LETSBuzz Book Club 23rd February 2003
This is a book imagining how a Vermeer painting came to be painted. Jean had mixed feelings about it - she liked it because it is obviously well researched and it immerses you in the world of Vermeer. You learn how households of the time lived and how paintings were done. The story is that the painting is of a maid who went to live in Vermeer's household. Jean was unhappy that it was a mixture of fact and fiction and thought the character of the maid was too clever for a 15-year -old.
Doreen commented that Vermeer is known to have been hard-up (he had 11 children to support) and that not much else is known about him. Both commented on the dressing-up box that Vermeer's subjects used and how items from it appear in different paintings.
Recommended with reservations
Jean
This is a novel about the siege of Leningrad. Andrew felt the novel was overwhelmed by it's subject and that the narrative wasn't strong enough. He didn't think the writing was very good, that it was turgid, and that the issues centred on were peripheral to the serious business of what was going on. He thought he would prefer a more factual account.
Andrew
Andrew sniggered all the way through this novel due to it's sheer familiarity. It's about working in an office in London and it resonated with him. It has no real characters or plot. The narrator feels that he's fallen into this life and doesn't know how to get out. It gets across the atmosphere of a London office very well.
Andrew
This is about a woman approaching her 100th birthday who has had a debilitating stroke and can only hear and squeeze someone's hand. It goes over the story of her life (married 5 times, 3 times to the same person) and has a mostly male cast.
Andrew thought it was quite good, in a comedy style but shows that the author is a TV writer. He ascribes actions/roles to each character, who then goes through a set sequence when you meet them in any part of the book. It never got away from being a comedy book but didn't make him laugh much.
Andrew
A book about a girl on an archaeological dig at Whitby (hence climbing up the 199 steps# to the Abbey every day) who bumps into a jogger with a dog and their relationship, involving the analysing of an old letter. "Boy meets girl, girl gets the dog".
Andrew
Doreen found it was hard to believe it was written by JB.
Horrible dreadful story - makes you want to wash your hands after reading it.
Set in strip joint in Soho, characters all pimps/prostitutes, sex described "with great relish". Interesting because of who the writer was, otherwise she wouldn't have read it.
Doreen
Old book about man who dies & goes to heaven. Heaven full of nice middle class London people who have the opportunity to run the universe. Keeps missing God (doesn't like to draw attention to himself). Lots of things happening at the same time, words death & heaven never used. His biggest success is designing the Matterhorn.
Doreen
Collection of newspaper articles supposed to be funny but only about three are. Autobiographical essays, mad Greek father, funny bits about learning French. Food described well in New York restaurant. Bits fine, bits not so good but worth it.
Doreen
Very good book - diary stitched together about being in intelligence in Naples in 1944. Tells you interesting things you didn't know. Not sure what he's doing most of the time - trying to catch collaborators and saboteurs, he thinks. The real problem is that everyone is starving. He tells you unbelievable things that are believable.
Doreen
Took Gill over six weeks to read. Set in 1832, just after passing of Reform Act, which enfranchised more of the middle classes. A lot of politics and non-conformist religion makes heavy weather of the first part of the book but the plot gets going eventually, though it's a 2-bookmark book (i.e. one to hold your place in the story, one in the notes). An interesting fact is that reading the Riot Act actually forms a part of the story (when 12 or more people gather together and start to get a bit riotous an authorised person - in this case a Rector- reads out the Riot Act which gives them one hour to disperse or they are committing a felony (in which case the troops are called in).
George Eliot herself was not in favour of votes for women unless they were educated.
It does have a good plot and is worth reading. Like a Dickens novel, lawyers are the villains.
Gill
The frames have gone all funny - click to make it good.