2023 - January - Sweet Sorrow by David Nichols

 It's a coming of age saga of a teenage boy in England I think, totally unrecognizable as anything like my growing up.  Consider it a modern Romeo and Juliet  around a performance of Romeo and Juliet.  

It has some good phrases. I liked "those who pass off Pesto as a vegetable".

As I read it I do recognise some experiences from my growing up, like the watching the world spin around you when you are so drunk.  What was the other that I was going to mention?  Oh yes, he describes falling off his bike as when time went very slowly - Not my experience at all. 

Amy's idea to make it into a coffee shop was brilliant, just 20 years too early. I don't know why it failed. 

I struggled a bit because he  started to tell his new love Niamh about those times, and then it wasn't dialogue but telling the story as if he was running it through his head again. I like the way he went to the reunion and came away happy having seen Fran happy. 

P: I have read another of this author’s books, One Day and absolutely loved it (would probably give it a 8-9) so I had high hopes for this which regrettably weren’t met  It was good, I thought the character development was very good and I enjoyed getting into the mind of an adolescent boy!  I enjoyed the writing style and I quite enjoyed the story, though it felt a bit chick-flick B movie.  But like I said, I was comparing it to something else and if I wasn’t, I might have scored it higher. Mark 7.

other marks 7, 7, 8.5

2022 - December - Absolute Proof by Peter James

 My comments: Bit of an Indiana Jones/ Dan Brown story. Investigator retired doctor gets journalist hero involved in researching absolute proof that God exists. He has to go to three places to gather the evidence, but somehow two sets of bad guys who don't want this sort of stuff revealed or want to use it for their own purposes are after him with deadly intent. I jumped the middle part of the book, and he gets to the last stage where a magician saves his life and gets killed himself, and then a huge manifestation from God appears, but Ross's piece in The Times is downgraded. end of story.

P:  It was a very easy read and the story was quite interesting, but I. really didn’t enjoy the laborious writing style.  Felt like far too much unimportant description that added nothing to the story.  It was a relief to get to the end of a very long book and it felt like nothing would have been lost of it was shorter.  I quite liked the ending as it wasn’t conclusive and left you thinking, but not sure it was worth it for me. Mark: 5

so Marks - 5/5/5

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.