2017-October- I am China by Xiaolu Guo

I AM CHINA - XIAOLU GUO

Iona Kirkpatrick lives in a flat in North London and is contracted to translate from Chinese to English, the letters and diaries of Mu and Jian.

These two had a strong relationship in China but have become separated and estranged after the birth of a child who died, we are not informed of this event until quite late on in the book. The letters and diaries reflect the strain and their feelings for one another.

Jian becomes an agitator against Chinese authority and takes part in Tianamen Square demonstrations attracting the attention of his father, a senior politician, resulting in him banning his son from China. Mu looses contact with him and feeling abandoned goes back to live with her parents. She enjoys writing poetry and somehow is able to leave her family to begin touring in the USA.

Jian was sent to England and arrived in Dover to be detained in an immigration  camp for many months before being transferred to Switzerland.

Moving on from there to France,  Greece and the Greek Islands.

There are very mixed feelings about this book but all agreed it was difficult to get into because of constantly referring backwards/ present time and found this particularly irritating. Some gave up because of it others continued to enjoy the story and insight into China in modern history, where education for girls was not considered necessary and difficult to obtain. Therefore for a Chinese woman to achieve success as a novelist is a major accomplishment in its own right, particularly in English Language.

There are some doubtful phrases including Jian's letter to, and reply from the Queen. His ability to travel across Europe seemingly un hindered and Mu's ability to tour the USA with her poetry.

Marks varied from 3(1) to 9(2) with an overall average of 6.

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Maggies review:

I enjoyed reading this although I found the movement between voices and times hard to start with.

I felt that the innermost feelings of Jian,Mu and Iona were extremely well portrayed with beautiful language. In particular the experience of Jian,cut adrift from his family and state came across with all of his anger and despair. I found a parallel in this with Iona's own unhappiness - manifested in meaningless casual sexual encounters.

The book moved me to tears in several places - with the sad hopelessness of Jian and Mu's separation; and the loss of their child as well as  Mu's description of her father's dying days.

I liked the way in which parts of modern Chinese history were woven into the storytelling - some of it quite chilling.

There were a couple of things that I found irritating - Jian's letter to the Queen which seemed to indicate a naive understanding of democracy given his political idealism in China. But even more the supposed reply from HM.

I'm also not convinced that Iona's stumbling upon her father with his mistress would have been enough to colour her adult attitudes and behaviours in the way this is implied. At 15 would she have been so traumatised by this that she would as an adult treat sexual liaisons almost as a way of punishing herself. Or have I got that wrong?

Overall though I found this a thoroughly good read with well drawn characters, a compelling story line and wonderful use of language. It's a book which really made me think about modern China and its influence in the world.

My score is 9

I hope you all enjoy discussing it - I'm really sorry that I can't  be there to hear what everyone has to say and whether others liked it as much as I did.

Second Review:
Dear All

I am really sorry to be missing this discussion. It was good to have something more challenging. I agree with all Maggie’s comments, especially the quality of the writing. I had the luck in the Library to find Xiaolu Guo’s autobiography “Once upon a time in the East”, and think you would all find it as interesting as I did. It says a great deal about the Chinese Education system that a girl whose primary education was in a small, poor isolated fishing village, living with an illiterate grandmother, was eventually, from a provincial urban secondary school, able from 6000 applicants to gain one of 11 places at Beijing Film school, and later to master English in the way that she has, and devise complex structures for her story. To be one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists in 2013 is an amazing achievement. The book itself is a great addition to our repertoire of migrant stories, and the counterpoint between the leaver & remainer (!) very clever.

I too would give it 9.

And mine: 

I don't like this book, but you do want to know what happens to Jian and Mu. The author must have a very low opinion of British women, the way that she makes the translator Iona go out periodically to get a quickie from any male she can, even if it is in a hovel. There are too many stories in here, and they are all over the pace timewise. We have Iona's story, the random transcriptions of Mu and Jian's letters, and the stories of what Jian and Mu are doing at different times. Jian's is almost chronological, but in the past compared with the Iona story and moving at a faster rate. My feeling is that it is a feminist book, as none of the men seem any good.  

2017- September - Mightier than the Sword - J. Archer

Mightier than the sword- Jeffery Archer                             September 2017

This book was the fourth in a set of 6, which although slightly off putting at first did in fact stand alone as a novel with enough detail about characters and earlier events to enable readers to make sense of the story.

This was about a wealthy family of shipowners whose cruise liner narrowly escaped being sunk by IRA bombers on its maiden voyage. Events subsequently centred around the directors' attempts to stop the story getting out to protect the company's reputation. In turn this provided fertile ground for blackmail and extortion on the part of the 'baddies' on the board of directors. 

In a side story the son of the female chair of the board, a mercenary young man loses his fiancée after failing to honour a promise to an elderly historian schoolteacher who provides him with essential information. His mother at the same time is being sued for libel by the ex-wife of her husband. 

At the conclusion of the story neither of these side plots is resolved leaving the readers feeling that the series might be part of a cynical effort on the part of the author to sell the next book or even better the serialisation rights.

The five members of the reading group who were present agreed that the book was lightweight and the plot and characters somewhat contrived. Nevertheless the author succeeded in 'reeling us in' to the extent that we cared what happened to the more sympathetic characters and felt antipathy towards the cheats and scoundrels. Overall it was an undemanding read and not a book that anyone felt they would recommend to others; although one or two had read earlier volumes in the series and felt they were better. 

Scores : average 6 ( range 5 to 7 )

2017-August - Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

We  expected not to like it, thinking it was chick-lit, but were drawn in by the need to know what happened.  There were lots of good laughs. We felt it was true to life anywhere with slight exaggeration to highlight effects.

There were three of the disturbing aspects of life that were addressed by this book:
        - Wife beating
        - Bullying
        - Children of split families

It was quite real and quite disturbing the effect on children of switching between families, and also the effect on the split parents.

It was cleverly constructed in showing how Max the bullier had seen his father hitting his mother, and Bonnie reacting because she had had similar experience.

The characters were distinctive and in the main likeable, though  Mrs Ponder only appeared at the beginning and the end. Some of us thought that there could have been more of her.  The teachers were very well drawn.

It was 'not badly written'. We liked the clever device of including snippets of peoples testimony throughout. This also highlights the way rumours spread and the damage that they can do. [ A fourth aspect of life addressed by the book]

At the end - A self-evident truth that a hairdo makes woman.

Would we read another of hers? Very likely.  It has shades of Jodie Picoult in taking up a cause and highlighting it.

This month all 8 of use were present, and the marks were 6*8, 7 &6, so average just below 8.

2017- July - To Rise again at a decent Hour by Joshua Ferris

This book is the stream of consciousness flowing through the mind of a Manhattan dentist while someone is trying to steal his identity and he becomes involved in a fake religion.

They said:

….at its best it is enormously impressive: profoundly and humanely engaged :with the mysteries of belief and disbelief, linguistically agile and wrong footing, and dismayingly funny in the way that only serious books can be.

The Guardian

…at once laugh-out-loud funny about the absurdities of the modern world, and indelibly profound about the eternal questions of the meaning of life, love and truth. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is a deeply moving and constantly surprising tour de force.

WWW goodreads

…wit so sharp, its fake-biblical texts so clever and its reach so big……a major achievement

New York Times

A serious inquiry into the condition of a human soul.

Financial Times

WE said:

The stream is heavily polluted

Why am I reading this?

Sordid

“Funny” - no way!

Do not appreciate the tenor of the discourse

A mind like a sewer and no wish to spend time in a sewer

Insulted by it

No redeeming features

Unmemorable ending

6 people started the book - only 2 people got all the way through. The rest gave up between page 33 and page 60.

There was general agreement that:

it did not deserve any mark at all: 0, zero, nothing, zilch, rien, nul points!

(There were mutters - was this choice “the Revenge of Liz”?)

PS Credit where it is due!

Sadly this singular novel is all mouth and not quite enough trousers. The Independent

2017-May - The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf

These are my notes on the book, as there were only three at the meeting and nobody did notes.

An excellent Biography of Alexander Von Humboldt and his travels and explorations. A 10 by any scientific person's scoring. His researches and books stimulated so many people, and there are chapters on some of these, Charles Darwin, Thoreau, Marsh, who influenced Muir who found the national Parks movement to prevent man from destroying nature. That is his main theme. Wulf writes very well.

2017-June - Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

The novel tells the story of Eitan, an Israeli neuro-surgeon, who, exhausted after a 19 hour shift at the hospital, finds himself involved in a fatal SUV collision in which he hits an illegal immigrant from Eritrea. In that isolated moment in time, he makes a decision which proves to be life changing for him. He leaves the fatally wounded man to die at the roadside.

Unknown to him, the accident was witnessed by the Eritrean’s wife and she begins to extort Eitan for his medical skills and he is forced to surround himself with deception for the price for her silence. This sets the scene of the underlying theme of power throughout the narrative of the book and its misuse. It is a story of secrets based on the unspoken.

There is a tension to the story as it revolves around the emotionally charged triangle of Sirkit the widow, Eitan and his wife Liat, with the dramatic irony that Liat is the police officer investigating the hit and run incident. The book is threaded through with themes of guilt, shame and racial intolerance, with gestures towards wider political themes, including a sub-plot involving the Bedouin Arabs.

Opinions within the reading group were varied, as is reflected in the score but there was general agreement that the overuse of psychological analysis became tedious, making it a dense and slowly paced read. In addition, although the text raised many searing moral questions and dilemmas, the third narrative dampened the emotion and didn’t really evoke any real empathy towards any of the characters.

One of us, although not present, had read the book, reported it as not very memorable.

Score: 6.3

2017 April - The Green Road by Anne Enright

The Green Road – Anne Enright

The consensus about this book is that it wasn’t very good, and was a waste of time.

Quite confusing – One of us finished it but didn’t know how she felt about it.

So much of it was left unsaid and unresolved.

There was so much that you don’t know or learn.

Didn’t enjoy it. It was not the way that you hope families will go.

She (the mother) was a selfish woman and made Maggie so cross. The whole book doesn’t bring out a picture of Rosaleen at all.

No route or roadmap through the story. It was disjointed and almost like a set of short stories.

Waded all through it and not got a proper ending.

Don’t understand why it was necessary to be so explicit about Dan’s homosexual adventures or about Constance at the hospital.

However, there was some lovely descriptive writing, some nice touches, for example about the shopping.

LW said that overall it was an unsatisfactory book – some bits could be left out and some bits needed to be added.

A final statement: very descriptive – BUT.

Marks came out to be just below 5.