Both books this
month are multiple stories. A lady Cyclists guide alternates
chapters between a story in 1923 and a story in the current time. A
Possible Life seems to be 5 entirely separate stories.
A Lady Cyclist's
Guide to Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson, 2012 Bloomsbury
Alternating chapters
about 3 women missionaries in Kashgar, on the Chinese side of the
Himalayas, in 1923, and a woman traveller and writer in current time
London. Millicent was the very controlling and arrogant leader of
the three ladies, in love with the younger sister of the middle girl,
the missionary of the bicycle. They assist in the birth of a child,
whose mother then dies and they end up with the child. The locals
accuse them of murder and they are under house arrest, but Millicent
keeps trying to convert them with leaflets and other means, upsetting
the locals. Eventually the youngest dies, and Millicent is
imprisoned, and the middle girl Evangeline escapes with the baby. The
other story eventually finds out that she is the granddaughter of
that baby, brought up in England.
D. Found that
reading a story in two different times was difficult, so read the
current time story first. M. also didn't like having two time
periods intermingled in books. It was the better story. The
missionary setup was totally implausible, and upsetting. O who has
read other books about missionary ladies, thought that it was
reasonably well researched, but implausible. Millicent being so
pig-headed made her quite a good character. She was also described as
very controlling and arrogant. The timescales of each part of the
story are confusing because of their uncertainty. Also the behaviour
of the baby was totally unbelievable. He was either being fed or
wrapped around Eva, but never a problem. Also most of the 1923 story
was spent in the one village/town, and the travelling to get there
was glossed over, as was the escape journey.
Alison was looking
for 'devices' in the book, liked the modern story but felt that it
failed because she didn't know how to make the relation between the
two stories. Was the owl a device or a connection? The conclusion
was that the owl was totally dependent, just like the first convert
who is killed after being taken away from the missionary ladies.
The title is taken
from the book that Evangeline is going to write from her forbidden
diaries about their time as Missionaries.
A final comment
about the book was that it went full circle but it wasn't worth the
length of the journey.
The marks ranged
from 3 to 7, with an average of 4.5
Published by Bloomsbury - does that mean it is in the ideals of the Bloomsbury set?
-----------------------------------
A Possible
Life Faulks, Sebastian Hutchinson
5 short stories at
different places and times, about totally unrelated people. I think
it seems like an exercise in writing about how peoples lives have
turned out. Not Impressed.
It was a struggle to
find the common themes between the stories. Maybe there weren't any?
Possibly it was that there were choices in each story that allowed
the protagonist to walk a different path.
There were many
different opinions of which stories were good and which weren't. One
of us nearly didn't go on after the first.
M liked the first
and second, and the third about the adopted brother who turns out to
be a half-brother. She didn't like the last two. L found the first
story depressing and the second not much better about the boy in the
workhouse. She read them hoping that something would improve but it
didn't for her. D liked the first story best. R said of the main
character “He was not unhappy” D said that the book went
downhill after the second story.
R didn't
particularly like the book, but had to read it as she is a great fan
of Faulks. She claimed that it was 'unsettling' as it stated on the
cover.
P - I liked the
second story about the workhouse boy that makes good, but the last
story by 'Freddie' about Anya the folk singer blows me away.
Reminiscent of Tommy Roe 'The Folk Singer' it questions what we
should do in life, and whether we chose the right pathway. A 9 in
its own right. Perhaps because it is written about the era that I
grew up in.
There was a comment
that echoes are things that he put in – I don't understand this.
Maybe I wrote it down wrongly or incompletely.
In general the
comment was “unmemorable”. Two people didn't give it a mark.
Otherwise the mark
is 5. In some cases this was determined by giving a mark to each
story and averaging them. M scores by marking for character, plot,
and language and averaging them. This could be developed.
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