The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon

While most of us loved it, one was indifferent and one absolutely loathed it!

We all related to that long hot summer of 1976; some group members were looking after their young families at the time and some of us were teenagers still at school. The historical context was well presented, it all felt familiar, and for one member the place was familiar too, a location somewhere in the East Midlands. We all remembered having to put the television on to warm up; the TV programmes mentioned; and the casual racism!

We agreed that the descriptive language was fantastic and we recalled favourite passages about the oppressive heat, John’s emotional turmoil and Grace’s weak attempts at pre teenage rebellion.

The crux of the book was people being singled out for being different and it was only through the mouths of the children that Jesus became the most obvious example of this. The adults were unaware of their hypocrisy throughout. As the adults’ secrets emerged through the story (and there wasn’t actually much really happening, it was mainly back stories) it became apparent that the person they were ‘picking on’ was actually the least flawed of them all. From the group which included alcoholic Sheila, lazy May to the abused John and depressed Sylvie; none could grasp that Walter had actually done nothing wrong. Well, apart from the real ‘child snatcher’ who was herself a victim of circumstance.

It was the children, Grace and Tilly, who could most easily see through some of the web of lies that adults spin to get through life. Their observations, which include comments like, “Why do people blame everything on the heat?” “It’s easier than telling everyone the real reason” were very knowing.

Would we recommend it? All bar one – yes! This is a first novel and we look forward to the next one.

Our next book is The Incident at the Fingerpost by Iain Pears and we meet on Thursday, Sept 28^th at the Hundred.

Current good reads by members that they would also recommend are:

• The Map Addict by Mike Parker (if you are mad about maps like Jane and me!)
• The book the recent film Lion is based on – A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierly
• A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gayle
• Neurotribes – the Legacy of Autism and how to think smarter about people who think differently by Steve Silberman

Book Choices - July 2017

Here are our book choices for high-Summer reading. You can send your preferences to me by email or make your voice heard at the meeting this Thursday (20th July) 8pm at The Hundred. 

An Instance of the Finger Post by Iain Pears

Set in Oxford in the 1660s - a time and place of great intellectual, religious, scientific and political ferment - this remarkable novel centres around a young woman, Sarah Blundy, who stands accused of the murder of Robert Grove, a fellow of New College.

Four witnesses describe the events surrounding his death: Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; Jack Prescott, the son of a supposed traitor to the Royalist cause, determined to vindicate his father; John Wallis, chief cryptographer to both Cromwell and Charles II, a mathematician, theologian and master spy; and Anthony Wood, the famous Oxford antiquary. 

Each one tells their version of what happened but only one reveals the extraordinary truth. Brilliantly written, utterly convincing, gripping from the first page to the last, An Instance of the Fingerpost is a magnificent tour de force.

Together by Julie Cohen

On a morning that seems just like any other, Robbie wakes in his bed, his wife Emily asleep beside him, as always. He rises and dresses, makes his coffee, feeds his dogs, just as he usually would. But then he leaves Emily a letter and does something that will break her heart. 

As the years go back all the way to 1962, Robbie's actions become clearer as we discover the story of a couple with a terrible secret - one they will do absolutely anything to protect.

Larchfield by Polly Clark

It's early summer when a young poet, Dora Fielding, moves to Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland and her hopes are first challenged. Newly married, pregnant, she's excited by the prospect of a life that combines family and creativity. She thinks she knows what being a person, a wife, a mother, means. She is soon shown that she is wrong. As the battle begins for her very sense of self, Dora comes to find the realities of small town life suffocating, and, eventually, terrifying; until she finds a way to escape reality altogether.

Another poet, she discovers, lived in Helensburgh once. Wystan H. Auden, brilliant and awkward at 24, with his first book of poetry published, should be embarking on success and society in London. Instead, in 1930, fleeing a broken engagement, he takes a teaching post at Larchfield School for boys where he is mocked for his Englishness and suspected - rightly - of homosexuality. Yet in this repressed limbo, Wystan will fall in love for the first time even as he fights his deepest fears.

The need for human connection compels these two vulnerable outsiders to find each other and make a reality of their own that will save them both. Echoing the depths of Possession, the elegance of The Stranger's Child and the ingenuity of Longbourn, Larchfield is a beautiful and haunting novel about heroism - the unusual bravery that allows unusual people to go on living; to transcend banality and suffering from the power of their imagination.

The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally

I have an admission - I have lost my notes so I am going to keep this brief and from memory. Please add comments to the blog post with additional points that I have failed you on.

A good group of us met to discuss this book - the story of Australian nurses who volunteered to nurse in World War 1 and found themselves on an incredible journey travelling through Egypt to nurse the injured from the Dardanelles and then to France.

Quickly the book establishes the senseless and cruel loss of life that comes with war and gives a clear insight into the extreme conditions that medical corps were working in, ill-equipped and overwhelmed thay rarely lost their sense of professionalism even if they lost all hope.

Keneally has the ability to use language in an almost poetic way to describe even the most horrific circumstances.  It is a hard story, well researched and told in a manner that holds no punches yet enables the reader to continue through the horror and sadness that frequently arises.

Central to the story are two sisters: Sally and Naomi Durance, both nurses with very different careers - Sally stays in their home bush town, and cares for her dying mother whilst Naomi heads to Sydney and is altogether more sophisticated. We found it hard to warm to Naomi at the beginning but quickly we came to like and respect her (as Sally did too) so that by the end of the book it was hard to choose a favourite sister. In fact it became quite difficult at times to remember which sister was which as the story ran on - they 'morphed' so well that even the author got the confused at one point when he refers to Sally waiting when it should have been Naomi (I wrote the page number down but I lost it!)

We enjoyed the 'challenge' of reading narrative with no speech marks - indeed it is surprising how quickly this feature became quite unnoticeable.

The nurses enjoy high status and are well looked after by the officers but are less well treated by the 'orderlies'. Love is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a key part of the story as each of the nurses meet different partners in different circumstances. For example we experienced the joy of love at first sight, the trauma of sudden loss; the sadness of seeing your own child injured; the inequality of rape; the inequity of a frowned upon nurse/patient relationship; a proposition by a female doctor; a husband and wife dealing with personality change from head injury - all clearly experiences of real nurses during the war.

Of the characters we found space in our hearts for Nettice (who fell in love with a blind patient) and Honora who lost her sense of joy at the same time she lost her love and Mitchie, the indomitable matron who never gives up as that would mean losing touch with her son.

The ending is confusing and not all the group agreed that it was a good ending though perhaps it continues the senseless brutality, the horror of war and of the death, mutilation and annihilation that came with the war to end all wars.

Would we recommend this book? Yes, it is a brilliant read.

Our next meeting is on Thursday 20th July (8pm at The Hundred) when we will discuss The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon.