LETSBuzz Book Club 25th February 2001
This charming story of domesticity was considered by the public to be one of Dickens' best at the time of original publication. At the time it was the most popular of his Christmas stories, though obviously it hasn't endured anything like as well as "A Christmas Carol".
Gill
Written entirely in the 2nd person "you did this.you went there etc.." this is a story about a teenage swimming champion who sacrifices a huge amount of her social life to become good at her sport. This 2nd person detachment worked quite well but what was not so good was that the male author didn't quite get the right feel about the lead character, mostly because of her gender, rather than her age.
Gill
A story of two Indian girls, one bright who goes to university the other not so clever but whose family resolves to look after her as a result. An interesting and affectionate portrait of East London Punjabi culture, focusing especially on those who choose to rebel and step outside of the culture such as one girl who has a western boyfriend.
Gill
Set in Dublin in the early 20th Century, Gill found this tremendously heavy going and couldn't decide if the book was supposed to be funny - the descriptions of the poverty of the time and place seemed to be parody.
Gill
Good in parts. Accurate 1970s pop cultural references (TV, music, clothes). The main character was quite good, a rather mature 12 year old girl who is really quite nasty. Doreen felt there was some silly stuff that the author shouldn't have bothered including. The book is a tremendous advert for the Punjabi way of life, offsetting a very well balanced Indian family against the dysfunctional white families roundabout in the West Midlands where the book is set. Some similar themes to those in "Life isn't all Ha Ha Hee Hee" in that the characters feel most at home and comfortable in their own culture. Doreen would read another book by the same author.
Doreen
Short stories that Doreen said made her feel stupid as she just didn't get the point of them. Written in a flat and unemotional style. Doreen didn't like the book and felt that the individual stories were non-events
Doreen
More short stories set during the 39-45 war about ordinary people getting on with their lives and coping with hardship & adversity. Very much a view of the war from the home front and the Ladies point of view
Doreen
A bit lazy, not much happens. This author seems to have gone rather off the boil after the quality of her earlier books - she seems to be coasting.
Doreen
Real life crime at it's most bizarre. Criminal research, mostly remarkable for reporting the first uses of then innovative detection methods such as handwriting and dental records in convicting the perpetrators. The last part of the book is about people who were supposed to be hanged but who survived the execution. One particularly ghoulish story about one Margaret Dixon who was found to be alive in her coffin on the way to her burial. Rory found the writing a bit tedious at times
Rory
A new (and rather over-priced) book. The central strand is the true story of the murder, committed by Edie, of her husband. The book is feminist with a small f, about an intelligent woman prepared to criticise her surroundings and is interspersed with news cuttings an idea that Gavin didn't like so much. Edie, though deeply flawed, is the heroine and would have been thought extraordinary in her day and age. She would probably be thought unremarkable now.
Gavin
Gavin though this very similar to "Possession" by the same author, but without the interesting bits.
Gavin
Short stories by the author of "The Poisonwood Bible", possibly the group's favourite book of last year. Evidence of a technique being honed but overall these stories, written ten years or more before "The Poisonwood Bible" were fairly ordinary, though not bad.
Gavin
Ruth Picardie is the sister of an Observer journalist who wrote a weekly column for the paper while she was dying of cancer and this book is a collection of e-mails and correspondence to and from the author during that period. Jean enjoyed the book very much, strangely, and found the writing wonderfully humorous despite the terrible situation that the author is in. Her husband came across as detached from the whole situation, indicating that he really wasn't coping with things at all.
Jean
Very accessible and easy to read, a direct and beautifully simple celebration of being alive. Some of the poems seemed a bit dashed off but that could be the whole point of them.
Jean
Caroline and Jean had both read and enjoyed this memoir of a girl's childhood and wanted a man to read it to see what he thought. Andrew found it a reasonably entertaining read but thought the main character (a 12 year old girl) rather petulant and fairly annoying. The book set the scene of the household well - the girl's mother runs a somewhat chaotic boarding house on the coast with her two children in tow, in order to leave behind the hippie madness of 1960s/1970s London. She's still drawn back to her
city ways by her two local friends, taking drugs and leaving the kids behind to go off for frequent wild nights out.
Andrew
Andrew was disappointed not to enjoy this as much as Doreen & Jean's glowing reviews had him hoping that he would. In some ways he thought that the writing was "too good" - he often found himself reading a few pages and although he'd really enjoy the language being used, he had to go back and re-read the passage because the narrative hadn't made any impression. "Like a nice massage" he said "undoubtedly beautiful, but inclined to send me to sleep".
Andrew
Andrew echoed Gill's comments on this book and also found it quite a difficult read. The book is a first person account of someone involved in the early days of the Irish uprising in 1916 and Andrew referred to history textbooks to see if the actual events that the author used to carry the narrative were being accurately reported. He couldn't see the main character (Henry) as either likeable or a noble freedom fighter, he just followed in his father's footsteps as a murderer, extortionist and general rogue, using the fight for independence as a cover for his nefarious activities.
Andrew
The frames have gone all funny - click to make it good.