Fushima Dreams by Zelda Rhiando

What a monkey puzzle of a book.  Part crime, part psychological thriller, part mystic dream this intense book defies categories.  Set in modern Japan around the time of the tsunami, and centered around the main characters of Harry and Sachiko.  The birth of their son Tashi has ripped their life apart, Sachiko suffers from postpartum psychosis and Harry is failing appallingly to cope with this and their child.  He turns in on himself as much as Sachiko absences herself mentally, and then the tsunami - what happens to them in the aftermath unfolds painfully.

The author Zelda Rhiando came to our book club and answered our many questions about the book.  She traveled around Japan for a month, absorbing the character of the Japanese people, enabling her to write with a delicacy of the innate 'politeness' of Japanese society, the rules that govern people's actions and interactions. It was interesting to hear Zelda's perception of her characters and how a story often has a life of its own. It must be terrifying to come to a book club, we really appreciated Zelda coming and talking so frankly about being an author and the process of not only writing but publishing a book.  Great evening with a fascinating author.  Thank you for coming to Zelda. PS. Wine may have been involved!

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

Words used to describe it:  softly shocking, intriguing, fascinating, mystic, intense

Next Book

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

Next Meeting

Christmas Do - starting at Olivia's then on for supper and dancing

Friday 20th December

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Having read Persuasion at different times in my life, I have always found this gentle, harsh, claustrophobic novel one of her best.  It may not have the romping breath of Sense and Sensibility, or Mr Darcy, Pride and Prejudice, but I do think that the arch of the story, the minutiae of a woman's life, hemmed in by society's constructs of what a woman of a certain stratum of society can and cannot do is so well illustrated in this novel.  It is of its time and yet still pertinent today.  I won't precis the novel as it is so well known.  Having said all this many did not enjoy this novel as much as they have enjoyed others by Jane Austen.  

Marks out of 10 between 5 - 8

Words used to describe it:  Mills and Boon, predictable, engaging, refreshing revisited, social nuance

Next Book

Fushima Dreams by Zelda Rhiando

Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor

Review from Goodreads:  1878 - The Lyceum Theatre, London. Three extraordinary people begin their life together, a life that will be full of drama, transformation, passionate and painful devotion to art and to one another. Henry Irving, the Chief, is the volcanic leading man and impresario; Ellen Terry is the most lauded and desired actress of her generation, outspoken and generous of heart; and ever following along behind them in the shadows is the unremarkable theatre manager, Bram Stoker. Fresh from life in Dublin as a clerk, Bram may seem the least colourful of the trio but he is wrestling with dark demons in a new city, in a new marriage, and with his own literary aspirations. As he walks the London streets at night, streets haunted by the Ripper and the gossip which swirls around his friend Oscar Wilde, he finds new inspiration. But the Chief is determined that nothing will get in the way of his manager?s devotion to the Lyceum and to himself. And both men are enchanted by the beauty and boldness of the elusive Ellen. This exceptional novel explores the complexities of love that stands dangerously outside social convention, the restlessness of creativity, and the experiences that led to Dracula, the most iconic supernatural tale of all time.

But what did we think of it?  On the whole most of us couldn't get past the over flowery writing, the descriptive text was too much to digest and got in the way of the characters and story.  Many didn't finish the book, perhaps too much for a holiday read.  Those who know the theatre loved the descriptions and insight into Victorian la la land, but not enough to enjoy the book.

Marks out of 10:  4 - 5 so not high

Words used to describe it: interesting historically, camp, overwritten

Next book

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Next meeting:

Friday 20th September at 127 Harbord St

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda’s assistance, he co-designs Adam’s personality. This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong and clever – a love triangle soon forms. These three beings will confront a profound moral dilemma. Ian McEwan’s subversive and entertaining new novel poses fundamental questions: what makes us human? Our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns of the power to invent things beyond our control. (Goodreads)

This received a mix reception by the book club readers.  Some really enjoyed the moral aspect of when is an AI robot a machine, and when does it become someone?  The slow inevitable telling of the story was interesting. The book did generate a good discussion about the rise of technology in our lives, who uses and likes 'Alexa' and what comparisons can we make with AI.

Marks out of 10 - between 3 - 8

Words used to describe it:  alien, uncomfortable, difficult, moral

Next Book

Shadowplay by Joesph O' Connor

Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Set in South Carolina 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 there Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world as about the mystery surrounding her mother. (Waterstone online review)

Words used to describe it:  enriching, charming, intriguing, heartwarming, gentle, simplistic, unchallenging, ordinary

Marks out of 10:  between 7 - 8

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Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

Next Meeting

4th July at 130 Harbord St

Self Made Man by Norah Vincente

We have still to review this book

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

What she doesn't write, but what we see, is the march of time, relentlessly trampling every moment into the past; the ash-spiral fragility of memory; the transience of passion; the fact that even when we burn brightest we are already dying … Claudia, the protagonist of this book writes her own history, her intense incestious relationship with her brother, the bright doomed love affair of her 20's the grief of Tom's death coloured the rest of her life.  Her distant and harsh treatment of the child she wanted but never loved.  Not an easy book to read, but the language is beautiful.

Words used to describe it:  carry on, kalidescopicscaberous, historic, cutting, difficult, vicious

Marks out of 10:  between 6 - 9

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Self Made Man by Norah Vincent

Never Mind by Edward St Aubyn

The interview by the Guardian writer Stephen Moss of Edward St Aubyn is revelling and obfuscating at the same time and this perfectly ecapsulates the book.  Edward writes about his abusive, upper class childhood,where his father rapes him and continues to abuse him from the age of 5 to 8.  It's a hard book to read,  where a child scared by his treatment moves to teenage years and the casual use of drugs to hide the scared and disturbed child beneath the drug abuse to enable him to forget. 

Words used to discribe it:  cutting wit, explosive, over rated, authentic, characterless, horrendous, corrosive,

Marks out of 10:  between 6 - 10 so highly scored

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Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

Next Meeting

18th April

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

"William Blake famously wrote, "To see a world in a grain of sand,/And heaven in a wild flower,/Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,/and eternity in an hour." This will become Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov's daily challenge and his lifelong campaign, to see the whole world as defined by the confines of a single building, living out his days under house arrest in the glorious and historic Hotel Metropol for the insidious crime of writing a poem. Amor Towles has created a character of supreme intelligence and wit, a man of integrity and honour. A gentleman in the truest sense of the world, whose misfortune it was to have been visited by his muse in the tumultuous times after the Bolshevik Revolution, and so inspired to pen a poem." explorebooks  Reviewed by Mark Billingsley.

Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, is confined to the prison of the luxurious hotel in the centre of Moscow as penance for a crime against the communist state  His life reduced to the rooms and characters that make their way to the hotel over the years that he is incarcerated.  The storytelling slowly meandering its way out of the corridors of the hotel.

Words used to describe the book:
not for me, overly sentimental, interesting structure, disjointed, disappointed, lovely turn of phrase, 

Marks out of 10 between    6 - 8 

Next book

Never Mind by Edward St Aubyn

Next Meeting

7 February at 130 Harbord St