September 2014- And the Mountains Echoed - For Whom the Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls   - Ernest Hemingway

Spain during the civil war. Roberto and Maria; Pilar and Pablo, fascists and republicans, Anselmo, Sordo, farmers, gypsies and bullfighters. Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. The earth moved. Powerful story telling, vivid imagery, a love story. This is a long slow narrative telling the story of a lifetime that is lived over 4 days. We feel the raw emotions and can see the grimness of war. There is loyalty, obedience, and trust together with suspicion and treachery amongst comrades. The language is rich, particularly the dialogue which reflects the Spanish idiom of the area. Pilar’s descriptions are compulsive and horrifying.

Those of us who had read it were pleased that we had. Chris probably wishes he had read it. Deserves to be a classic? Too expletive right!!

5 – 9(3 x 9!!)

Average 8                                                                                                       RJP 28/10/14

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And the Mountains Echoed

This is a series of stories that are linked both with Afghanistan and with each other. In each story there is a strong relationship between two characters, and throughout there is a poignant theme of opportunities missed. This is poetic story telling. Chris loved it!

Abdullah and Pari, brother and sister, living in poverty in the country, are parted when Pari is sold to Nila, a wealthy but unreliable woman who is married to Suleiman who is gay. Nabi is chauffeur and cook to Suleiman, who loves him, but this love is unrequited.. Nabi stays loyal into old age, eventually inheriting Suleimans house. Idris and Timur are cousins, one introspective, thoughtful and kind, the other outgoing and superficial, but it is the outgoing one who makes the difference to Roshi’s life. Adel is the son of a warlord and Gholam the son of a poor refugee, who has returned to claim his land and is murdered as a result. Markus and Thalia have a lifelong bond, and one suspects that his decision to become a plastic surgeon is driven by her facial injuries caused by a dog attack in childhood. Markus lives in Suleiman’s ruined house in Kabul which he rents from Nabi. Pari eventually remembers and finds her brother Abdullah, but not until after he has become demented. Lots of characters, some very sympathetic, in plots that interlink.

We all enjoyed it, but Oonagh had found that it did not stick in the memory. There was irritation because it jumped backward and forward in time, but it was generally a "reasonable read" and looking at the marks, we clearly all enjoyed it!

Score 8 (6 - 8)                                                                                 RJP 28/10/14

August 2014 - Cold Comfort Farm & The Spoils of Poynton

Cold Comfort Farm             Stella Gibbons (Published 1932)

Read and discussed by Minster Readers August 2014.

In England in the early 1930's, 20 year old socialite Flora Poste, recently orphaned is left with only 100 pounds a year and nowhere to live. Against the advice of her friend Mrs Smiling, she goes to live with long lost relatives on Cold Comfort Farm at the 'invitation' of her aunt subsequently discovered to be her cousin Judith Starkadder. The interesting aspects of Judith's invitation are that she wants to atone for a wrong committed on Robert Poste, Flora's father, but she will not divulge what that wrong was; and that she and her family will not leave the farm since a Starkadder has always lived on Cold Comfort Farm.

Flora arrives to find Cold Comfort Farm exceedingly ramshackle and peopled by a number of eccentric characters. These include:

:- Aunt Ada Doom (her mother's aunt) who dominates and controls life on the farm from the bedroom in which she has lived a reclusive existence for 20 years after seeing 'something nasty in the woodshed'

:- Amos Starkadder, who is Judith's husband, the farmer and a fanatical hellfire and brimstone preacher.

There are 3 adult offspring of this union: Seth who is perceived by women as God's gift but is more interested in watching movies, Reuben who yearns to take over the farm from his father and the ethereal and otherworldly Elphine.

Another key character is the 90 year old cowman and general dogsbody Adam Lambsbreath who is devoted to the cows Graceless, Feckless, and Aimless but nevertheless fails to notice when bits of their bodies rot and fall off.

Flora sets out to improve things on the farm which she accomplishes in fairly short order through her manipulative scheming and silver tongued harangues ( with minimal assistance from a few London friends and acquaintances and an elastic £100). Her gift to the residents of Cold Comfort Farm is to set each free to follow their dreams.

Everyone in the group thoroughly enjoyed this book which is a witty and rich parody of life in rural England,

in spite of the fact that we never find out what injustice was done to Robert Poste – apart from a troubling reference to the unknown fate of a goat.

Nor do we learn what it was that Aunt Ada Doom actually saw in the wood shed – but an image of this large old lady dressed in flying leathers more than makes up for it! In fact the whole tale is punctuated by hilarious and colourful images of life on the farm – those especially mentioned included the cow hobbling on 3 legs after one fell off; and Adam Lambsbreath 'clettering' the dishes with a bunch of twigs.

The use of some unusual and sometimes invented words added to our appreciation and without reference to a dictionary there was no misunderstanding what Seth was up to ' mollocking' around.

We generally felt, that the names of the characters greatly added to the enjoyment of the piece -including the as yet unmentioned Mr Mybug, the author who bugs Flora; and Mrs Beetle the bustling cook and general factotum.

The wholly fictitious flowering 'Sukebind' deserves a mention not least for its role in the annual pregnancies of Miriam Beetle! We were also amused by her screams of agony on the day after her labour in order to secure an extra day off work.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable and amusing read.

Average score: 8          Range 6 to 10

The Spoils of Poynton           Henry James

This story features the widowed Mrs Gereth who over the years has furnished her home - Poynton - in grand style. On the death of her husband her son Owen inherits the property and its contents. Meanwhile Mrs Gereth adopts a young companion - Felda - who shares her passion for Poynton and its valuables. Mrs Gereth hopes that Felda and Owen will marry in spite of the fact that he is betrothed to another. His intended appears not to value the house and its contents but estranges herself from Owen when his mother removes all the contents to her dower home in Essex. (Owen has permitted his mother to take the pieces special to her but hasn't expected total denudation!)

Owen professes his love for Felda (eventually) but is not willing to break off his engagement. This would have been a breach of promise. When Mrs G returns the spoils of Poynton, Owen marries his intended and goes to live abroad. Felda receives a letter from him inviting her to select any item from Poynton in his absence and she visits the house to make her choice only to find that it has burned down.

On the whole we found this book a difficult read with its old fashioned language and phrasing. The group whilst acknowledging the complexity of the language employed by James were somewhat underwhelmed by the story line and plot. The characters on the whole were felt to be believable but it was hard to empathise with the wimpish Owen or the manipulative Mrs Gereth. (Did people really feel that way about possessions?) All could see however that the situations in the novel were a result of the historical context and it's social mores. Both Felda as a young impoverished single women and the widowed mother were socially disadvantaged (and out manoeuvred by the fiancée and her mother).

We did not recognise this book as a classic James masterpiece. But we discussed why it might be regarded as such by others – perhaps as a story of manners? Doing the right thing for the social times? We were not all convinced of the authenticity of the female viewpoint as depicted by a male author

Average score: just under 5          Range: 2 to 9

July 2014 - Wool and You before Me

WOOL    by Hugh Howey

It's a post apocalyptic dystopia . The planet has been turned into a radioactive wasteland and the several thousand-strong group of people who have lived for generations in a 144 story underground silo believe they are the only people left alive. Their society is rigidly stratified along medieval European lines: the lowest floors are where the workers live, generating power, making things and growing food; the middle floors are the domain of the IT department which acts as a priesthood and possesses the ancient book of rules for how life must be lived within the silo, and the upper floors are where the administrators live and work.

The heroine of the story is Juliet, a sassy no-nonsense engineer, who is plucked from her comfort zone and support network in the lowest of the low levels to become Sheriff of the silo with an office on the top floor. Readers immediately sense that if any problem or crisis can be dealt with by grit, ingenuity, hard work and engineering know-how then Juliet's surprise appointment is bad news for the bad guys.

The bad guy turns out to be power hungry Bernard [head of IT] who, not content with being the shadow power behind the throne, plots his way to become Mayor as well. Juliet is the only thorn in his side and he trumps up charges against her for which the penalty is exile from the silo wearing a protective suit. What nobody outside of IT knows is that the suits are deliberately made with sub-standard materials and only protect the wearer long enough for them to go through the strange tradition of cleaning the silo's window on the outside world and stumble away for a few hundred yards before collapsing. Exile is death. Juliet, however, has worked this out and tricks IT into giving her a suit made from proper materials supplied by her friends in engineering. She escapes, finds another silo, helps the handful of survivors in it,discovers that there are many more silos and that the IT heads of each have been in radio contact with each other from the beginning. Meanwhile, back in the old silo, the revolution has begun.

Our opinions were mixed. We all agreed that it started well.The society it introduced us to was interesting and the characters were engaging. Most of us thought it dragged a bit in the middle but half of us thought they would want to read the next part of the trilogy. One reader loved it. Others had specific niggles including: how did the servers keep going off so long?( perhaps a bit of professional pride being hurt here ) ; the understandable complaint from a largely over-60s reading group that there were too many stairs and a minority interpretation that it was all about tomatoes .

Marks: average 7            range 5-8

--------------------------
You Before Me     by Jojo Moyes

It's basically a simple story.
Will is a young man who has it all. He's a mover and shaker in global finance. A typical day involves buying an under- performing company before breakfast, re-structuring it before lunch and selling it at a huge profit in the afternoon before letting off steam by skydiving into his seat at a 5 star alfresco restaurant to the rapturous applause of the other diners and the adoring gaze of his blonde model girlfriend. He works hard to play hard. That's what he always dreamed his life would be and he's made it happen.

Then he gets hit by a vehicle and wakes up to the prospect of living the rest of his life as a quadriplegic, dependent on other people to feed him, empty his catheter and prevent him developing bed sores.

Does Will react to this drastic change of circumstances by regarding it as a new and ultimate challenge that he can overcome by employing his amazing battery of life-skills? No, dear Minster Readers, he does not. He feels that, with no prospect of physical recovery, this is not a life he wants to live and tells his parents that he wants to go to a clinic in Switzerland to die. The most his parents can do is to persuade him to live another six months so that he gives himself some chance to adjust and find a reason to live. During this time he will need a paid companion.

Enter Louise, a rough diamond from the poor part of town. Louise is under pressure. She lives with her parents and single-mum sister with whom she has an intense love/hate relationship. Her dad is about to be made redundant with little prospect of getting a new job at  his age, her sister wants the family to fund her to go to law school to make something of herself, her mother works at home all hours so their cleaning, ironing and outside catering bills are kept to a minimum, but when Lou loses her well loved job as a waitress in the local cafe the future looks grim. Desperate for work she turns up to be interviewed by Will's mum for the post of companion to Will. Her main qualification appears to be a flair for quirky clothing combinations but, in a rare moment of inspiration, Will's mother appoints her on the spot and the love story begins.

At this point some of us inwardly groaned as we anticipated several hundred pages of true love not running smooth. They would start off curious about each other, then have an almost terminal bust up, get back together and one  develop feelings of affection for the other which needed to be hidden etc. until mutual glorious love eventually reigned supreme. We read on to find out that it went something like that, but not quite.

At the same time as the love story begins so too does the polemic about the problems faced by severely physically disabled people and a discussion among the characters about the rights and wrongs of assisted suicide. Again, at this point some of us feared that this could become too heavy handed.

But our fears on both counts were largely groundless. The book turned out to be a lot better than we expected and we  all enjoyed reading it. From a literary point of view we all agreed that Moyes had chosen the right ending. His death adds an urgency to the moral debate which a so-called happy ending wouldn't. Many of us recalled scenes that we loved including the meeting with the ex-girlfriend; the wedding dance and their goodbye session. We were touched by how he had used his time to broaden her horizons.

Marks.   Average.  6              Range.      6-7

2014 June - A lady Cyclists Kashgar trip, and Seb Faulks short stories

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.

May 2014- Where Angels Fear to Tread and Unaccustomed Earth

Where Angels fear to Tread.                     E.M.Forster

This book, Forster’s first published novel, rather surprised the Group.

It concerned an Edwardian middleclass English family who had  been reluctant to accept their son’s choice of bride on the grounds of her lower class status and lack of accomplishments. When, after fathering a daughter, he unexpectedly died, they became concerned at the looming prospect of her choosing a dentist as a second husband.

To avoid this seemingly catastrophic event she was persuaded to make a visit to Italy. Shock! Horror! She there met and married an extremely minor Italian aristocrat, bore him a son and died.

These facts being generally known back in Britain, the family began to fear that they would be perceived as not doing their moral duty by the boy, as they were already doing by his half-sister, if they did not take an interest in him. Accordingly the son, his sister and the mother’s companion set out to rescue him from the fate of being brought up by an Italian father.

Various events led to a melodramatic kidnap of the child who was then unfortunately thrown out of the vehicle in which they were fleeing with him and killed.

There was general agreement in the Group that the plot was ludicrous in the extreme, but that there were occasional glimpses of the writer to come.

The presentation of the various social settings was often wryly funny, the importance to the characters of conscience, responsibility and respectability was well presented, and the descriptive passages vivid.

Marks 1 5 6 4 5 6 3 Average 4

 ++++++++++++++++++++

Unaccustomed Earth                        Jumpha Lahiri

The Group had already read “The Namesake” by the same author, and these short stories echoed its themes of alienation and integration. 5 short stories were followed by 3 linked ones. Most of the Group had read them one after the other and felt that the impact of any individual one had been diminished by their repetitive nature. Any one of them read singly would, however, be appreciated as a vivid portrayal of a particular and distinctive example of the common problem.

The culture and generational clashes varied from story to story and affected a range of characters which the group felt were brilliantly evoked in a few sentences. Cultural expectations might lead to marital difficulties; old traditions to surprising developments; education to separation; maladjustment to alcoholism; ignorance to misunderstanding; parental ambition to student rebellion. Although happy occasions were described from time to time, every story contained sadness, loss or betrayal, which “pulled at the heart” because its description was beautifully written.

Marks. 8 8 9 8 7 8 4    Average 7.5                                               (OL)

April 2014 - Rachel Hore- The Silent Tide & Pat Barker - Toby's Room

The Silent Tide                      Rachel Hore

This book was not well received by the majority of the group, it had comments like ‘chicklite’, rubbish, no depth and pretentious. Others were a little kinder, a relaxing and reasonably competent read, non-demanding, non- pretentious, a real mixture in fact. We felt the facts were incorrect, and we didn’t care enough about the characters.

There were two love stories intertwined in with a mild mystery thrown in, one was about the writer Hugh Morton and his first wife Isobel who he wood and wedded, the second was about his biographer Joel and his editor Emily. The parallels were that both men were writers and both female characters were their editors.

The story about Hugh, Isobel, daughter Lorna and his second wife Jacqueline was interesting but tedious, this could have been condensed. The love story concerning Emily, Joel and ex lover Mathew was immaterial except that Emily kept unearthing facts about Hugh and Isobel’s life together, with more than a little help from Lorna.

It started with a well written chapter and ended with such a highly unlikely one.

Marks ranged from 0 to 6 (1 six, 4 fives, 1 four, 1 three, 1 two, 1 nil = 35) which brings the mark to 3.5

DRW　

                    Toby’s Room               

Pat Barker

We as a group had different thoughts about this book, some thought it was a well crafted book and enjoyed it, but others didn’t like her writing style. The main complaint was the slipping from one scene to another, sometimes in the same paragraph.
The main characters were Toby, Elinor, Kit and Paul. Toby’s character was not liked by the group, we didn’t have any feeling for Elinor either, Kit was well drawn and Paul made up the foursome as he was infatuated with Elinor, and allowed her to use him.

The book was set around WWI, it depicted the horrendous life in the trenches in France, this was well researched and documented, the atmosphere portrayed was just right. We also read about the effect the war had on certain elements of British society, and in the social circles the foursome belonged to many were pacifists with no thought of the war at all. The German people who had settled in Britain before the war were treated with suspicion, by people and the British Government, their movements were restricted. Life was difficult for them.

The book focused on two areas the incestuous relationship between the brother and sister, Toby and Elinor, which some felt difficult to read. Elinor was obsessed with Toby an Officer in the Medical Corp, when he was declared ‘Missing in Action’ she needed to know how he died and selfishly took every opportunity to find out.

The other area was the on the facial surgery of the injured. Elinor an artist, who took classes of anatomy and dissection during her college course, enable her to work at a specialist hospital helping to reconstruct the soldiers faces who had been injured in the war, by drawing their injured faces enabling surgeons to carry our the necessary operations. It was also to delve into Toby‘s death. Many in the group found this aspect of the book fascinating, a discussion took place between some members regarding the differences between treatment then and now, and how things have changed in this specialist area over the years. During WWI  reconstruction surgery was mainly experimental, the description of the smell and work of dissection in the book was as some of our members remembered.

How Kit, a pacifist who was drafted into the Medical Corp. as a stretcher bearer, dealt with his horrific injuries, his treatment, and the impact it had on his life was a story in itself.

This was really bleak book, the marks ranged from 5 to 8 (1-five, 5-sixes, 3 sevens, 1 eight = 64) which brings the mark to 6.5.

DRW

MArch 2014 -Follett- Winter of the world.

Winter of the World is the sequel to Fall of Giants coincidentally also by Ken Follett. It's a historical novel based around the events preceding and during World War II. It follows these events from the point of view of various people and families based in Germany, Russia, Britain and the US; it also takes in the Spanish Civil War. Coincidence is in fact rather the name of the game because these characters have to interact with each other so they meet up in various theatres of war and at most important historical events under slightly contrived circumstances. They are also rather all-knowing about everything going on around them. 

However to quote our very own sage 'knowing what was likely to come next and a surfeit of coincidences did not prevent (one) from being carried along with the rapid stream of the story, which did not give time to pause and think about its credibility. I would say the individual episodes, coincidences apart are fairly realistic, and that the book does give a real sense of the way in which situations were continually changing and affecting not only people's personal lives but how the world would be in the future'.

This book affected different members of the group in different ways; one member found it rather
disappointing after enjoying the previous book and admitted to being somewhat bored by it.
Another member was so drawn into the story that they felt personally bereaved when the German, Walter, was killed. It was generally felt though that there was a good range of characters.

One of our group commented on how the side story of the detective work and bravery shown
surrounding the prevention of the continuing murder of the handicapped and Jews from hospitals made for an exciting subplot, maybe because this was one historical event of which we did not already know the outcome.

One or two people felt a slight anti-British bias which prevented them from wholly enjoying the
book.


Marks ranged from 4 to 7 giving an average of 6 1/2

It was commented that it reminded one very much of “The Winds of War” by Herman Wouk (author of “The Caine Mutiny).