2021 - March - Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng.

Shortly after I started this book I thought  that Izzy had done the best thing possible to that all-american perfect family home.  It is an interesting contrast between the two concepts of free to travel and absorb life anywhere and  living in the same regimented manner from birth to death in the community of your ancestors and hoping that your children, who are moulded in your shape, would follow the same path. 

The movie makes Mia out to be black but I see her and Pearl as Japanese-American types. 

I didn't really like the book, but I was forced to finish it to find out what happened. Did Mia and Pearl ever talk about the abortion? Did Lexie ever tell her mother - I doubt it. And the book is so full of misunderstandings of people. How did Bebe get a ticket to Canton - Not cheap. 

As I finished this book I was reminded of a song from long ago 'Little Boxes'    https://open.spotify.com/track/4VJrTc5QPr13zgkwxaTjjN?si=b382cc24c03b42da

Marks 5x6, 7 & 5 = 6.

Basic comments are quite enjoyed it, but unmemorable and unrealistic. Thought Mia was selfish in pursuit of 'art'. 

Pearl envied the Richardson's stable lifestyle

No sympathies for the adoptive mum of Bebe's baby. 

The mothering idea went through the whole book.  In some ways it was a comparison of motherhood.

Mia always called her  Mrs. Richardson, but as a landlord and employer one would, except maybe in Ohio. 

There was noticeably a lack of offialdom in looking after Pearl. 

And for Bebe, if you drop through the cracks there is no safety net

2021 - February - Narrow Road to the Deep North - Flanagan

Appreciated that it was a good Book, but Japanese stuff still brings back horrible thoughts. This is the starting comment from one of our 80+ readers, who remembers the Japanese behaviour in the war. 

C said " If I knew someone who had been there I wouldn't have been able to read it." I couldn't, and others couldn't take the horrors described in it. 

It was difficult knowing people who had suffered it. L said it was unpalatable, though there were lovely bits in it.

The characters were good and the places descriptions were good. It was a book of three parts. The secret him before the war and his love affairs, the middle bit which was his war, and the aftermath where he was trying to make sense of what happened. He couldn't help being a hero, but he got this pinned on him because he persisted in asking for help.  It explores how the japanese could be so inhumane.

C - A great book, so difficult, so good.

One of the few booker prizes that deserved it.

A good book, but not a nice book.

It was more real than the previous book 'The Beekeeper of Aleppo' .

However it did get good marks from those that could read it.

Maggie: do apologise: I totally forgot that we were meeting this evening. And very disappointed to have missed the opportunity to hear what everyone thought about The narrow road to the deep north.

For me it was an interesting and compelling read in spite of some of the truly horrific 

descriptions of thePOW camps. I felt that the characters were well drawn and believable. 

And it was interesting to get the insights into the perceptions of all the different characters 

especially the Japanese culture underpinning their behaviour.

As I’ve mentioned before, my husband was in several of these camps on the railway. And 

his telling of his experiences accorded entirely with the book.

I felt sorry for Dorrigo who had such an unfulfilled personal life. But it added an interesting dimension

to the book.

.

Daphne emailed me and probably all of us. She also found it a good read and would give it a 9. As 

would I. 

 

10, 9, 9,9 8, 

2021- January The Beekeeper of Alleppo - Christy Lefteri

From the first page you know that this is going to be a dispiriting book. It is about a man and his family who have to flee Syria and make their way to England. On the way he takes on a lone boy to replace his dead son. His wife is blind and very depressed.  I kept leaving the book and coming back to it as it was our reading group book. Chris gave up and went for something lighter.  He said that as you know early on that they have made it to the UK, what's the point of reading further. 

This was a criticism of the book by most readers, that it jumped around in place and time. O said that 'the structure was irritating'.

It was a traumatic story, certainly not escapism that most of us want inthese days of Covid. 

L found the bees interesting. They were, but not as someone said  'an allegory for life'. Another comment was that the book was about blindness, Afra's psychological blindness caused by the death of her son, and Nuri's emotional blindness due to the traumatic shocks that he has seen. Also throughout the book he was seeing things that didn't exist, like the little boy Mohammed. 

M did like the characters.  were they beleivable? Hard to say with Nuri seeing these young boys accompanying them that were fictitious

We couldn't understand how he kept that large amount of money safe during all his travels and the rough areas he was in. Also how did he get so much money, and what currency was it? 

At the end it all came rather fast as they got via the smuggler Italian passorts that meant that they were able to travel throughout the EU untroubled, and flew quickly from Greece to England. 

M says that she has recommended it to her otehr book group, but doesn't know that was such a good idea. It was a book selected for us by the librarian, not one we chose.

However the marks averaged at 7. 

 

2020- December Middle England - Jonathan Coe

It is a story about a family and their friends dated from 2011 through to 2018. It came across to me as vignettes of life not attached consecutively to each other and therefore not making a flowing story.  it was 'disjointed' , and tthough it was enjoyable reading, after one or two chapters it was easy to put down and there was no compunction to pick it up again, except in the hope that something might happen. 

As we have all lived through this period and it is fresh in our minds, the thought was expressed that it might later be useful to a Martian who was wanting to know what all the fuss was about during this period.  

It was the third book of a trilogy, which meant that we had not been introduced to some of the characters beforehand, and were expected to know their history.

A couple of readers said that they didn't like any of the characters. 

The writing was quite good though. 

My notes: Interactions within a family group and friends in the 2010-18 time period. It almost seems like little excerpts in life that he tries to link up. I read a bit, then think I'm bored, and come back later and read a bit more. Quite involved in trying to get to know the characters and see where the story is leading.

MS wrote about it: "Have finished the book for the second time and still can't make up my mind what I think about it.

Reading it was quite interesting but basically it was all modern history and I just feel there was not

much imagination in it. I wouldn't read it again but I will give it 6/7."

That was it. the mark was 6. 

Lots more discussion in our Zoom meeting about different topics instead of the book.  It got short shrift. 

2020-November The Lido by Libby (Elizabeth) Page

 This a love story. A love story about Rosemary and George, Rosemary and Kate, Rosemary and Kate and the Lido, and Kate and Jay.  Rosemary has been swimming at the Lido for 80 years, and when it is threatened with closure and sale to a big corporation that wants to make it into a tennis court and gym complex for residents of the big new apartments that they are going to build, Kate and Rosemary team up to try and stop it and pull in many of the local Brixton people, who you learn about through the book. Eventually Kate's editor pulls a cat out of the bag and helps to win a reprieve. 

This from Bartholemews Large Map of London dated 1994. Note the Lido in Brockwell Park. 

Comments from OL:

As for The Lido – GOLD STAR for the 87yr old heroine (note, I became one up on her last week)

As for the rest, I’m afraid the word was Tosh. How could any one believe that an advertisement on the bottom of a pool seen only from the sky would outbid a developer ? Predictable and fairly  readable up to that point.

Must admit that I am buying the paperback for my daughter-in-law who is a lido enthusiast.

In general the mark was 6 because it was an easy, feelgood read. 

2020-October - Wilding by Isabella Tree

Notes on this book.

Marks  7,7,7,7,8,8 = 7.

How the author and her husband took an ancestral property and stopped farming it, and let it return to the wild state. The book is very interesting, but overlong. Some parts of it are given in such great detail that you have to read it in sections. About how the history of the earth was not all forest cover, about Microrhizomes underground, about the effects of different types of earthworms. She makes a strong case for rewilding to restore trace elements iin the soil and food. At the end you feel that she is a real campaigner for rewilding Britain. I don't know that I would reread it, but I will certainly remember it, and i would pass it on.

Very well researched, We learnt a lot, glad we read it, but wouldn't have picked it up by ourselves.  There is so much that we ( and this means the world) don't know about  soil and fungus and the good and bad effects.  And who decides what is an alien species? 

It was well written, even if it did go into long detailed explanations of things. A comment that  they enjoyed the early bits but not the lists.

Chris had heard of it years ago and fancied going to visit. He suggests that after the current situation has passed that we all go on a road trip there, and then also to where the Crawdads sing! Otherwise A &C are keen to go, and when they do they will report back. 

Campaign for more organic farming? Getting Venison from the shop is a positive contribution, slight discussion here of grain versus grass fed cattle.  When we come out of the EU CAP, Britain will have to invent our own subsidy system.  we diverted to compare coastal erosion to chemicals on farm land. 

What I got out of it was that it was an experiment, keen on measuring the effects of what they did. It could not properly be called wilding as it was controlled wilding, like around the perimeters. 

 We think that they were ambivalent about the tourist industry effects, but they wanted to do it. Uncontrolled dogs on the land was mentioned. 

O didn't expect to enjoy it but she did. It was more interesting than expected, and not written in a sentimental way. The bureaucracy was quite interesting.  There is an argument in favour of this type of land management. 

[MArgaret] Hi All. Finished WILDING by Isabelle Tree and returned it to the library last week.

Mixed feelings really, did not like the begining with all the long and unreadable words although I suppose the history of agriculture was relevant.

The farm in Sussex was a huge risk to dispose of all his machinery and begin again, however he received help from many areas including Government financial help. The introduction of Longhorn cattle deer, pigs and reintroduction of others like beaver did work, along with allowing hedges to grow wild  with brambles, elder to give cover to seedling trees like the oak.Also it took several years to encourage more wildlife and while I enjoyed Chapter 16 and all the new species and would like to see more of nature allowed to prosper, but how many farmers could afford to drop everything and wait up to 10 years to see if the public would pay to view their achievements or would the government be expected to foot the bill. An interesting thought that the vitamin reductions in fruit and vegetables according to the author is too large if this is true. 

2020 - September - Where the Crawdads Sing

In August we read 'The Tattoist of Auschwitz'  and had a Zoom meeting. Nobody wrote up our thoughts. 

In September, because of the Coronavirus lockdown, the library didn't supply books, so we elected to read 'Where the Crawdads Sing' and again had a Zoom meeting. 

MS liked it, thought that it was exellent, liked the characters, liked the story, thought that it was believable. LS also liked the story and the descriptions and has even recommended it to another book club. 

CW thought that every cliche in the book was in this book, used very nicely. The friendly helpful Negro, the Atticus Finch lawyer, the bad boy and the good boy, lone girl makes good, all there. Very good, and worked well. As he said, the Author got away with it. 

Good descriptions of marsh life, I think he meant the wildlife.  Swamp Justice is what he called it, and was shocked that she got away with it.

AW said that the book spent a lot of time explaining why it wasn't possible, and then Kya did it. 

Chase was not a nice man. 

RP thought that kya looked at the situation like it was the animal world, remarking how the praying mantis ate her male partner. 

OL  thought that it ended like 'Transcriptions'. She enjoyed reading it, but criticisms came later.  As Maggie said, you had to suspend disbelief  while reading it.  I compared it to a Horatio Alger novel. 

Some of us though that it might have been Tate that murdered Chase. 

The people were real individuals. 

Kya was a victim of other peoples cowardice her whole life.

Grits, it wa siggested, were like Quinoa. Actually they are  a porrige made of fried cornmeal, commonly eaten for breakfast. 

Her  diet was discussed - Where did she get vitamins, she was lucky not to lose all her teeth at an early age, except that she didn't have sugar!

We had some discussion about whether this sort of thing could have happened in Britain, and wondered whether there were children in the wreckage of the East End of London post-war when there was very poor housing.

Marks: basically 9 with a couple of lower ones.