The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

Raynor and Moth in the space of a few days, hear that Moth has a terminal illness, they have lost their home and livelihood - bailiffs are at the door.  Not knowing what to do they decide to walk the South West Costal Path, 630miles from Somerset to Dorset all round the peninsula of Devon and Cornwall.  Along the way they battle loneliness, hunger, destitution and illness. The harshness of the endeavour that they have set themselves seems to be their salvation.  The beauty of the landscape, the nature, sky, sea and sounds appear to cleanse them of their issues.  This seems trite but it does.   A poignant read, even if the protagonists aren't that likeable. 

This book generated a good talk about how easily we can lose everything.  How homelessness is a harsh and unforgiving state - we are all only one bad investment away from this. How people judge the homeless. 

Words used to describe it:  perceptive, harrowing, humbling, chilly, cold, sobering

Marks out of 10:  between 7 - 9

Next book

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Next meeting

7th October

Venue:  TBC

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

Pat Barker has taken the story of the Iliad and given a voice to some of the women who are mentioned but not noticed in the stories.  History is written by the victors and that doesn't include women.  This retelling of the Trojan Wars,  in particular Achilles and Agamemnon, from the view point of Briseis, a teenage Queen, of ransacked Lyrnessus, given to Achilles as part of his 'spoils of war'.  Seen from the view point of a woman with no standing except that she is the 'trophy' of a powerful warrior, this book is a interesting discourse on the plight of women. Referred to as 'it', displayed, defiled and ignored the women's lives are precarious, and dependent on keeping their man 'happy'.  Somethings appears not to have changed much in thousands of years - to be given, traded, fucked and abused, women have to find their place where they can.  Brutal and uncomfortable reading, mixing the known stories from the Iliad with imagined scenarios, this brilliant book gives voice to the unheard bringing to life the dirt, blood and harshness of a battle camp. It also explores the psychology of the 'hero' Achilles inured to death, bored of battle and fixated on his goddess mother.

The discussion was broad, a number of us didn't know well the stories of the Iliad, and therefore had difficulty in understanding the relationships between the men and why they were fighting etc.  Having said that Achilles, was more man and less godlike in this story, a warrior who knows his business, but is plagued by PTSD. We generally thought the end was weak, but most of us loved the book. 

Words used to describe it:  sympathy for the girls, survival, co-modified, chattels, absorbing

Marks out of 10: we all gave it 8

If you want to listen there is an interesting podcast interview: Pat Barker with Eleanor Wachtel

Next Book

The Salt Path by Raynar Winn

Next Meeting

Friday 4th September

at Carolyn's

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernandine Everisto

This book follows the lives of 12 different women through their lives, loves and struggles. The mainly British and black women and girls give us a  Britain which challenges us with its glimpse into their lives.  Cleverly linking together various women through the last century. Each of the 12 characters is given a chapter, occasionally other characters appear and overlap, but essentially each character has a different life, choices and background.  From gender identity,  a career woman, a young bride from Barbados in an unhappy marriage, an abusive lesbian relationship  All very diverse lives but eloquently written.  These characters are elegant vessels to discuss and illustrate the many and varied lives of British black women.

The book generated a good discussion about identity, colour, race and being a woman.  

Words used to describe it:  marvelous, rich storytelling, better on the second reading, too many characters, irritating, humanity

Marks out of 10: between 5 - 9

 

Next Book

Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

Next meeting 

Friday 14th August at 126

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

8 years following many women, results in a book of three women and their sex lives, general lives and loves.

I think that this reveiw on Goodreads explains it best:

 

May 24, 2019 Roman Clodia 

This is quite a perplexing book as I'm not sure what Taddeo's intentions were. She takes three American women and tells their stories of failed love, disappointing marriages, unmet or unfulfilled sexual and emotional needs.

In some ways, the stories are different and, almost deliberately (?) echo themes covered in recent fiction: Lina, in a sexless marriage falls into an affair with her high-school boyfriend; Maggie is 'groomed' into a sexual relationship with her high-school teacher; Sloane finds herself introduced to open marriage built around a ménage theme, and recognises herself as a submissive after reading 'Fifty Shades of Grey'.

And yet, all three have commonalities: all three women are essentially unfulfilled; all are, to greater or lesser extents, exploited by men. Lina and Maggie are desperately pleading for love from married men who call them up when they choose. Sloane has a troubled history of anorexia/bulimia and despite her seeming assurance, traces early examples of male familial disapproval which affected her adolescence.

What I found disturbing about the book is a seeming gender essentialism which shows us, abject women, in thrall to powerful men who control their relationships whether through being unavailable emotionally and physically, sometimes because they're married, or, in the case of Sloane, by a voyeurism which makes her the sexualised object beneath a dual male gaze. The overall tone is one of dysfunctional masochism, especially in the cases of Lina and Maggie.

It's fascinating to see other women's inner lives but it's also frustrating to see how much pain, misery and lack of agency inhabit these (love) lives. The implication seems to be that whatever happens to level the playing field for women publicly and professionally, there's still an underground struggle for some women who want to be loved in ways that their men and their own choices seem to preclude.

Words used to describe it: (not given yet)

Marks out of 10: (not given yet)

Next book

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

 

Next Meeting

In the garden of 117

17 July 2020

after Gin by the Bins

Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Read during lock down - in a time of corona virus, most of us found this a difficult book to get our heads around.  The many names of the characters, the flitting around in time and style was discombobulating.  The allegorical, dreamlike narrative where the Devil, 'Professor Woland' battle with the bureaucracy of Soviet Russia as a character, then slipping to another narrative of a embittered writer, the Major who battles to create and publish his novel on Pontius Pilate and Jesus. While Margarita lover and muse of the Major, leaves him to live a life of the comfortable bourgeois, only to give it up when given the chance - to ride naked on a broomstick over Moscow before arriving in the middle of an event with all the other various characters and metaphysical beings made it essential to concentrate when reading. 

This dense and difficult book requires time and an understanding of the Russian character, especially of the tense and difficult time under Stalin, where anything could mean your removal to the gulags, or death.  I don't think that we quite understood the depths of this novel. Also we think that the different editions/translations make a huge difference to the ease of reading. 

Most of us failed to read it, finding the metaphysical aspect too difficult at this time of uncertainty.  However those (2 of us) who did finish it found the book a fascinating but problematic read.

Words used to describe it:  difficult read, watching paint dry, sympathy for the Devil, confusing

Marks out of 10:  between 1- 6

Next Meeting

Sunday 14th June by Zoom (probably)

Next Book

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

Olive Kettridge by Elizabeth Strout

Book Club meeting held via Zoom due to Lockdown.  Not totally successful technology wise - but at least we had our book club meeting.

Olive Kitteridge (2008) is a novel by American author Elizabeth Strout. It presents a portrait of the title character and a number of recurring characters in the coastal town of Crosby, Maine. It takes the form of 13 short stories that are interrelated but discontinuous in terms of narrative. (Wikipedia)  Using the stories within a novel concite, we are introduced to the people that Olive as school teacher, wife, mother has touched upon in her life.  She is not a likeable character, abrasive, harsh, kind, intuitive, blunt and many other contradictory words.  

Most in the book club loved this book, found the character of Olive, difficult though she is, resonated with them.  The short stories within the novel was an interesting way to introduce the complex characters that lived in the Maine town.  A few of us did not like the chop and change of the short stories and found the inconsidtent time line difficult.  

Words used to describe it:  resonates, human nature, vivid description of character, unforgiving, 

Marks out of 10:  between 5 - 9 (mostly between 7 -9)

Next Book

The Master and Margarita by Mikahel Bulgahov

Next Meeting by Zoom

Friday 8th May

Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown by Anne Glenconner

Wow, well that book generated an excellent discussion at book club, from the mores of the aristocracy, bad parenting, feminism (or not), up bringing, boarding school, and much much more.  Anne Glenconner's biography was a thoroughly entertaining read.  Her life fairly rips along at a pace that would have left most of us behind.  Her life with Colin Glenconner was unconventional and difficult and yet ultimately extremely privileged.  Colin Glenconner's disregard for his family, his spoilt child attitude to life was extremely hard to bear.  Without the money behind him, his behavior would not have been supported by anyone.

Words used to describe it:  loved it, a romp, fascinating, fawning sycophantic, engaging, rip-roaring read.

Marks out of 10:  between 5 - 9 

Next Book

Olive Ketteridge by Elizabeth Stroud

Next Meeting

9th April

Venue

TBC

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

Very hard to review a book that you didn't complete - none of us completed and that is a first for this book club.  This book was (well the 150 pages that I did read) a mess, a confusing mess.  Why the reviewers fuss we couldn't understand.  Sorry people, we did not like this book.  

So no words and no marks out of 10.

Next book - a bit lighter

Next book

Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown by Anne Glenconner

 

Next Meeting

Thursday 5th March

Venue TBC

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

Next Book

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

Next Book

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

Next Book 

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

Unless by Carol Sheilds

There is a review by the Guardian reviewer  Blake Morrison 'Hell hath no fury' which reads so much more into this book than we did.  It sees the novel as a quiet scream against the female ouvre, a feminist novel but not a strident one.  We didn't read it as such.  Most of us just saw it as a novelist writing about a novelist, introspective and navel gazing.  Although the language is beautiful and skillful, the story was not engaging enough for most of us.

Words used to decribe it:
concited, navel (novel) gazing, uncompromising, gloomy, beautifully written, disjointed, unengaging

Marks out of 10
Between 3 - 8 (only one 8)

Next Book

A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

Venue

at Carolyn's

 January 17th 2019

Christmas dinner at Chelsea Arts Club 

19th December

Villette by Charlotte Bronte

Villette, was Charlotte Bronte's final novel and possibly her most autobiographical.   Lucy Snowe, leaves England, fleeing an unspecified family trauma to a French boarding school in the French town of Villette.  Watching the romance between Dr John and Gineva Fanshawe brings to Lucy the heartache Lucy has tried to escape.  

This novel is considered to be one of the most insightful fictional studies of a woman's consciousness in English literature.  We thought, as a group, it was a difficult read and most of us didn't finish it despite having nearly 3 months to read it!  

Words used to describe it:
long-winded and over-elaborate, boring, endless, tedious, boring and null - Ummm not good ones!

Marks out of 10 
between 3 - 4 

Next book

Unless by Carol Sheilds

Next meeting

16th November at 126 Harbord St

Dietland by Sarai Walker

I wasn't at the meeting so can't comment on this book.  Sorry.
But there is a really good review by the Guardian here

Next book

Villette by Charlotte Bronte