Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo

Six of us sat down to discuss this lovely story at our book group this month and focused conversation flowed for quite a while (i.e. we usually deviate from the subject far more!).

We read this book alongside the media run up to the remembrance day for the start of the Great War. Our timing made the story even more profound than it already is.

The story is of a rural family to whom more than a fair share of life challenges had already been presented. Two sons leave to fight in WW1 and one of them finds himself in a situation that commands reflection on his life and relationships.

Michael Morpurgo writes for young people and his outstanding talent has produced a beautiful simple story. The reader experience will depend on their personal life experience but the basic story is one that will appeal to any age from young teenage upward. 

We questioned how the generation of young men, that Tommy and Charlie represent, were able to trust anyone in authority ever again after the experiences they had in this war? (With reference particularly to The Colonel and Sergeant Hanley who fail to meet the expectations of responsible authority that most ordinary people would reasonably have had.)

We  reflected on how strong the women were in the story and how their influence was brought to bear. The brave, open-minded, mother; the wicked, self-interested Grandma Wolf/Wolf Woman, Molly’s mother with her fixed views and closed mind, Molly who despite her mother held on to what was important to her and the feather bearing old woman whose one comment defined Tommy’s destiny.

Many adult readers will have their own handed down family stories of this terrible conflict and we wonder if that is why Michael left an open ending. The reader can choose to decide for themselves what happens next for the characters in the story. 

Would we recommend it? That's a unanimous ‘oh yes’ and we do so without hesitation. This is a must read and we will all read it again (and again!)  

Our next book - Every Day is For the Thief by Teju Cole - is set in Lagos, Nigeria. We will meet to discuss our thoughts on this read on Thursday 15th January 2015, 8pm at the Ashendon Hundred. So why not make more reading a New Year resolution and come and join us?

Book Choices - November 2014

As Winter draws in our fireside reads will include one of the following three choices:

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a love story unfolding over half a century between a doctor and his uncle’s wife.

Taking its title from one of the most famous books in Japanese literature, written by the great haiku poet Basho, Flanagan’s novel has as its heart one of the most infamous episodes of Japanese history, the construction of the Thailand-Burma Death Railway in World War II.

In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Death Railway, surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever. 

Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2014. 

Every Day Is For The Thief by Teju Cole

A young Nigerian living in New York City goes home to Lagos for a short visit, finding a city both familiar and strange. In a city dense with story, the unnamed narrator moves through a mosaic of life, hoping to find inspiration for his own. He witnesses the “yahoo yahoo” diligently perpetrating email frauds from an Internet café, longs after a mysterious woman reading on a public bus who disembarks and disappears into a bookless crowd, and recalls the tragic fate of an eleven-year-old boy accused of stealing at a local market.
 
Along the way, the man reconnects with old friends, a former girlfriend, and extended family, taps into the energies of Lagos life—creative, malevolent, ambiguous—and slowly begins to reconcile the profound changes that have taken place in his country and the truth about himself.
 
In spare, precise prose that sees humanity everywhere, interwoven with original photos by the author,Every Day Is for the Thief—originally published in Nigeria in 2007—is a wholly original work of fiction. This revised and updated edition is the first version of this unique book to be made available outside Africa. You’ve never read a book like Every Day Is for the Thief because no one writes like Teju Cole.

The Playmaker by Thomas Keneally

Keneally's magnificent story of a young officer in a penal colony during the founding days of Australia transports readers through layer after layer of life in Sydney Cove, Australia. 

With the colony a little over 12 months old, the Governor commissions a play to celebrate George the Third's birthday in 2 months hence. The young protagonist, Ralph Clark, is given the responsibility of staging the play using convict actors. The stage is set for a clash of cultures - the respectable middle classes of the officer class and the underbelly of London represented by the convicts. The story opens the day after the hanging of a marine.

The characters and incidents described are based on fact, and is an excellent snapshot of Australian history.

We will make our book choice on Thursday 13th November, 8pm at the Ashendon Hundred when we will be discussing Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo.