When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman

Well we made another great book choice and had plenty to discuss at our meeting last night. We all agreed this was an excellent read though a few preferred the first half of the book to the second (because the latter lacked chronology).

Winman's descriptions of situations, smells, feelings, places etc. conjured up memories of events in our own lives. Perhaps it's because much of her story related to the time when most of us were children, we were able to relate to the luxury of Orange Maid ice lolly’s, the dream of winning The (Football) Pools, IRA Bombs that shook and destroyed lives and the community feel good factor of a Silver Jubilee. We could almost taste the '4 a penny' Black Jacks and Fruit Salad sweets and took time out to reflect on the freedom we had in our own childhoods. On a slightly darker note, for Sue Roberts the book brought back memories of a highly distressing school nativity play. At least now Sue understands why the thought of wearing brown tights is so traumatic for her!

This book tells a story of what could be regarded as a typical childhood in a loving and close family. The story that unfolds is far from typical and Elly (the central character who names her pet rabbit God) takes the reader on a journey that leaves the innocence of childhood behind (but not too far behind).

There is much humour throughout the book and yet a feeling of impending ‘disaster’ and an undercurrent that implies there is something ‘wrong’. Sometimes the wrong becomes evident but at other times the reader is left to wonder.

Relationships are the central theme – some are beautiful, some quirky others cruel and abusive. Elly and her family have strong family ties, they are close and loyal to one another and to those they love.

Of the characters we enjoyed the relationship between Mum and Nancy, we loved Arthur and Ginger and Elly’s family for taking them into their lives. Our hearts reached out for Jenny Penny. For Elly we were concerned for her apparent inability to lead a normal life with normal relationships.  Though she had an enviable relationship with her brother and her parents, and she cherished that and recognised it was more special than other children enjoyed:  that point is best defined by a line from the book itself:  “On the beach there were parents holding cigarettes and lager instead of their children’s hands.”

Would we recommend this book – most definitely.

Our next book choice is The Red House by Mark Haddon - we will meet to discuss this book on Tuesday September 11th. Sue Roberts has offered to 'host'.

July 2012 - Book Choices

Our next meeting is on Tuesday 10th July, 8.15pm at Gatehangers. We will be discussing When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman.

Here are our choices for our next read to see us through the Summer!

Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth 

Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying, not only because of their grimly impoverished surroundings, but also because of what they were expected to endure. But while Jennifer witnessed brutality and tragedy, she also met with amazing kindness and understanding, tempered by a great deal of Cockney humour. She also earned the confidences of some whose lives were truly stranger, more poignant and more terrifying than could ever be recounted in fiction. Attached to an order of nuns who had been working in the slums since the 1870s, Jennifer tells the story not only of the women she treated, but also of the community of nuns (including one who was accused of stealing jewels from Hatton Garden) and the camaraderie of the midwives with whom she trained. Funny, disturbing and incredibly moving, Jennifer's stories bring to life the colourful world of the East End in the 1950s.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver...

There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared.

Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell...

The Red House by Mark Haddon

After his mother's death, Richard, a newly remarried hospital consultant, decides to build bridges with his estranged sister, inviting Angela and her family for a week in a rented house on the Welsh border. Four adults and four children, a single family and all of them strangers. Seven days of shared meals, log fires, card games and wet walks.

But in the quiet and stillness of the valley, ghosts begin to rise up. The parents Richard thought he had. The parents Angela thought she had. Past and present lovers. Friends, enemies, victims, saviours. And watching over all of them from high on the dark hill, Karen, Angela's stillborn daughter.

The Red House is about the extraordinariness of the ordinary, weaving the words and thoughts of the eight characters together with those fainter, stranger voices - of books and letters and music, of the dead who once inhabited these rooms, of the ageing house itself and the landscape in which it sits. Once again Mark Haddon, bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and A Spot of Bother, has written a novel that is funny, poignant and deeply insightful about human lives.