussion about the place of women, how things have changed, the lack of influence and the wonderful dialogue of the Aunt with her great lines.  Many concidered it would make a great play.  Although some members thought Lucy vapid, she was really just a conduit for the bully Wemyss to play out his OCD, narcissistic tendencies!

Words used to describe it:

Charming, a discovery, looking forward to reading it (you must Alison) engaging, enchanting, wanted more, must read

Marks out of 10 - all 9's

Next book

The Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore

Next meeting

115 Harbord St

9th July

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey

This book isn't called an American Classic for nothing!  We all thought we knew the story, having either read or seen the movie many years ago, but reading it again you realise what a good book it is and why.  
Randle McMurphy arrives at Pendleton Mental Institution, Oregon from prison, relived as his days of hard labour are over, not appreciating  that now he has no date for release and he could be incarcerated indefinitely under the 'care' of the tyrant Nurse.  Nurse is the main character in this book.  McMurphy subverts and undermines her cruel, inhumane and psychotic authority bringing life, laughter and a reason to live into the lives of the inmates of the asylum.  It doesn't end happily.  It is a discourse on Big Brother, the affect of an omnipresent and autocratic government and the state of mental health treatment in the US in the 60/70's on people and a not so subtle elegy to the human spirit.

Words used to describe it:
mind fuck, captivation, chilling, excellent

Marks out of 10 between 8 and one 10!

Next Book

Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim

Next Meeting 

28th May 

at 

117 Harbord St

Wonder by RJ Palacio

Wow, those who didn't come last week missed a good one - 5 star recommendation to Olivia's Guinness Cake!  Superb, delicious, divine - if we get cake like that each time, I vote we have it at Olivia's more often!  
When we reviewed this book I hadn't finished reading it so couldn't participate in the discussion - I've now read it so will!

Albert Pullman - known as Aggie, is the hero of the story.  What makes him different is his hideous facial abnormality caused by a gene defect.   As even he says  "I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse." After many operations he still looks freakish.  The book describes peoples reactions to him, or rather how he looks not his personality which is charming and intelligent. It skillfully shows how little actions of adults hurt more than the direct reactions of children.  Using first person narratives from friends and family the book describes Aggie's 5 year at a private school, from different perspectives,  after being previously home schooled.  How the children react, how the head master sensitively and adroitly deals with the issues that rise, illustrating how it affects his sister Via, who lives almost entirely in his shadow, lost amongst the clamor of Aggie's issues.  A clever book that manages a complex subject in simple language appropriate for the age group it's aimed at.

Our discussion centered around the the various points of view.  Some felt it rather 'trite' and too simplistic, the advice from his teacher "When given the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind." – Dr. Wayne Dyer, we thought was perhaps too banal - should you lie to be kind?  The chapter with no punctuation or capitals some found difficult to read. 

Words used to describe it:

simplistic, nothing profound, made me feel kinder, innocent, slightly predictable, sweet

We marked this book twice: 
as adults  between 5 - 7 
If we were marking it as young adults between 6 - 8

Next book

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest

by Ken Kesey

Next Meeting

23 April at 130 Harbord St

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The autobiography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a harsh evocative story which illustrates her life from her Somalian childhood, to restrictive youth in Mecca, Saudia Arabia, to Kenyan and then escape to Holland. Clearly describing her life of beatings, harsh mutilation, devout believer, escape from a forced marriage and asylum in the Netherlands, education and her political awakening and doubts and changes in her faith.  As an insight into the restrictive life of one brought up within the constraints of Islam as practiced in parts of Africa and Arabia it was illuminative.  

A fascinating  book illustrating a woman's life and a window into the life of someone who had considered the faith of her birth as omnipotent and  then through life and education changed her outlook and perception completely.  For many of us it was not the harshness of her life which shocked us but the perceptions, ignorance and prejudices shown that we found most 'interesting/horrifying'.  We were all glad that we had read it and the debate was extensive.

Words used to describe it:  fascinating, enlightening, eye opening, informative
Marks out of 10:  8 across the board!  That's a first.

Next book

Wonder by RJ Palaccio

Next Meeting 

Change of date now Thursday 19th March 

at  72 Kingwood Road

Germania by Simon Winder

Ummm this is a difficult book to review, it's not a novel with a story to to be picked to pieces - it's a personal romp through the history of Germany - as its borders fluctuate, shrinking and expanding with the personal ambitions of which ever principality is in ascendancy.  A book to dip into rather than read in one 'Volleri betreiben' session.  Full of information and richly detailed , the authors enjoyment of the country, its museums and the history came through.  I found that it has helped with my very vague knowledge of the hinterland of Europe and how these countries have waxed and waned over the centuries.  
The book generated a good discussion about European history and our lack of knowledge. Some found the book too dense and a difficult read.

Words used to describe it:  detailed, impenetrable, dry, dense, starts well, difficult, witty to begin with
Marks out of 10 - between 2 - 5

Next book

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Next meeting

Thursday 19 February 

at

72 Kingwood Road 

March meeting at Cindy's

April meeting at Mandy Y