2022 November - Girl, Woman Other - Bernadine Evaristo

 My comment before meeting:   It's about lesbian women justifying being lesbian I think. It's 12 separate stories loosely attached. I didn't finish it (85). The woman is also a rebel who rebels against good english and throws away centuries of development of good punctuation and structure. There are some good phrases and paragraphs(?) though.

Stories are grouped in Threes.

It's about strong and persevering women

The stories reflect a hierarchy of prejudices  starting with the strongest first and looking at other ones as the book progresses, even to a prejudice against Yorkshiremen.   It tones down with each story.  the third story is historic. 

Our mark, for those five that gave marks, were 8. 

2022 October - The first Phone Call from Heaven - Albom

When I started this book I was a bit disgusted that the author could write about Heaven being used this way to hurt people. About half-way through I knew that Sully was going to get to the bottom of it and uncover the person who was doing it. The ending was a bit unexpected. i didn't expect it to be the father of the Air Traffic controller. The wrap-up where some people have found something, but basically the town has returned to normal was expected. It in some ways does make you think about the difference between faith and belief. rating: ?5

2022 August - September - Less, and Meat Market by Juno Dawson

 Meat Market is a Young Adult book. When I read the first couple of pages  I felt like a pervert reading this sort of stuff. Not my bag at all. 

As I read more I became interested in how this 16 year old let fate drive her into a lucrative modelling career, and how she got on with her friends. I thought that she seemed pretty level headed. At one point when money was mentioned I thought that she would need a money manager to look after her future. The sex with Ferdy was, well, sex, and I wondered if it was necessary to the story. 

When she left school to do modelling full time I wondered whether this would be the end of her school friendships.  The back cover of the book leads you to think that it will all turn ugly, and so at one juncture it does. The pressure of performing so much in so concentrated a time leads her into drugs and these eventually lead her into addiction, but she is trying to hold on to the  strong part of her previous life, Ferdie, while being pushed all over the world, and earning buckets of money. A few times she considers if it is worth it, but the money and the buzz draw her back, until she is sexually affronted by a pervert photographer. She then blows the whistle on him which leads to a court case and justice, with the help of other models, Then the book winds up with all the feel good stuff about woman power and responsible agencies started by one of them, and how they all progress in life.  

At the end I enjoyed the book, and it was a glimpse into a different type of life.  7- 8?

Alison & Chris comments: 

Meat Market by Juno Dawson. 

Here are some opinions from the Ferndown jury (disclaimer-Chris). This is going to be brief, not because there’s little to say but because my typing speed is glacial.

I liked it a lot. It’s a gripping easy read about a big issue that’s especially relevant now, because social media makes things instant and global, but also important at any time because there’s always issues of imbalances of power in relationships.

She uses modern language but the structure of the book is very traditional. There’s a beginning , a middle and an end; there’s one linear time line; it’s a morality tale where the good guys win and the bad guys get punished, and the heroine is a normal likeable girl who is thrust into extraordinary circumstances,struggles but finally triumphs. The result is that she doesn’t let style get in the way of telling a good story.

What an extraordinary world modelling is. Watching the Queen’s funeral I was struck by the starring role and the pressure put on ten-year-old choirboys to lead the musical tribute. I was thinking that there was no other area of endeavour in which someone so young would be trusted to perform at a world class level. But these boys have had years of intensive training to develop their natural talents. They’re also, unless you’re Aled Jones or someone similar, not famous celebrities. Models, according to this book, have no training or preparation.They are gawky teenagers suddenly thrust into an intensely competitive global industry of fashion and advertising with very little in the way of protection or support network apart from their agents.

You’ve all seen me with clothes on so you’ll know that I’m not terribly fashion aware and l normally filter out or ignore adverts on television or in magazines, but this week we’re staying in a holiday cottage that doesn’t have internet television so we’re watching some scheduled programs with adverts and I’ve been struck, after reading the book, by how all women in adverts are so slim and tall looking. Now I can see that McDonalds wouldn’t want an advert in which fat people order a meal, are asked if they want to “go large” and respond enthusiastically, but there must be some way products can be promoted as aspirational without all buyers being portrayed as thin people.

That’s the limit of my typing time. Hope to see you in October.

Score 8.

Chris

2022-May&June Lorna Doone & Now is the Time

 Not a lot to say about Lorna Doone, only two of us on the zoom meeting. I will finish it one day as I am enjoying it, but have had to get on with other books meantime. 

Now is the Time  by Melvyn Bragg

1381 and the king wants more taxes. Bowman Walter Tyler has had enough and so have so many others, Wat, John Ball (Priest) and Jack Straw from Essex lead their parties in to London to negotiate with the king. When they think that they have won concessions from the king he turns on them and an almighty purge of the dissidents around the country happens. A regrettable part of our history.

We all enjoyed this book after we got over the beginning couple of chapters. It was well researched and written.  Our marks averaged at 9. 

2022-April - The Cut Out Girl by Bart Van Es

Once again, as nobody else has written up this book, it is up to me using the notes that I took as we discussed it last night. 

It was a memorable book. Rather than saying that we enjoyed it, it was more fascinated  by the story.

It was a combination of fiction woven around non-fiction events and very hard to tell the change. 

The story was  about a little jewish girl that was taken on by the author's grandparents during the war, and was written around a number of interviews that he did with Lien, where he then roams around the districts that she mentions and sees how they have changed since the war. I don't know whether he embellishes the stories that Lien tells him, or if he frees up her memory to tell him more as time goes on. He fills up the book with the background history of the way that the Nazis behaved in the Netherlands during the war, and what they did to the Jews. 

Lien is treated as any other child in the Van Es household except for the rapes by the uncle. She must have been very traumatised by that time as she just accepts what happens to her. 

As an adult she falls out with Ma Van Es, partly becauee of her divorce and for other reasons, but in later life she is healed by meeting other children who were hidden like her, and also meeting a friend from her early schooling. 

Comments from us: 

The hsitory of Jews in Holland, Quite long in some ways becasue of this added material.

I couldn't tell if it was a biography of Lien, or a history of Jewish Holland. Holland had been very receptive to Jews and all other peoples before the war. 

H. thought ti was absolutely brilliant. It  was based on a true story and an interweaving of fiction and non-fiction.

P. found it frustrating. the hook into the book was the falling out over such a trivial thing. and how the girl was traumatized.  It is a book I will remember, some of it quite harrowing, but a happy ending. 

L. Survival with deprivation. 

Author : Extremely blunt stuff about Holland - How would the book go over in Holland?

H. Relevance of book with respect to 2022 ukraine

B. Interesting but not engaging. almost just a list of events.[5]  Liked style but not brilliantly written. 

Our marks averaged at 7. Would we recommend the book - hard to say. 

2022 - March - Prague Nights - Benjamin Black

Some links to interesting things in the book that I had to look up. 

https://www.gigaplaces.com/en/place-confluence-of-the-elbe-and-vltava-in-melnik/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_planetary_motion

It was a marmite book, some enjoyed it and some didn't. Not as bad as cleaning the oven was one comment.   3 marks at the 2 level and 5 at 6/7. Average 5. 

A good comment was that they got to feel the language, enjoyed as a light read, lots of characters, and good atmosphere of the court.

Otherwise it was poorly written, almost as  the second book of a two book deal.  Others felt nothing for any of the characters and weren't drawn into it. Not enough precise detail.   I couldn't fathom  who-dun-it.

2022- February - 2 books, The Behaviour of Moths (Adams) and Educated(Westover, Tara)

 Behaviour of Moths by Adams

Just a  few notes that I made during the discussion.   Neitehr Chris nor I read it due to time constraints on the loan.

It needed a good editor. It was a bit of a slog

It was peculiar, someone commented that it reminded her of A.S. Byatt.

Something a bit wrong with Vivi, was she autistic? She had to be trained to use teh correct facial expressions

It is a different book, not recommended to others as some parts were a bit gruesome. 

Marks averaged at 5.

Educated  by Tara Westover

 Our retired teacher found it hard to beleive.

The book was well written. Clear and simple writing.

Chris commented about how different Americans are . How passioante in their beliefs. A lot to do with religion.

She persuaded people that she needed help, and people everywhere gave her the help she needed. How helpful academia was, getting scholarships, having time out etc. 

2 Points - Brother leg burnt, and Shears. Different peoples understanding  of events in retrospective. 

Her mother wrote a book called Educating. 

MArks 7/7/7/8/8 -  7.5

2022-January Home Fires

 Home Fires by Kamila  Shamsie. 

A reworking of Antigone in a modern setting. 

My notes: According to the notes, a modern reworking of Antigone. Two Muslim families in Britain, one two sisters and a twin brother who joins ISIS and is killed when he tries to leave, and the other the Home Secretary and his son who has fallen for the twin sister. How the Home Secretary is being steadfast in his treatment of terrorists, but his son goes to the aid of his love, with disastrous results.  I found that the first section did not grab me, but on prompting I kept reading and was really caught up in it. I can't say enjoyed it, but I did find it fascinating. At the same time I was reading 'Walk in My Combat Boots' which was recollections of american soldiers of their time in the army, much of it in Afghanistan & Iraq, and how the soldirers tried to help the locals. This contrasted heavily with the Isis treatment of the book. 

This book got high marks from all of us - 8's and a 9. 

It was well written and we thought that we could be sympathetic to all the characters, though I think a bit less to the older daughter.  It was very clever on the conversion of the characters from Antigone to the modern day. It was a broad and far reaching story, and it has kept us thinking about it after finishing it - always a good sign.

Would we read another of hers? Yes, but we need a gap, it was too intense.