November 2012 Book Choices

Our next meeting is  at 8.15pm on Tuesday 13th November in Gatehangers Inn and we will be discussing THE BOY WITH THE TOP KNOT by Sathnam Sanghera.

Here are the book choices for our next book.

 

The Railway Man by Erick Lomax

The experience of three and a half years of slave labour and torture as a prisoner of war of the Japanese, on the notorious Burma-Siam railway, dominated the rest of the life of Eric Lomax, who died this year aged 93. His 1995 memoir, The Railway Man, is a classic of its kind, and work on a major feature film based on it is well advanced for release next year.

It was only when he was in his 70s that Lomax achieved a kind of peace, by meeting Takashi Nagase, one of the men who had interrogated and tortured him, and striking up an unlikely but profound friendship with him after they met in Thailand.

 

 

The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903)

Buck the dog was living a fantastic life in California until he gets sold to pay a debt. He gets taken to the far off Klondike to become a sled dog, where Buck must toughen up and learn the harsh reality of the cold Northern life. Eventually, Buck becomes stronger and adjusts to his new life. Later, no longer useful to his owners, Buck is acquired by greenhorns whose inexperience nearly kills him. Luckily he is then saved by John Thornton and he at last finds a man he loves.

Later, on a distant gold-hunting expedition, Buck hears a call emanating from the woods which strongly appeals to his inherent wild nature shared by his distant ancestors. Events take him away from his old life… and into legend. It’s often assumed to be a book for children due to its numerous adaptations. This however, isn’t true. It’s really an adult’s book, but be warned, it is quite heavy on animal cruelty…

 

Fame is the Spur by Howard Spring (1941)

Set against the background of the years between the end of  the nineteenth century and the beginning of the Second World War, this novel chronicles the social and political changes involved. The story follows the rags to riches story of cabinet minister Hamer Shawcross and his beautiful wife Ann, a dedicated Suffragette supporter who has her own agenda and is not easily intimidated.

The Red House by Mark Haddon

The Red House by Mark Haddon

Four members of our group met to discuss this book and, despite all admitting that it took a few chapters to get into the story, we all enjoyed the read.

It is not an uplifting story, and lacks the LoL humour that Mark Haddon has managed in other books we have read. It illustrates ‘real family life’ and, despite being sombre, it does contain some (dry) humour. Overall it is a reflective story.

A family is ‘thrown’ together on holiday and they go about all the normal holiday stuff: activities (canoeing, trip to Hay on Wye, walk up the mountain) and meals together with ‘undercurrents’ and the occasional disagreement. ‘Matter of factness’ prevails with simple everyday things used to illustrate the ‘normality’ of 'living together' (e.g. tapping the sink drainer into the bin!).

Underlying the normality, each Individual character has a personal circumstance that others are not fully aware of that adds the drama and intrigue: Angela’s loss, Daisy’s sexuality, Louisa’s past, Richard’s work worries, Dominic’s secrets.  Alex comes through here as the least ‘troubled’ adult and Benjy enjoys childhood simplicity. So, this is a ‘normal’ family ‘jogging along’ without communicating as well as perhaps they should. We are also shown that communication with the outside world using mobile phones is risky. There is a moral here!

Of the characters: We felt sorry and worried for Angela, absolutely adored little Benjy, hated Melissa and loved Daisy. Alex and Richard the ‘young buck’ and ‘old stag’ and their evolving relationship is brilliant and adds the humour that is otherwise lacking in the book. We respect Louisa for her organisational skills and for ‘trying hard’ all week and agreed that she is the most interesting character, probably because of where she has come from and where she is now. Her perspective is different and she is the 'even keel'.

The reader is kept on the edge, waiting for the big drama to happen. It happens but not as, or what, may have been anticipated.

Would we recommend it? Yes – but heed the words of one of our group: “When I closed it at the end I didn’t feel as if I was losing a good friend.”

Our next book is THE BOY WITH THE TOP KNOT by Sathnam Sanghera.

We will meet to chat about this book at 8.15pm on Tuesday 13th November in Gatehangers Inn.

Book Choices - September 2012

THE BOY WITH THE TOP KNOT by Sathnam Sanghera

It's 1979, I'm three years old, and like all breakfast times during my youth it begins with Mum combing my hair, a ritual for which I have to sit down on the second-hand, floral-patterned settee, and lean forward, like I'm presenting myself for execution.

For Sathnam Sanghera, growing up in Wolverhampton in the eighties was a confusing business. On the one hand, these were the heady days of George Michael mix-tapes, Dallas on TV and, if he was lucky, the occasional Bounty Bar. On the other, there was his wardrobe of tartan smocks, his 30p-an-hour job at the local sewing factory and the ongoing challenge of how to tie the perfect top-knot.

And then there was his family, whose strange and often difficult behaviour he took for granted until, at the age of twenty-four, Sathnam made a discovery that changed everything he ever thought he knew about them. Equipped with breathtaking courage and a glorious sense of humour, he embarks on a journey into their extraordinary past - from his father's harsh life in rural Punjab to the steps of the Wolverhampton Tourist Office - trying to make sense of a life lived among secrets.

THE ENGLISH PATIENT by Michael Ondaatje

The English Patient is a 1992 novel by Sri Lankan-Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje. The story deals with the gradually revealed histories of a critically burned English accented Hungarian man, his Canadian nurse, a Canadian-Italian thief, and an Indian sapper in the British Army as they live out the end of World War II in an Italian villa. The novel won the Canadian Governor General's Award and the Booker Prize for fiction. The novel was adapted into an award-winning film of the same name in 1996. The narrative is non-linear and the main characters are examined in depth and detail.

The film stars Ralph Fiennes so you can imagine him as you read the book!

TARA ROAD by Maeve Binchy

(In honour of Maeve Binchy who died last month)

Ria Lynch and Marilyn Vine have never met. Their lives have almost nothing in common. Ria lives in a big ramshackle house in Tara Road, Dublin, which is filled day and night with the family and friends on whom she depends. Marilyn lives in a college town in Connecticut, New England, absorbed in her career, an in her life that is independent and private woman who is very much her own person. Two more unlikely friends would be hard to find. Yet a chance phone call brings them together and they decide to exchange homes for the summer. Ria goes to America in the hope that the change will give her space and courage to sort out the huge crisis threatening to destroy her. Marilyn goes to Ireland to recover in peace and quiet from the tragedy which she keeps secret from the world, little realising that Tara Road will prove to be the least quiet place on earth. They borrow each other's houses, and during the course of that magical summer they find themselves borrowing something of each other's lives, until a story which began with loss and suffering grows into a story of discovery, unexpected friendship and new hope. By the time Ria and Marilyn eventually meet, they find that they have altered the course of each other's lives forever.

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.

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

LOL - oh how we laughed out loud.

At last, a book we all agreed on, a laugh out loud, very funny read. All the better because not one of us expected an Evelyn Waugh book to be so hilarious, we were expecting a 'classic' of a more 'classic' kind.

Having not expected the story to unfold in the manner that it did meant the beginning was a little confusing but as the scene began to unfold it became clear that this book was confusion personified. That was one of the points. 

There were many points made by the author about foreign correspondence (as Sue Roberts, informed us in her very own scoop) Waugh had been one himself (for the Daily Mail) working in (among other places) Ethiopia and Jacksonville (in Scoop) is based on Addis Ababa.

For a book based in a far gone time (written in 1938) many of the tales and experiences shared were equally applicable to current times and press behaviour. Indeed the scramble for 'news' and a scoop today is only altered by the technology available to do whatever it takes to get it and get it reported first.

That said, the issues raised are a great snapshot of the time - declining Aristocracy, rise of Capitalism, Fascism, Bureaucracy gone mad, the rise of the servant classes, Germany and Russia. 

The little 'asides' throughout the book are wonderful and keep the humour flowing.

Of the characters we loved Mr Baldwin (and his Cuthbert), were thoroughly entertained by the crazy Mrs Stitch, were appalled by Lord Copper, disliked Katchen and felt very sorry for Salter (although all came good for him in the end). William was the most surprising character of all and can only be described as an assertive push over.

The cleft stick left us confused - apparently all: A cleft stick was a piece of wood with a 'Y' shaped end into which a message, or later a piece of newspaper copy, could be inserted for ease of carrying by a messenger. When Lord Copper suggests that Boot should take some cleft sticks with him to Abyssinia, he is implying that his correspondent might encounter some problems. Whether such implements were in reality still in use at the time of his Abyssinian adventure, who knows?

Our next meeting is on Tuesday 10th July at 8.15 when we will discuss When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman.  

Our Book Choices for May/June 2012

Next Meeting: On Tuesday 8th May, 8.15pm we will meet to discuss Scoop by Evelyn Waugh.

Next Book: The following books are our choices for the group 'read' during May and June:

When God was a Rabbit – Sarah Winman

Young Elly's world is shaped by those who inhabit it: her loving but maddeningly distractible parents; a best friend who smells of chips and knows exotic words like 'slag'; an ageing fop who tap dances his way into her home, a Shirley Basse impersonator who trails close behind; lastly, of course, a rabbit called God. In a childhood peppered with moments both ordinary and extraordinary, Elly's one constant is her brother Joe. Twenty years on, Elly and Joe are fully grown and as close as they ever were. Until, that is, one bright morning and a single, earth-shattering event that threatens to destroy their bond for ever. Spanning four decades and moving between suburban Essex, the wild coast of Cornwall and the streets of New York, this is a story about childhood, eccentricity, the darker side of love and sex, the pull and power of family ties, loss and life. More than anything, it's a story about love in all its forms.

Before I go to Sleep – SJ Watson 

Christine wakes up every morning in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar man. She looks in the mirror and sees an unfamiliar, middle- aged face. And every morning, the man she has woken up with must explain that he is Ben, he is her husband, she is forty-seven years old, and a terrible accident two decades earlier decimated her ability to form new memories. But it’s the phone call from a Dr. Nash, a neurologist who claims to be working with Christine without her husband’s knowledge, which directs her to her journal, hidden in the back of her closet. For the past few weeks, Christine has been recording her daily activities—tearful mornings with Ben, sessions with Dr. Nash, flashes of scenes from her former life—and rereading past entries, relearning the facts of her life as retold by the husband she is completely dependent upon. As the entries build up, Christine asks many questions. What was life like before the accident? Why did she and Ben never have a child? What has happened to Christine’s best friend? And what exactly was the horrific accident that caused such a profound loss of memory? Every day, Christine must begin again the reconstruction of her past. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more un-believable it seems.

The Forgotten Garden – Kate Morton

Why was a four-year-old girl apparently abandoned by her parents in 1913 and left alone on a ship bound from London to Australia?

To answer that question, Morton constructs a generation-spanning chronicle of three women. First is a Victorian fairy tale author named Eliza Makepeace. The second thread is Nell Andrews, the perplexing abandoned child who sets out to solve the conundrum of her true origins. Strand three is Cassandra, Nell’s granddaughter, who in turn goes to England to play detective.

If it’s atmospheric entertainment you want, this is a knockout. Morton, like her heroine Eliza, has the storyteller’s touch. Filled with romance, tragedy and luscious period detail, the novel would make a rip-roaring mini-series.