brookworms - reviews
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The Sex Life of
My Aunt by Mavis Cheek about Dilys who has led an ideal
existence for the past 30 years. Her devoted and successful husband Francis has
paid the bills, kept her in fine clothes, indulged her fantasies about writing a
book. She's wanted for nothing until one day, after a funeral, she finds herself
in tears on a railway station, and a handsome young stranger offers her a
handkerchief. The innocence of this brief encounter swiftly turns into a hideous
campaign of deceit, as Dilys is sucked into an intense love affair, and
experiences heights of passion she'd always believed beyond her reach. But the
lies she must tell to sustain it lead Dilys to make some shocking discoveries
about her own past.
From this meeting,
due to increased numbers, we split into two groups to discuss the book.
This made it more difficult to summarise the overall Brookworm view when each
subgroup had different ideas. One group decided the book was a raunchy
version of “Brief Encounter”, with many references to the film. However, this
was more a lust affair than a love affair. We had more sympathy for Dilys’s
Aunt than for Dilys herself. She had such a tough time, not knowing that she
had not had “proper” sex on her wedding night, and getting constant gibes from
her mother-in-law about her “infertility”.
The other group
found the book more tedious, the family history stilted and the relationship
between the sisters contrived and unrealistic. They also spotted the many
flower references, such as the Aunt running a flower shop, Matthew turning up
with flowers at the hotel, and Dilys being observed to be “blooming”.
We agreed it was an
easy read, but one dimensional. We only saw events from Dilys’s (sex-obsessed)
point of view. Her children and grandchildren seemed to play an unrealistically
small part in her decision making. We both liked the scene in the Health Food
shop. We both felt that Dilys was very complacent about her lifestyle, and
shallow, and we didn’t have a great deal of sympathy for her. We felt that a
comfortable lifestyle was more important to her than almost anything else,
caused by her childhood poverty. Both groups felt the ending was rather weak,
but then, so was that of Brief Encounter.
read Amazon's review
The
Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which is the story of
Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have
known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married
when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because
Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder:
periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time,
pulled to moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. His
disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately
harrowing and amusing. “The Time Traveller’s Wife” depicts the effects of time
travel on Henry and Clare’s marriage and their passionate love for each other as
the story unfolds from both points of view.
This was enjoyed by everyone at the meeting
– several people said it was the best book of the year so far. We had all found
the first few chapters slightly confusing, but had really appreciated the age
and date summaries at the top of each section – which did not distract from the
story at all. Some of us had a problem with the times when Henry met himself in
the past, and some really enjoyed the paradoxes involved in the diary of his
visits to Clare as a girl, and having to be guided by his memories when meeting
his younger self.
Some of us found the “perfect love” a bit
sentimental, the sex life slightly unrealistic, Henry rather a woman’s man,
Henry’s and Clare’s written voice rather similar & Alba rather precocious, but
these were minor points and didn’t detract from the book. We thought the
Christmas meal where Henry met Clare’s family for the first time to be full of
intimations of what was going to happen. The frostbite was awful: Gill A
pointed out that there was a line earlier in the book when Henry said “if
anything happens to my feet, shoot me.” We felt that Henry did not enjoy being
a time traveller, but Alba did. We wondered about that as we felt that as a
girl she would be more vulnerable. It seemed that chrono-displacement disorder
was more widely researched and known about during her lifetime – maybe there
were other time travellers. Henry’s desire for normality partly explained his
choice of job and a library is a good place to disappear and not be missed. The
staff seemed remarkably tolerant of what they saw as his penchant for roaming
the shelves naked!
Apart from drawing up a timeline for this
book, Barbara L’s husband felt he had heard a similar time-jumping story before
- “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut – but says that is for hard-core
Science Fiction buffs only.
read Amazon's review
Blessings
by Anna Quindlen about Lydia, a rich elderly woman, and her young live-in
gardener who are forced to cross the formal employer-employee boundaries when a
baby is found abandoned in the garage.
Most of us had found this a quick and easy
read – good holiday reading. Some thought the ending too abrupt which was
annoying. We all found the writing very descriptive and easy to visualise – we
could see Maggie Smith playing Lydia in a film version (or Jessica Tandy were
she still alive!) We all particularly liked the scene in the orchard.
As always, we spoke a fair bit about the
money. Where exactly did it come from? Lydia’s father sent it to give her a
chance of freedom, but he had no money of his own. Was he a racketeer? Did
Lydia know it was “dirty money” and therefore hide it away and put it from her
mind. How come Meredith knew about it?
We would have liked to know more of the
background stories – of Lydia’s mother, father, husband, brother, lover, friends
and housekeeper.
We felt the “Blessing” of the title, apart
from the family name, was the baby. It changed everyone’s life for the better –
Skip realised he could take responsibility and look beyond his background; Lydia
could look forward rather than back again, and her relationship with her
daughter started to improve. Even the housekeeper mellowed slightly – of course
she had known about the baby from the beginning – she had had to hide her own
daughter the same way before she came to America - and we had hopes for her
daughter and Skip. We felt that the possibility of improving yourself was an
optimistic theme of the book.
read Amazon's review
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, a
page-turning international murder-mystery thriller that also provides “an
amazing interpretation of Western history – from the nature of the Mona Lisa’s
smile to the secret of the Holy Grail
We considered this a gripping page-turner; great for a long
flight but which did not provoke a long discussion. We agreed that Dan Brown
was so credible in his descriptions that it was difficult to distinguish between
true fact, false fact, and fiction. We felt that the plot was so fast-paced it
carried you through the unbelievable parts, from the amount of activity the
Louvre curator Sauniere fits into his dying moments, to the complex code
breaking with delicate mechanisms taking place in a light aircraft. The plot is
full of fortunate coincidences and tireless, rather one-dimensional,
characters. We also felt the clues were easy to solve, and thought that Dan
Brown signposted the answers so that we could congratulate ourselves when our
guesses turned out correctly. This is not to say we didn’t enjoy the book –
with one exception we all did and would read more of Dan Brown. If you would
like to read an article claiming what he got wrong in this book, try
http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=157&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=48.
read Amazon's review
The
King is Dead by Jim Lewis “a soulful, illuminating novel of love,
murder and redemption” covering two turbulent generations of a Tennessee
family.
This was a big disappointment to all of us.
Most of us enjoyed the geneology at the beginning, though couldn’t see its
relevance to the book, and we preferred the Walter story to the Frank story. By
the time we reached midpoint of the Frank tale, most of us were losing the will
to carry on, and really didn’t care who lived and died. We felt that the women
throughout the book were stereotyped and we objected to the “sex object”
attitudes to some. We felt that there were a lot of random encounters and
events in the book which never led to anything – rather like life, the stranger
walking along the other side of the road may have nothing to do with you or your
future! However, we felt that that did not lead to a satisfying novel. We also
felt that the only reason that Walter, Frank & Nicole were “successful” is that
they were good-looking! Only beautiful people succeed! Some of us liked the
poetic language, others found it a bit over the top. On the whole, we felt it
had been given an unwarrantedly good review and we’d like to have a quiet word
with the reviewer!
read Amazon's review
To
Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I know some of us studied
this at school! “Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee
explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and
class in the Deep South of the thirties. The conscience of a town steeped in
prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's
struggle for justice.”
We had all really enjoyed this book, despite
it being a “set book” which some of us had had to study in our younger days. We
had been surprised at how deceptively easy it was to read, which disguised how
cleverly the plot was made clear to the reader, even though the narrator didn’t
understand what was happening. The town of Maycombe is entirely fictional but
is so real that you could draw a map. Apparently it is loosely based on
Monroeville, Alabama, the hometown of Harper Lee. We feel we appreciate the
book more as adults than we did or would have as teenagers, as we could relate
more to the adult hypocrisy in the town, e.g. in condemning Hitler but condoning
racism; and understand Jem’s transition from cheerful boy to grumpy teenager.
We were surprised that Jem and Scout called
Atticus by his Christian name, but they obviously respected and were proud of
him. We thought Atticus a very good man, progressive and able to “think outside
the box”. Boo Radley was especially interesting as we had to form our own
opinions from Scout and Jem’s tales and fantasies. Was he really a bad man? We
didn’t think so. Why did he stay so completely shut away? We thought he was
most likely the eponymous mockingbird, left free at the end of the book. The
mockingbird could also have been Tom Robinson, or innocence generally.
We felt the tension of the trial scene and
wondered about Dill. What purpose did his character serve – maybe just to egg
Jem and Scout on. The children were not as free as we would have thought. They
were restricted, by society and convention, to playing very close to home.
read Amazon's review
Reading Lolita in Tehran by
Azar Nafisi, is about an Iranian academic who ran literature classes for
girls in Tehran. When the political clampdown began in the 1980s she was forced
to go underground.
Despite many of us finding the book rather
hard going and too intellectual, it brought home to us how such a dramatic
situation affecting the lives of so many women can be playing out in one part of
the world while we carry on working, studying, marrying, without realising what
is happening. That said, we did not really sympathise with the author. We
found her amazingly self centred and rather an intellectual snob. She wanted to
write the lectures she wished she’d given, and we wanted to hear about everyday
life. We felt that because of her American affiliations, and her privileged
life, she was more free than most women in Tehran. She seemed to be free of
responsibility for her children, free to take coffee in subversive cafés, and
free to visit her “magician”. Was she having an affair with this man? We
weren’t sure.
We found the descriptions of wearing the
burka fascinating – it certainly destroyed any idea for me that they might be
cool and comfortable – and it was interesting that even women who had previously
worn them for religious reasons felt that being compelled to wear them made a
mockery of their beliefs. We loved the food too!
We found that we generally enjoyed the
sections of the book relating to novels we had read more interesting than those
where we hadn’t, although none of us had read all four. Miriam suggested that
if you liked this book (and maybe even if you didn’t), you would like “The Child
that Books Built” by Francis Spufford, a memoir of a boy obsessed by books with
a thought-provoking survey of the classics of children’s literature. There are
parts of a child’s consciousness, he argues, that only books can reach, and we
become and remain essentially what the books we have read have made us.
read Amazon's review
The
Used Women’s Book Club by Paul Bryers is a gritty, fast-paced
literary thriller. On the night the Used Women’s Book Club meet to swap novels
the husband of one of its members is being brutally murdered.
I was mortified that I had not remembered we
had read a Paul Bryers book before (The Prayer and the Bone), as one of the
Brookworms’ only rules is not to read the same author twice. That said, most of
us quite enjoyed this book. It was a quick, light, read – good for the busy
holiday period. Some of us were “not grabbed”; others found it unputdownable!
Many of us had not noticed that the main characters were named for the “Little
Women”, with similar characters to their namesakes. We felt there were
overtones of Agatha Christie too in the number of red herrings, such as Jo’s
running prowess. We remember Larry’s story more than that of the women – he is
the main protagonist – and Paul Bryers is a male writer. We found the scene
where Larry’s son falls into the river most gripping – and several of us had to
keep reading at that point to find out what had happened to him. We also found
the arrival of the “cleaning lady” in the last sentence or so rather ominous.
read Amazon's review
The
Five People you meet in Heaven
by Mitch Albom is a small, pure, and simple book about 83 year old
Eddie, who fixes rides at an amusement park and who has lived what he considers
an uninspired life. He dies in an accident at the park and awakes in the
afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination, it's a place where
your life is explained to you by five people.
On the whole we were disappointed by the
book – we expected more. It was a VERY quick read, and we could see it being
turned into a film – which it has been. We all enjoyed the countdown of the
last minutes of Eddie’s life at the beginning, and spent most of the book
wondering if he had saved the little girl. We found the morals of his 5
heavenly experiences rather simplistic. We split into two groups to discuss the
book and both groups compared this book somewhat unfavourably to “The Lovely
Bones” by Alice Sebold , also partly set in an imagined heaven. The discussion
went into a lot of detail about the 5 heavens Eddie entered, and we thought
there were some good lines, such as hatred being a curved blade. However, we
did not feel that our lives were changed by the book, which we thought took
itself a tad too seriously. We did wonder what Eddie’s heaven would be, who he
would meet, if the people he had met in heaven then moved on and if so, where?
Would he meet his wife again? If you would like to find out more about the
book, try
http://www.albom.com/fivepeople/the_book.htm
read Amazon's review
My
Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult is about Anna, who was
conceived in order to donate her cord blood cells to her older sister. At the
age of 13 she decides to sue her parents for the rights to her own body.
This gave us the best discussion we have had in a long
time, despite nearly all of us liking the book. We had some insight from a
couple of Brookworms about the tremendous pressures on family life caused by
caring for a severely ill child. We were amazed that there had been no ethical
approval of Anna's role in her sister’s illness, and felt Sara was a hard mother
to Anna and Jesse – until her court scene, when we felt we understood her more
and empathised with her dilemma. We felt the saddest part of the book was the
dance and the boyfriend. We wondered if anyone at all knew about Campbell’s
condition – and why he was driving. Some of us weren’t too keen on the ending
and epilogue, but on Jodi Picoult’s website she says that the ending was in her
mind before she started to write the book. She also says that having finished
the book – you should read the prologue again – try it.
Gill G has read a couple of other books by
Jodi Picoult, and enjoyed them. She is a prolific writer and has eleven
published books to date. Find out more at
www.jodipicoult.com
read Amazon's review
The Shadow of the Wind by
Carlos Ruiz Zafon is another “Richard and Judy” book, about Daniel who, as a
boy, chooses a book by Julian Carax from an old library in Barcelona. As he
grows up, he meets several people who seem inordinately interested in the book
including a man who reminds him of a character in the book (the devil) who is
tracking down all copies of the author’s work in order to burn them. Daniel’s
life turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julian
Carax and to save those he left behind.
On the whole we did enjoy the book, though those of us
whose tastes do not include gothic melodrama found it a bit hard to take.
Several of us would like to include Barcelona on our Brookworms world tour –
despite the weather appearing consistently terrible, and several of us felt we
should find out more about the Spanish Civil War. We loved the idea of the book
cemetery, and we liked Victor Hugo’s pen, neatly woven into the story. We found
it quite hard to keep track of people’s ages, liked the ending, particularly
enjoyed Fermin’s character, and felt there were some good one-liners. We felt
the women were portrayed very differently to, and less realistically than the
men. The major themes of the book seemed to us to be the power wielded by
parents and the state, social class, the weather and unrequited love.
read Amazon's review
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