LETSBuzz Book Club 21st May 2000
Not very interesting. I got bored. He makes no effort with the characters. I could hardly tell the difference between them. It did perk up a bit when the Indians appeared. Gill mentioned the violence, but I didn't think it was too bad. I wouldn't recommend it.
Seán said he enjoyed it. It was the first de Bernières novel he read and he went on to read the rest.
Jean said it gave her some idea how an ordinary person could become a torturer.
Andrew
This is a collection of short pieces and they are very variable. The violence is shocking because it's gratuitous. The writer is a film director and the book reads cinematically. The story called The Boys is worth the cover price alone. It's very, very simple but beautifully written.
Andrew
This is the best Crace book I've read. The story is told backwards. The writing is spare and economic. It's modern, bang up to date. It examines a very simple situation and presents different people's viewpoints. It's possibly the best book I've read this year.
Andrew
I read some of this some time ago. It's been edited and thereby improved. The author had said to her recently that a photograph had much more significance after it had been taken than at the time you take it. I think the same about this book. The events of 1996 (the year in which this book is set) appear more significant now.
This is Gavin's personal journey - Gavin on the page.
Gill
The book is set in Amsterdam at the height of tulip fever. I read this at tulip time and woke up to a tulip in our bedroom. I enjoyed it. There's a lovely bit of mistaken identity around which the whole plot revolves. A good yarn. The pictures didn't really
interest me. I'd forgotten about them. (Jean and Doreen loved them)
Gill
This is set in Andalusia. I liked it, but I wouldn't go and live in Spain. The author buys a house on the recommendation of an estate agent. He is exploited by the locals, the food is awful..There are good bits about sheep.
Gill
An American missionary takes his wife and 4 daughters to the Congo and arrogantly tries to impose his religion and culture on the local people. It's written from the different viewpoints of the wife and daughters. Each of them is quite different. It begins in the 1960s and goes up to date. There's a lot about the culture of the Congo.
Gill
This book is a review copy. It's just like Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It's a thriller set in 90s London. Its main selling point is the outrageous rhyming slang.
Otherwise, however, you've heard it all before. Disappointing. It dwells on the "exotic" nature of crime. This can be quite boring.
Gavin
Good title; dreadful non-starter of a book..It's full of people with little or no morals. There's a lot of sex, which no one seems to enjoy. Custard is a car but this book doesn't get out of the driveway.
Gavin
Avery light book. I really enjoyed it. It seemed to be a very honest account of how the writer copes with being a single father.
Jean
I read this when I was in my 30s. On re reading it now, it says a lot more to me. I wonder if the writer set herself a challenge - to get the 2 most unlikely people in bed together. I enjoyed the chapters about the middle-aged woman (Vinnie) but I wasn't so interested in the handsome young man, Fred.
Rory was halfway through this book. He agreed that the author had written the women better than the men. He was uneasy about the hidden motivation of the book - all four characters are just after an affair, a bit of illicit sex.
He thought that the author was good at writing about manners, conventions and the way they behave when they are at home and abroad.
Jean
I quite enjoyed this, but the characters are unattractive and completely unsympathetic. It's a thriller about a conjurer trying to work out what's happened after his girlfriend's death. It runs out of steam three quarters of the way through and just unwinds. There is no satisfactory end.
Seán
The author is a film director. The book opens in Spain during the Civil War and it describes the protagonist's view of what's going on around him. The rest of the story is about the relationship between him and his father (who was an IRA man at the time of the Easter Rising.) It's a tale of mutual incomprehension. It's a lovely and poignant book leading to a very satisfying conclusion when they do reach a mutual understanding.
Seán
The author is a West of Ireland poet who writes about people and places I know. This one, however, is set in London and is about an Irish labourer who becomes obsessed with a murder. The book puts you into the mind of man who doesn't understand what is going on. It moved me a great deal. I had to finish it and stayed up late to do so.
Seán
This is the third of his books I've read. I didn't enjoy it as much as the others. It was somewhat unsatisfying. I didn't get to like the characters much. It starts off when they are in school and they don't seem tpo grow up much or develop over the next 25 years. The author is saying that they are symptoms of society and is on some sort of crusade to tell us a big message. When this message arrives, it's a damp squib. The first half of the book is depressing and the second half supernatural.
Andrew had read it and liked it. It was an old-fashioned sci-fi story, and then it became reminiscent of Metamorphosis by Kafka. The characters get used to the woman being in a coma just as Kafka's get used to the man being an insect.
Rory
Revolting and disgusting. Silence of the Lambs was much better. This is immoral (the author suggests that Hannibal's victims deserve to die their terrible deaths. The ending is absurd.
Doreen
I read everything she writes. Although she's a "crime writer" the crime is incidental. The murder in this story occurs two thirds of the way through. Well written as always, the characters arewell drawn and (if you're a fan, well known to you.)
Doreen
The first part of the book is set in India. One of the daughters of the house stays home looking after her parents resenting her lack of freedom and privacy. The second part sees the son of the house staying with a white American family in the USA. There are more similarities than differences between the two households. Food plays an important role.
I read this on the plane home from California and I think the author has captured an outsider's reaction to the land of excess perfectly.
Doreen
A horribly depressing book about South Africa. The protagonist goes to stay with his daughter. He's in disgrace after seducing one of his students. His daughter is raped and he is beaten and set alight by three black men. His daughter decides that no one is to know about the rape even when one of the culprits moves in next door. It is accepted by everyone that no one will be punished for the crime. The author seems to be telling us that there is very little chance that white people will be able to live happily if at all with their black neighbours.
Doreen
The frames have gone all funny - click to make it good.