LETSBuzz Book Club 10th December 2000
This book had just won a Guardian prize, but Jean did not think it prizeworthy. It is the story of two families, one Asian and one West Indian from 50s/60s to date. Jean felt it is good on the cultures, lives and languages of London where it is set, but some of the characters are a bit over the top, including a slightly mad African Witch who walks up and down Kilburn High Road. It is a big book, and though Jean was convinced by the end, she had got rather fed up in the middle, not being drawn in enough.
Doreen thought it had a good understanding of older characters.
Jean
Jean thought this a wonderful book, where you do care about the characters, and can get involved with it at different levels. She felt the book about the missionary family was in two parts - the first part was the main focus of the book - dealing with their life as missionaries, and the second part, dealing with their lives afterwards - and she wondered when you should stop a book. Excellent
Jean
Jean found she didn't care about the characters in this book. They were not likeable characters and she didn't care about them.
Jean
This is a bleak book, not a cheery read. It's on two levels - one a sci-fi level and the other about the impossibility of relationships between men and women.
It is about the new Ice Age - people do not have long to live, they are trying to flee to Africa but are not allowed in. Two people fall in love, have a child, the woman joins a strange group of radical women. The man is only kept alive by children because he knows how to repair the doves (robots) - and this part is quite funny.
Jean
Andrew thought this terrible and tedious and had given up disappointed. Doreen agreed and thought it was old hat. Certainly not Booker Prize material.
Andrew
A book with a hideous cover. A very modern day story of a man in the film industry in London. Gangstery with a fantastical plot twist. Jogs along OK till then. Then starts to get silly. Then got boring. Not recommended.
Andrew
One of his older books - 93/4. A unique style - no-one writes like him. It is about a man going to work in a department store. He is taken on as a furniture shifter, but has to pass a sort of initiation test, which he does. The furniture shifters are seen as irritants in the store. Secret passageways are discovered. The book had something of the fantastic about it. Unsatisfying at a level, but well written and well-rounded characters.
Andrew
Andrew really enjoyed this. (Doreen didn't - thought women were just sex objects)
Andrew
See above
Doreen
This is about a group of women in the deep south of America who smoke and drink a lot. It goes back 20-30 years, and has four children each telling their own story. At first it seems an idyllic childhood, but then you start to realise how things have really been, with beatings, abuse, damage and incest.
Not recommended
Doreen
A novella about Lord Lucan - a strange story in which two men on consecutive weeks visit the same psychotherapist and say they are Lord Lucan. Obviously researched, and a good ending.
A novella set in Africa in the 60s. Probably wouldn't be written in the same way now.
Doreen
Good short stories about ordinary people to whom extraordinary things happen. Believable and a pleasant read, 100% recommended.
Doreen
Not as well known as The Lady in White or The Moonstone but a gripping read nevertheless - you are drawn in from the beginning. Perhaps it's a sign of changing times, but Gill found the secret quite easy to guess from the beginning (Maybe Victorian audiences would have been a little more naïve?). Nevertheless, she was thrown off the scent by a couple of "red herrings" along the way and even though the ending was as suspected, she was never quite confident that it would be so.
Gill
Gill had tried reading this well-known book but had given up. It is not a particularly engaging read, and the necessity of continually looking up translations of Latin and local names of the flora and fauna in the back of the book make it hard work. More a book to dip into perhaps. However, the sheer abundance of wildlife in this small village on the Sussex/Hampshire/Surrey borders is quite remarkable, and vastly different from anything that would be seen today. Unfortunately, for the naturalist of Gilbert's time, it is quite acceptable (and indeed thought necessary) to shoot and dissect the wildlife in question as part of the identification process - optical equipment not being quite what it is today - and this makes it a less than pleasant read.
Gill
The frames have gone all funny - click to make it good.