Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

Six of us enjoyed a somewhat eye-opening chat about our latest read: Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan.

The conversation started like this: "it's nicely written but I found myself wondering where it was going, I got bored and had to force myself to finish it."

Oh no, I thought, this is going to be a one drink meeting and early to bed. How wrong was I? well, very! 

Our resident Ian McEwan fan jumped in: "I absolutely adored it, it was extremely clever and there was a constant sense that this was going somewhere interesting, something would happen."  

Now, I should have seen this coming as every time I have seen said fan recently she has been talking about how the 'tension' was building and wondering if I had got to the bit where...? and I was a bit bemused...

...because, my take on it is: I didn't get it! I didn't experience any tension but I really enjoyed the read and the characters. I thought it was a bit Bridget Jones in places, there were loose ends all over the place and the characters weren't all that convincing (I don't feel the author knew these people very well.) I was disappointed in the ending but probably because I failed to spot the 'clues' which were (according to no.1 fan) peppered throughout.  As an Ian McEwan 'virgin' I didn't know to look for clues though!

Our education continued, we learned that this book is Ian McEwan's first happy story, and it was quirky and full of deceit. You see, I for one didn't realise it was happy and I didn't notice the deceit! We did all agree that we enjoyed the quirkiness of the novella's. Also, the writer character is, in fact, Ian himself. You do have to read the book to realise how highly he rates certain of his abilities and how funny that is. 

So it seems that with Ian McEwan, you either love him or simply enjoy him. Certainly no-one hated the book but it was fabulous to have someone who was able to see the book for what it was and allow the rest of us to understand what makes a great spy story and to gain some appreciation for the talent Ian McEwan has. That is the beauty of a book group.

Of the characters most of us felt they were not very convincing. We did like Shirley a lot and Jeremy so Sarina (boring as she was) did choose her friends well. 

Would we recommend this book? Yes, especially if you like Ian McEwan. And, if you haven't read him and don't know what to expect, give it a try and please look for the clues!

As agreed, some of our group also chose to read another of our choices: Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey. We didn't discuss this book in detail but the overriding response is it is very well written, gripping, and a great read. 

Our next book is The Painter of Signs by R.K. Narayan. We will meet to discuss our reading experience on Thursday 14th May, 8pm at The Hundred. Again we were split in our choice and we will try to also read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. So we have a readathon going - happy reading. 

Book Choices - March 2015

Here are our Spring choices: 

The Unlikely Pilgrimage or Harold Fry by Sue Joyce

Harold Fry is convinced that he must deliver a letter to an old friend in order to save her. He meets various characters along the way and reminisces about the events of his past and people he has known, as he tries to find peace and acceptance.

Recently retired, sweet, emotionally numb Harold Fry is jolted out of his passivity by a letter from Queenie Hennessy, an old friend, who he hasn't heard from in twenty years. She has written to say she is in hospice and wanted to say goodbye. Leaving his tense, bitter wife Maureen to her chores, Harold intends a quick walk to the corner mailbox to post his reply but instead, inspired by a chance encounter, he becomes convinced he must deliver his message in person to Queenie -- who is 600 miles away --because as long as he keeps walking, Harold believes that Queenie will not die. 

So without hiking boots, rain gear, map or cell phone, one of the most endearing characters in current fiction begins his unlikely pilgrimage across the English countryside. Along the way, strangers stir up memories -- flashbacks, often painful, from when his marriage was filled with promise and then not, of his inadequacy as a father, and of his shortcomings as a husband. 

Ironically, his wife Maureen, shocked by her husband's sudden absence, begins to long for his presence. Is it possible for Harold and Maureen to bridge the distance between them? And will Queenie be alive to see Harold arrive at her door? 

The Painter of Signs by R.K. Narayan

For Raman the sign painter, life is a familiar and satisfying routine. 

A man of simple, rational ways, he lives with his pious aunt and prides himself on his creative work. But all that changes when he meets Daisy, a thrillingly independent young woman who wishes to bring birth control to the area. Hired to create signs for her clinics, Raman finds himself smitten by a love he cannot understand, much less avoid-and soon realizes that life isn't so routine anymore. 

Set in R. K. Narayan's fictional city of Malgudi, The Painter of Signs is a wry, bittersweet treasure.

The Truth by Terry Pratchett

William de Worde is the accidental editor of the Discworld's first newspaper. New printing technology means that words just won't obediently stay nailed down like usual. There's a very real threat of news getting out there.

Now he must cope with the traditional perils of a journalist's life - people who want him dead, a recovering vampire with a suicidal fascination for flash photography, some more people who want him dead in a different way and, worst of all, the man who keeps begging him to publish pictures of his humorously shaped potatoes.

William just wants to get at THE TRUTH. Unfortunately, everyone else wants to get at William. And it's only the third edition...

We will make our book choice on Thursday 19th March, 8pm at the Ashendon Hundred when we will be discussing Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan. Please come along and join us if you would like to - whether you have read the book, or not. 

Every Day is For The Thief by Teju Cole

Just four of us met to discuss this book on a chilly evening at The Hundred. Another of our members though kindly sent her comments 'virtually'!

Of the five: one member ‘did not love it’ because it did not tell ‘a story’, three loved it and one enjoyed “having had the opportunity to read such an interesting book” but did not consider it a 'good read.'

So we discussed our differences in opinion and decided, though fiction, this is more of a diary than a novel. However, regarding the missing story, each chapter is a small story and, though the book is a quick read, perhaps each chapter should be read and reflected upon before moving forward? 

So, why was it not a good read for one of us? We found it wasn’t the quality of the writing that is the issue but the situation. The book presents a desperate situation in a desperate, lawless state. So, for this reader, the issue is that there is “so little to enjoy” in the tale that unfolds. 

This is certainly true - this book depicts Lagos (and Nigeria) as corrupt, lawless, anarchistic and lacking in self-sufficiency or national pride.  However, it's not all bad and our narrator, during his visit, finds plenty of examples of good, honest folk living 'ordinary' lives: the record shop, the lawyer's clerk, the music society MUSON School, his own family, his friend the doctor. 

That lead us on to think about the author's motives - why did he write such a seemingly damning reflection of his visit to Lagos and such a scathing critique of his home nation? Was he simply painting a picture of how he saw his home city at a point in time? Or perhaps it's a cry for help on behalf of his county (to embarrass the leaders or to expose what is happening to the wider world?) Or is it to overcome a personal dissonance: he left, he doesn't really want come back but feels he should? Or is it to express his disappointment at how things have changed since he left? Who knows? We concluded the author is fabulous but perhaps a little confused.

So, would we recommend this book? We didn't really conclude this but overall we felt it's worth a read because it's not a hard or long book to read and it does give an interesting view on a country none of know, or understand. So - ummm - YES!

Our next book is Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan, a favourite author of more than one member of our group. There was a split opinion and the casting vote swung in favour of fiction and away from a perceived sensitive subject. However, some of us will also aim to read Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey over the next couple of months. So, we will meet to discuss our thoughts on Sweet Tooth and, if more than one has read it, Elizabeth is Missing on Thursday 19th March 2015, 8pm at the Ashendon Hundred. Here's hoping for a better turn out: as always all welcome. 

Book Choices - January 2015

Winter is still with us and threatening to get colder and harder before Spring arrives. For Ashendon Book Group reading books offers a break from the harsh reality outside our doors and we have three strong contenders to choose from.

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

In this darkly riveting debut novel - a sophisticated psychological mystery that is also a heartbreakingly honest meditation on memory, identity, and ageing - an elderly woman descending into dementia embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared, and her search for the truth will go back decades and have shattering consequences.

Elizabeth is Missing introduces a mystery, an unsolved crime and one of the most unforgettable characters since Mark Haddon's Christopher. Meet Maud ...'Elizabeth is missing', reads the note in Maud's pocket in her own handwriting. Lately, Maud's been getting forgetful. She keeps buying peach slices when she has a cupboard full, forgets to drink the cups of tea she's made and writes notes to remind herself of things. But Maud is determined to discover what has happened to her friend, Elizabeth, and what it has to do with the unsolved disappearance of her sister Sukey, years back, just after the war.

A fast-paced mystery with a wonderful leading character: Maud will make you laugh and cry, but she certainly won't be forgotten.

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy 

Far from the Madding Crowd is perhaps the most pastoral of Hardy's Wessex novels. It tells the story of the young farmer Gabriel Oak and his love for and pursuit of the elusive Bathsheba Everdene, whose wayward nature leads her to both tragedy and true love. It tells of the dashing Sergeant Troy whose rakish philosophy of life was '...the past was yesterday; never, the day after'. And lastly, of the introverted and reclusive gentleman farmer, Mr Boldwood, whose love fills him with '...a fearful sense of exposure', when he first sets eyes on Bathsheba. The background of this tale is the Wessex countryside in all its moods.

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

From the bestselling author of Atonement and Enduring Love comes ‘A web of spying, subterfuge, deceit and betrayal... Acute, witty...winningly cunning’ Sunday Times.

The year is 1972. The Cold War is far from over. Britain is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism. Serena Frome, in her final year at Cambridge, is being groomed for MI5.

Serena is sent on a secret mission – Operation Sweet Tooth – which brings her into the world of Tom Haley, a promising young writer. First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man. Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life? And who is inventing whom? To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage – trust no one.

We will make our book choice on Thursday 15th January, 8pm at the Ashendon Hundred when we will be discussing Every Day is For the Thief by Teju Cole. Please come along and join us if you would like to - whether you have read the book, or not. 

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.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Seven of our group met to chat about our Dickens experience and, once again, the table was split. Some loved it and loved the language, others didn't (on both counts.) We agreed to differ and gradually found an equilibrium in a mutual understanding kind of way. 

Read through the challenges of 'strangely' named characters and Victorian grammar (written to be read out loud) to find a rich description of social hypocrisy and cruelty at its very best. 

Take time to enjoy the gentle pace, fine detail and subtle humour (Boundersby was so like a Monty Python sketch) to do try to understand what the Dickens it's all about.

Even those who didn't really 'get it' agreed that the characters did come to life and the story is a wonderful depiction (albeit perhaps a little unbelievable) of Northern industrial town living in Dickens' time. We loved Stephen and Rachael, disliked Boundersby and Tom, had no opinion of Gradgrind, felt sorry for Louisa and enjoyed the circus folk. 

Would we recommend it? on this we all agree: It's not the best Dickens book BUT read more Dickens!

Our next book is Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo and we will meet to discuss our thoughts on this read on Thursday 13th November, 8pm at the Ashendon Hundred.