LETSBuzz Book Club 7th November 1999
Doreen re-read the Turn of the Screw but didn’t read the other stories – generally, Doreen doesn’t like Henry James, which is “too much like hard work”, and Caroline commented that she finds him “impossible to read”.
This story is a cold, dark evening’s read. It’s a very good, rather creepy story. Mannered, typical of Henry James, with stilted, formal dialogue but an excellent atmosphere. Worth reading, or even re-reading, because it’s quite short.
Doreen
Doreen had really enjoyed A Widow For One Year by the same author, so decided to read this. It is a very good book, but it is also very like A Widow For One Year.
The book is very plainly written, which is Irving’s style, until you’re hit over the head with something awful - for example, the killing or maiming of a child – the book has a very high death count, and a constant sexual undercurrent (but not a lot of sex), with fantastic characters. The story is obviously meticulously planned and leads up to a terrible, ludicrous accident. Everybody is to blame for the event where everything comes together.
In conclusion, the writing is very good, it seems plain but is actually very architectural, and keeps leaving you with a feeling of “Wow! How did he do that?”
Doreen
Virgil is a Romanian poet, who escapes the country just before the revolution which topples Ceaucescu, and Kitty is the woman he starts a relationship with. The book is a nicely written love story, and you like both characters. Flashbacks in the book illustrate the reasons for Virgil’s departure from Romania, involving a poem critical of “the leader” and a very unpleasant visitor). There are plenty of good Ceaucescu stories and good jokes, but perhaps Virgil’s poetry is less enthralling.
The book gives a good take on the human side of the events in Romania, and has a sad ending. It's “sort of OK” – good if you like Paul Bailey.
Doreen
Andrew normally likes Lurie’s books, but this one didn’t come up to scratch. It felt as if it were written for serialisation, with unnecessary repetitions which weren’t ironed out as they should have been. The story was “soapy”, quite good but light and weakish. A disappointing book.
Andrew
Andrew picked up this book of short stories because he liked the cover. The stories were descriptive little vignettes, short on story, but in some cases very well drawn.
Andrew recommends the book and would like to read a novel by the same author.
Andrew
Andrew “enjoyed it more than I thought I would” and found it “a bit of a page turner”. The story was enjoyable but the ending belonged on a much more substantial novel – this one was like a sketch for a bigger book, and it certainly shouldn’t have won the Booker prize.
Andrew
Boz was Dickens’ writing name for his work in various newspapers. These sketches were written quite early on in his career, and as Gill doesn’t like the similarly-early Pickwick Papers she didn’t think she would enjoy this book. She heard a sketch on the radio and, expecting a let down, decided to read the book. Unexpectedly, the book was better than the radio version.
Reading the sketches is like journeying to a foreign land which you know a little about, and they are nicely written. Gill reserved the Hackney cab sketch for special praise, and said that some were still appropriate, and others quite sad (particularly those dealing with people working in London).
Recommended.
Gill
A very good read, with surprisingly good female characters. The book certainly has its nasty bits, shock-horrors which you don’t see coming. The book doesn’t feature the bears ir wrestling which Irving seems to like, but it still has his hallmark dead children.
Caroline really felt like stopping reading the book when the sleazy Amsterdam stuff as going on, and found the sexual undercurrent sleazy and very “in your face”.
The book ends in a sort of happily ever after way (Doreen says she cried at the ending). Recommended.
Caroline
Ashworth’s autobiography is a story of a child growing up in a terrible working-class, up-north background, suffering mental cruelty. The writing is very vivid about the abuse, and strikingly the author as a child retains her hope all the way through, and is eventually redeemed.
Caroline recommends this book, which is not grim, as a very good read.
Caroline
A wonderful book, it’s stuffed full of good things like a Christmas pudding.
Possession is the modern-day story of an academic who finds some love letters in a poetry volume in the British Library. He steals the letters, and finds they throw light on the life of a Victorian poet. As this story unravels, alongside it we find the academic getting involved-but-not-involved with another acadmeic.
The book deals with possession in its several forms, and is well worth reading (except for the pastiche Victorian poetry, most of which Caroline ended up skipping).
Caroline
Quite enjoyed this book, a collection of essays, but not particularly recommended. The title alludes to the fact that when asked hat she writes about, the author replies “Food, sex and god”.
OK if you like Michèle Roberts.
Caroline
In the typical style of British adventurers, Campbell starts her mammoth walk totally unprepared – unfit, slagging off the back-up team and under-sponsored. It’s amazing that she got through Africa, walking through the first fifteen countries with apparently no interest or reaction to the places she was walking through, “hermetically-sealed walking.” She seemed to be pretty immature (she was 24), for example complaining bitterly at being asked to do interviews in return for sponsorship. The impression is that she didn’t know why she was doing the walk, and was maybe mad.
Not particularly recommended.
Caroline
“Not as bad as Peter Mayle on Provence, but that style of book.” This description is a little unfair, Stewart is actually very self-deprecating and not at all patronising, and seems much nicer than Mayle. That said, Caroline found the book trite and nearly gave up reading it.
Caroline
This book reads as if it were being written at the time of the subject’s death, with the last chapters seeming shorter and shorter, and hurriedly written.
The book makes Diana out to be rather more important than she was, and also “makes out that she was a feminist, really” (laughter all round when Caroline said that).
Not recommended.
Caroline
Gavin picked this book up second hand because he’d been on a course by the author entitled “How to write a really good chapter”, and this book has “one of the worst first chapters I’ve ever read.”
He didn’t like the book at all, which was probably aimed at the Bridget Jones readers and none others.
Not recommended.
Gavin
The story is written from a boy’s point of view, and is about his growing up in Tipperary and move to the United States. He writes about his childhood, with a horrendous drunken father, poverty and illness, completely unsentimentally. The social commentary is very funny, terse and to the point.
Gavin felt the book only faltered when the arrival in the United States is portrayed from th child’s point of view – which, as the author was then 18, feels artificial.
McCourt is an excellent writer, and this is a very good book, highly recommended.
Gavin
Read alongside Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre is a well-written, stylish, Victorian classic. The Wide Sargasso Sea is a more modern classic, with parallels with the story from Jane Eyre.
The Jean Rhys book is very good, high in scary moments; it deals sympathetically with a mad woman – effectively the gothic element from Jane Eyre and her mental illness.The book is almost entirely composed of not-telling-the-truth and lying.
“A bit of a mind-scorcher, harrowing.” Recommended.
Gavin
The frames have gone all funny - click to make it good.