The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

 
Tuesday 15th of November 2011
This is a book that you have to struggle through in the beginning. Don't give up it's wonderful. You become immersed in the story of the tough little tomboy  Liesle, her adoptive family the Hubermans and the boy next door, Rudy. The fact that the book describes Hitlers effect on the local Germans' family life shines through now and then but you tend to ignore this, because it's to depressing to take in; you just want to be a fly on the Hubermanns wall and see what's coming up next. The story is told from the perspective of "death" , which we felt was the worse aspect of the book - none of us could see the point of  Death being the narrator and we felt his monologues tended to be cliched. However, leaving this aside, the Book Thief is a powerful and moving story about first love, and humanity shining through in the most desperate circumstances.
We all liked it and were wondering if it will make it to the big screen like the last two books we read.

The soup complimented the conversation very well Ulrika's delicious lentil soup.

One Day by David Nicholls

We read One Day in June 2011 after being tipped off by a few other readers. I was very impressed by the gripping story although it was so "girl next door" kind of a story. We have all been there in terms of being young in London so it was great to relive the ups and down being young, poor and sometimes disillusioned. The way the disaster was described was very powerful in the non-event way it was described. Some hated it but I loved it. So matter of fact without any extra drama added. So totally unpredicted and unexpected.  We all agreed that we would have hated the guy, but kind of liked him because Emma did. The characterisations where really well done.
I am sorry, I forgot who attended since it was such a long time ago the meeting was, but we promise to get better on updating the blog. Today we are discussing The book thief over a bowl of lentil soup and red wine.

The Help

We read "The Help" in July and it was another unanimous success. The book is set in the deep South of America in the 1960's when the times were..very slowly..changing. It concerns a group of white women and the often very complicated relationships they have with their black maids. One of the white women who has aspirations to become an author has the idea of recording the experiences of the black maids in a book, an undertaking ripe with potential problems and dangers; this was a time when the Ku Klux Klan was prominent and Blacks who stepped out of line were regularly met with violent retribution.
As the maids' stories unfold, the reader realises that although appalling maltreatment and double standards certainly did exist, that there are more positive stories also, where there is something akin to love between the women, however unequal their status. White women of the time were expected to play second fiddle to their men and themselves had fairly restricted lives, which were defined by clear social mores.So in some sense, there was perhaps more common ground than might be immediately obvious.
The book provides a fascinating social  commentary of an interesting period of American history and it is obviously deeply personal to the author who herself grew up in the deep South.
Overall, highly recommended.

Book 8 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

We all loved this classic Hemingway novel. It was first published in 1952, and was the last of Hemingway's works to be published in his lifetime. The story centres around the epic battle between an old fisherman called Santiago and a giant marlin. When the book opens, Santiago, hasn't caught a fish for 84 days and he is now considered so unlucky that  his beloved young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with him any more. Manolin remains devoted to the old man and continues to visit him regularly and bring him food  - without the boy, the old man might starve.
Despite all adversity, Santiago remains determined to fulfil what he considers his destiny - to catch a truly big fish. On the 85th day, he sets off alone, far into the gulf. Before too long, he realises that a huge fish has taken the bait, but the old man and fish are at an impasse, with Santiago unable to pull the fish in and the fish unable to escape and ending up pulling the skiff along. Santiago spends 2 days and nights on the boat, catching and eating raw fish and bearing the tension of the line with his body.
This is the ultimate test of endurance for both man and fish. Santiago has a huge respect and even love for this fish, which he calls his brother. He even feels that nobody will be worthy of eating the fish, that it is too noble for most people.
On the third day, the fish finally begins to tire, and with the last of his remaining strength, Santiago finally pulls the fish onto its side and stabs it with a harpoon. The fish is too big for his boat and he has to strap it to the side of his skiff as he heads home.
Tragically, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin and although Santiago manages to repel the first attacks, he eventually succumbs and the marlin is devoured by these brutal creatures. By the time Santiago arrives home, only the skeleton is left. The old man, defeated, heads back to his shack, where he falls into a deep sleep. A group of fishermen on the beach measure the marlin to be 5.5 metres long.
We get the sense that this is it for Santiago, that he has no more fight left, and although he and Manolin promise to fish together again, we are left with the feeling that Santiago has come to the end of his fishing days and the battle between him and the fish has ended in a final stalemate.
The Old Man and the Sea is a work of art, in its dreamlike, evocative account of Santiago's final battle, which he seems to have spent his whole life waiting for.
There was a unanimously positive response to this novella and most of us agreed that it is the best book so far.

Roo

Book 7 - The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

A man slaps an out of control 3 year old boy at a barbeque in suburban Melbourne. The boy's mother is furious, even more than one might expect given the circumstances, and decides to take the man to court. The on-lookers have their own opinions about who is in the right and as a result, there are rifts created (or perhaps simply highlighted) in families and longstanding friendships are tested. Each subsequent chapter of the book focuses on a different protagonist, introducing us to their character and life situation. Actually, the eponymous slap doesn't play as pivotal a role in the rest of the book as one might expect, it serves more as a focus for other events and ideas.
The central conceit of the book is an interesting one, and we could all relate to the mixed feelings we experience when someone else has to discipline our child because they have behaved badly. However,the question of whether hitting a child can ever be justified wasn't really explored in any great depth. Instead, the book is more of a character study , which would be fine except that most of the characters are so deeply unpleasant it is difficult to feel any real empathy or sympathy for them. The men are vain and obsessed with sex, often with a violent side to their nature, whilst most of the women are fairly 2-dimensional or just very annoying (for example, Rosie, the mother of the slapped child). The friendship between the 3 main women didn't seem believable to most of us, given their different characters and lifestyles.
In its favour, the book is a page turner and an easy read, but overall, the consensus was most certainly a thumbs down.
However, Ulrika's butternut squash soup was delicious again  - thank you very much!

Book 6 - Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq

So we stayed off mainstream for this next book - here is the Amazon synopsis:


Franz Kafka meets George Orwell in this dark, dystopian tale. Set in Paris in the near future, the story revolves around a young woman who works as a beautician and masseuse, and for whom happiness is derived from perfumes, shampoos and generally hedonistic pursuits. One day she realizes she is slowly (and quite literally) becoming a pig. Life as a neophyte porker, she discovers, isn't all that bad, though it does contain some unique dangers. She remains extremely popular with her massage customers, who take unusual glee in adopting her barnyard ways. Unfortunately, it is difficult for a pig to find true love in a human world; abandoned by her lover, her days blur into an endless stream of swine-like debauchery. Then she meets Yvan, a young corporate type who sometimes becomes a wolf.Pig Tales, a Prix Goncourt finalist and overnight sensation in France, is Marie Darrieussecq's first book.


Having learnt not to try and make too much sense of our books (from the Outgoing Man) we all probably approached this a little differently.  Most of us found it a straightforward read and quite gripping.  The story was very bizarre but  we all enjoyed it.  


It was probably interpreted on many levels - as a humorous story, as a shocking tale of a world getting more and more mad, as a sad story of male treatment of women, and as a moving story of a woman rejected by her family having to turn to prostitution.  Although the book was largely about the antics of this pig/madame and her clients it was very tastefully written in its descriptions.  It certainly left us all thinking about it and it was well worth the read.  Generally the thumbs up from all literary ladies present!


Great butternut squash soup provided by Ulrika.