December 2013/Jan 2014
Pure by Andrew
Miller
We were pleasantly
surprised by this well written unusual book; the characters were well
formed and interesting. The story was of a young man Jean-Baptiste
Barratte who was commissioned to undertake the removal of the dead
who were buried in a cemetery in the centre of Paris. The cemetery
was overflowing with bodies and was causing a health hazard, the
smell and description of the place was horrendous. This was engineer
Jean-Baptiste first contract, he had good references and hoped to
work on a substantial project. but undertook this unpleasant job
hoping to further his career.
After assessing the
situation he arranged for miners from Normandy along with his friend
Lacoeur to dig up the bodies, which were then transferred to
consecrated ground in a quarry outside Paris, where they remain to
this day. The whole exhumation of the cemetery was months of
disgusting work.
During this time
Jean-Baptiste lived close to the cemetery with the Monnard family,
the daughter Zigiette took objection to his work which we believe
affected her mind and during the night came to his room and tried to
bludgeon him to death. The maid, Marie saved his life but the attack
left him with brain damage, he could continue his work but could not
read and write afterwards. Jean-Baptiste had met and lived with a
prostitute Heloise Gadard who was educated and helped him with his
work. He was a very likeable character and felt great sympathy for
him throughout the book.
During the book we were
introduced to Armand and his partner Lisa, and the sexton's
young daughter Jeanne. Lacoeur raped Jeanne, this was not a gruesome
scene in the book, but written with sensitivity but the mood of the
book changed after this.
We felt we would not
recommend this book to our friends as the beginning was so off putting. It did gain
momentum, it was very descriptive and clever and all had to finish
it. We noted that it won the 'Costa' book of 2011 .
Unforgettable
Marks 8/8/7/8/8/7/8 = 54= 7.7
Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Some of our group
thought this book was excellent and easy to read, others thought it
was slow but gathered pace as it got going. Some didn't think very
highly of it at all, and thought it took a lot to say a little, so
it was a 'mixed bag' within our group. We understand there is a third
book coming out and so some of us are looking forward to it. There is
also a play in the making, which incorporates both Wolf Hall and
Bring up the Bodies to be shown in London.
A few felt
sympathy for Thomas Cromwell and wished he would leave the kings
service, but really his life at court was of his own making, with all
the manipulation he did on the Kings behalf, no wonder he was
disliked. Many were afraid of his power whilst he was in, the Kings
favour and he had many enemies just waiting for his fall from grace.
All this was with the knowledge that the King could tum on him in a
second as he had done with Cardinal Wolsey, who was Cromwell's idol
and benefactor. During the book Cromwell takes revenge with the five
courtiers who were disrespectful to Wolsey after his death.
The main story was the
removal of the Kings second wife Anne Boleyn to make way for his
third wife Jane Seymour, and we all know that plot.
Marks
8/7/6/6/7/10/6 = 50 = 7.1
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These were taken from the printed page, photographed, displayed in Irfanview and I used the Kadmos OCR plug-in to convert them back to electronic text, then corrected the errors put in by the OCR translation, and here they are. The OCR was not too happy with the times New Roman text- a capital T came out as 'I' and the 'e's were mostly transcribed as 'c'.
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