All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville West

Running on from A Handmaid's Tale, this book is a nice counter point  of a woman bound by convention, who on the death of her conservative husband begins to live the life she had always wanted, much to the horror of her 'awfully' conservative humdrum children.  A break of the social bonds and conventions.  It is a book with subtle comedic play of the characters, the sly digs at the social mores of the time and the affect that money or the thought of inheritance can engender in a family  makes for an entertaining read.  

Words used to describe it:  elegiac, comedic, self absorbed, unexpected, fabulous
Marks out of 10:  between 5 - 8 (mostly 8)

Next book

Berlin Poplars by Anne B Rogde

Next Event

Friday 15th December  - Book Club Christmas Do 

Details TBC

Next Meeting

Saturday 13th January

A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Set in the near future this book is the antipathy of The Power, in this book a Christian theonamy has overthrown the democratic system in America, subjugating women to misogyny in a patriarchal society where individualism and independence are crushed.  Class is denoted in the colour of your clothes and the 'job' that is subscribed to you.  Ofred, the protagonist of the story is a Handmaid, a woman designated as a chattel for the baring of children for the elite of the new order.  Fertility is declining and this orchestrated way of increasing birth rates of the 'right kind' of people is also a way of subjugating women.  

Someone said that all of the instruments of torture, with holding of rights, subjugation that Atwood uses in the novel have all been used in the last 150 years by different regimes.  Nothing was fiction in that regard.  Something to ponder on - nothing we currently enjoy is forever, and we must be vigilant with regards to changes of our democracy's.  This book generated a great discussion especially when compared with The Power.

Words used to describe it:  chilling, prophetic, Orwellian, elegant, insightful
Marks out of 10:   between 7 - 9  so highly marked

Next Book

All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville West

Next Meeting

115 Harbord St - Monday 20th November

The Adversary by Emmauel Carrere

Rather like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, the journalist Carrere becomes fascinated by the story of a man who lived a completely false life and then on the verge of his lies unraveling he kills his family - his wife, children, parents and tried to kill his lover.  How did he manage to maintain this lie for so long; why was he not found out, why kill, why, why, and how?  These questions are at the heart of this true story.  
Carrere tries to keep speculation and imagination to a minimum, How did Jean-Claude Romand manage to keep up the pretense that 
1) he had managed to graduate from medical school (without ever taking an exam) 
2) he worked for the World Health Organization (he never worked, he spent his days in cafes and laybys) what a waste of a life and time 
3) why did people trusted him so much they gave him their money to invest without any questions 
4) and how at the end, once convicted, he became the darling of the prison visitors with his conversion to religion, acceptance of his sins therefore his forgiveness and redemption is assured. 

This creepy book generated a good discussion on the nature of man, do we really know people, how much people will accept or ignore, just because you are 'normal, ordinary'.  

Words used to describe it:  
Profoundly drepressing, cold, shocking, disturbing, intriguing

Marks out of 10 - between 5 - 8

Next Book

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Next Meeting 

117 Harbord St - Mandy's

Strumpet City by James Plunkett

'A classic story of Dublin during the Lockout' so says the Irish Times.  The book doesn't deal in isolated lives but in the way large events connect disparate people.  From Rashers Tierney  marginalized and precariously positioned one penny from starvation, to the upper-class world of the Yearling and Bradshaw's.  The 5 years of increasingly bitter dispute between Dublin's unskilled workers, organized by James Larkin's Irish Transport & General Workers' Union and the city's employers, led by William Martin Murphy.   Murphy demanded that workers renounce the ITGWU or be 'locked out' of their jobs.  The six months it took to effectively starve the work force into submission are graphically depicte.   It was the slow violence of hunger much of it directed against children, that ws most telling.  The characters are carefully drawn and accurately crafted.

Many didn't finish this book as it was long and detailed.  It is worth the read, if you manage it. Despite only a few reading it - it generated an interesting discussion about class, poverty, and the Irishness of the characters.

Next book

The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrere

Next Meeting

14th September at Carolyn's

The Power by Naomi Alderman

If women had power - physical power, the power to zap someone with a bolt of electricity generated from their own body how would the dynamics between the sexes change?  This happens suddenly, one day young women/girls are able to zap someone, their power emerging with their nascent sexuality.  They are able to ignite it in older women through touch.  Dynamics change, women turn against their oppressors, sexual, religious, physical and life for men is no longer the same.  Drugs are developed that enhances the power and porn created to fetishise it.  

Through the lives of various characters, Allie, the abused America foster child who reinvents herself as Mother Eve, seeking to develop a community away from men, who joins forces with Roxy the daughter of a London crime boss,  Tunde a Nigerian journalist reporting on the global changes taking place, and discovering what it's like to be an attractive young man in a woman's world.  And Margot the middle aged politician who sees that power comes from strength not authority, and now she has that strength.

It's a bleak book - the descriptions of sexual violence are horrifying, the abuse of power as with men depraved.  Are we (women) just going to succumb to the same power imbalance as men, would we really?  The book did engender a good discussion about the nature of power, is it just physical or can we achieve power in other ways.  

Words used to describe it:  thought provoking, unlike-ably interesting, harsh, 

Marks out of 10 - a consistent 7

Next Book

Strumpet City  by James Plunkett

Next Meeting

Friday 14th July venue either Carolyn or Mandy  TBC

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian: A Novel by Marina Lewycka

Review to come

Next Book

The Power by Niaomi Alderman

Next meeting

Friday 9 June

at 

72 Kingwood Road

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Hard to describe a book where the terseness of prose  is mixed with fantasy.  Flitting from place to place through amorphous black doors enable refugees to 'arrive' in another country.  This book cleverly and clearly brings alive to the reader the slowly emerging  horror of watching your country dissolve into war, fractions and wanton violence that you are little able to comprehend or avoid.  The necessity of flight from your country becomes imperative.  Saeed and Nadia the protagonists of this book take one of these 'black doors' arriving in Mykonos, then onto Germany, to London a city rapidly filling with other refugees creating it's own political crisis.  Forced to live their lives outside of their previous culture, makes them question some of their cultural assumptions and their relationship with each other.  Crisis in London makes them feel uncertain of their ability to make a home in a city which doesn't want them.  An interesting discussion on the nature of being a refugee, what is home is people, place or culture?

Words used to describe it:
Pithy, bares reading twice, first half best, profound, disturbing, beguiling, enlightening, melancholic, crystallizing

Marks out of 10:  between 7 - 9 so highly marked,

Next Book

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

Next meeting 

4 May 2017

At

126 Harbord St

House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Lily Bart, a well born, beautiful, educated but impoverished woman, living in New York's high society around the turn of the century, where the one aim in a woman's life is to 'snare' a husband, preferably a rich one.  As her 29th year approaches her prospects become slimmer.  The book highlights the gender gap, where women were not expected to 'do' anything to ensure their future except to marry and if this didn't happen - what then?  If you had no family or money to support you -  a slow decent from privilege to a tragic, lonely existence on the margin of society.  

Ms Wharton's beady, critical eye scythes through high society where petty infractions of perceived rules were ruthlessly judged, exclusion and expunction from the social circle where the consequences.  If you don't fit, aren't rich enough or make a social mistake, that's it you're out.  Especially if you are a woman. Men or rich people could flout the rules as much as they wish.  Lily colludes in her downfall by falling into debt, playing cards for money (and losing) and flouting convention by meeting  a man alone.  All which play into her downfall.
Slow to get going many didn't finish this book.

Words used to describe it:   overwritten, snobby, overt antisemitism, cruel, frustrating 

Marks out of 10:  between 6 - 8

Next Book

Exit West by Moshim Hamid

Cindy can get copies of the book from Nomad Books

Next Meeting 

5 April 12 Lysia St - hosted by Moira

Rabbit by John Updike

Not an American dystopian novel but and American dystopian life.  The book depicts 3 months in the life of a 26 year old former high school basketball player, Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, in a loveless marriage, boring job and his attempts to escape this life of mundanity.  On the spur of the moment he leaves his wife and drives south to his home town trying to regain some of his high school glory days and find the spark in life that has left.  The novel goes on to describe the vicissitudes of Harry's life, how he changes it, the people and women.  
Updike says of his book that "My subject is the American Protestant small-town middle class.  I like middles. It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules".  He goes on to say that when he "looked around in 1959 he saw a number of scared dodgy men who could not make commitments, men who peaked in high school and existed in a downward spiral.  Their idea of happiness was to be young.  Thus Rabbit, Run was born".
This book was found by many to be 'boring' by others to be beautifully descriptive and others just middling.  It wasn't an easy read, but did generate some interesting discussions about mid America , the cultural changes that were going on.

Words used to describe it:  Groundhog Day, depressing, wanting to portray something dismal in beautiful writing, great characterization, of it's era, forensically detailed,

Marks out of 10:  between 5 - 9 so very varied

Next Book

House of Mirth by Edith Wharton