The Moment

The Moment by Douglas Kennedy

Blog written by Marty C

"The main character, Thomas Nesbit, after divorcing his wife chooses to move to a small town in USA.
His daughter forwards to him a box sent to him with the name of his former lover in Berlin 25 years previous.

Thus begins his story of his sojourn in Berlin during the Cold War at the time of the Berlin Wall.
Thomas recounts his meeting and instant attraction (mutual) with Petra Dussman.
The box which he subsequently opens reveals her perspective of their love affair and time spent together in West Berlin.
As well as these two main characters we meet a colourful Gay Brit Alistair Fitzsimons-Ross from whom Thomas Nesbit rents the upper floor of his premises.
The backdrop of Berlin in the the 80s with the presence of Stasi in East Berlin reveals what a police state it was. The Wall in a way also becomes a character to me.
Discussion ensued as to what The Moment referred.

As it was the last book of the year perhaps there was not a representative view as some had not read or started the book.

Following our meeting Meredeth felt she may have been somewhat harsh and  commented on The Moment  that it was a "great setting in Berlin and compelling at times" which I feel is probably a fair comment..
I actually felt it quite compelling reading especially Petra's story.

I do recommend as a follow up read Anna Funda's
"Stasiland" She is a wonderful researcher.

Happy New Year

Looking forward to book club 2014"


We rated the book 7 out of 10.

Our next meeting will be on Jan 30th, 2014 at Meredith's and the book chosen is Burial Rites by Hannah Kent.
Happy New Year everyone and happy reading over the holidays!

Middlesex

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Blog written by Lee T


Middlesex is perhaps a little longer than our book club members would like, but a book certainly worth making the effort to finish.

The end resonates with the dramas and tragedies of the beginning but on a more personal scale with the tragic but humourous death of Milton as it contrasts with the earlier tragedies at Smyrna.  As Desdemona and Lefty left Bursa so the American family and Desdemona leave the American home of Middlesex.

Desdemona, even through the mist of her dementia, realises the truth of the Greek prophecies and the wisdom of her Orthodox religion. Eugenides takes us through a fascinating and horrifying history of Greek family's migration to America (in this case Detroit) and the success and then decline and fall of a family and the city, and the strange story of the survivor Calliope/Cal.  As Cal guards the entrance to Middlesex to prevent the return of his father Milton’s spirit, so the remaining family members are then freed to find their own fate.

Eugenides through his extraordinary writing technique is able to suggest future occurrences without “spoiling” the plot, instead these devices entice the reader to read on.  One of our book club members recognised a close familiarity with the Greek culture and mores as presented in the story and yet this was a delight for those of us for whom much of this was new.


Melissa's comments :

"Thanks again Lee for suggesting this book. What a feast it was!

I thoroughly enjoyed the read and am grateful to have been introduced to this author's work.

I think it is brilliantly told. Wonderfully epic, energetic and original. I love the experience of the immigrant's journey and the challenges of living up to the 'American Dream'. Also his compassionate understanding of the experience of those who do not conform to 'acceptable normality'.  A terrific yarn which is delightfully playful in its successful experimentation of the literary technique, 'Point Of View'.

I am giving it an 8 and 3/4.  I would give it a 9 except for the fact that i reserve 9's for books whose lines I want to underline.  Though I loved this book, I did not race for the pencil.  I will however be using it to teach POV in my classes!

I wonder why it has not yet been made into a film. Terrific story."

A Novel Approach would like to congratulate Jeffrey Eugenides for being inducted into the 233rd class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences recently : http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2013/10/news-notes-8-u-faculty-among-inductees-to-american-academy-of-arts-and-sciences/ 

Our average rating for this book is 9.25 out of 10

Our next novel choice is The Moment by Douglas Kennedy and we will meet at Marty's on Nov 21st Thursday.

The Rosie Project

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Blog written by Melissa B

Graeme Simsion’s novel, The Rosie Project, was an enjoyable, easy and often amusing read. The story focuses on the plight of a socially challenged genetics professor who is on a mission to find out whether he is capable of true love. Don Tillman’s ‘Wife Project’, ultimately becomes The Rosie Project as a consequence of helping Rosie with her ‘Father Project’.

Members of the Book Club enjoyed various aspects of the book, such as the gene hunt and the familiarly depicted Academic environment and the specific details of Professor Don Tillman’s unusual behaviour.

However, I think it’s fair to say that the majority of the group were a little disappointed in this book.  We struggled to believe that a person with Asperger’s Syndrome might be able to change as much as the Professor Tillman. We also discussed whether people should or could try to change for each other and indeed whether that change could be sustainable.

Many felt that Rosie’s character seemed underdeveloped and not fully believable.

Some members felt the book started strongly but petered out in terms of energy and interest by the end. Some did not care by the end, to find out who the father was, and as the main through-line on which the plot rested, this was problematic for the success of the story.

We all felt the subject matter had great potential, with insight into the experience of living with the condition of Aspergers (in it or beside it) and with the experience of needing to find out the source of one’s genes (ie. A missing father).  Yet both of these topics felt somewhat superficially presented and overall, our group seemed unsatisfied with the outcome.

The novel did inspire some fun and interesting conversation about the nature of dating and the process of questioning suitable partners. This lead to members sharing interesting stories about their own experience and the concept and process of meeting a match, especially contrasting the way partnership evolved 20-40 years ago, in comparison with the RSVP style searches today.

It was suggested by Jane that perhaps the book might be better suited to a market of slightly younger readers in their late 20’s or 30’s.  We also agreed that it had the potential to be adapted into a popular romantic comedy film.

Above is a photo of the brilliant creation that Marty made – a handmade chocolate framed Rosie book cover. No-one could bring themselves to eat it.

Our rating for the book is 6 out of 10.

Our next book choice is Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and our meeting will be at Lee's place on Thursday October 17th.

Having Cried Wolf

Having Cried Wolf by Gretchen Shirm
Blog written by Sally L

Hello bookclub blog readers! Our August reading was Gretchen Shirm’s “Having Cried Wolf”. This is a unique collection of fifteen short stories set in and around the fictional seaside town of ‘Kinsale’. I had been looking for some short story reading for our group and was intrigued by flipping through the first few pages of this collection that I picked up from Melissa (thanks Melissa!). First impressions were that writing was contemporary, fresh and stripped down (thats my non-writerly speak) – and the stories certainly lived up to this promise!

As a brief description, the setting and characters are distinctly Australian. Many of the stories begin by drawing us into familiar surroundings: two friends catching up in a café while “ the sound of cicadas rises and falls around us” (Breakfast friends); A mother observing an 18 year old son  arriving home from a party, car headlights  “through the frame of the old fig” (Carrying on). From these mild scenes, common and uncommon dramas unfold, and the reader is gradually immersed into a wonderfully rich larger narrative (very impressive). The stories develop along multiple dimensions , linked by place, with the coastline never far from view, but also weave together in unexpected ways, with characters who reappear in different stories, filling out narrative from different perspectives, and spanning across time. A fascinating common element to the stories is how quietly tragedy plays out, to be replaced by things moving on.

At our discussion (8 of us), there was general enthusiasm for reading short stories, and enjoyment of the writing in Having Cried Wolf. We were interested in the use of linking characters between stories and also thinking about how the stories left much unsaid for the reader to wonder, including the significance of the title! We read the authors comments about ‘Having Cried Wolf’ here: http://short.reviewofaustralianfiction.com/the-short-of-it/post/choosing-a-title-part-one/ and continue to be intrigued.
A couple of us who bought the electronic book version were disappointed they could not flip around the pages to track characters between stories (digital books need to include this as an essential function!).

Our group discussion was, as usual, fairly diverse, but a consistent response was something along the lines of having trouble engaging with the stories as a collection when it seemed the tone of depression would never lift.

Overall, we gave the book around 6 out of 10.

For some other blogging and examples of short stories with linking characters…
Tim Winton  - The Turning http://www.abc.net.au/classic/program/midday/listen-again.htm


Bookriot: http://bookriot.com/2012/03/16/short-stories-you-so-trendy-from-linked-to-thematic/

Our next meeting is at Melissa's on Sept 19th Thursday and our book choice is :
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

The Light Between Oceans

The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman


Book to be reviewed by Megan.

We have rated this book 8.4 out of 10.
Our next book choice is Having Cried Wolf by Gretchen Shirm and the meeting will be at Sally's on August 29th Thursday.

That Woman

That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor 
by Anne Sebba

This was our biography choice of the year and there was general disappointment in the style of this book. One comment was this novel reads like one long article about Wallis Simpson and the scandal.

We learn that Wallis may have been a hermaphrodite and had weight issues her whole life.  Was she really in love with the King or did she in the end feel she had to stay with him after the abdication?

One member suggests we should read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides which was a more engrossing novel about the journey of a hermaphrodite.  This received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2003.

We rated this book 5.5 out of 10.

Our next novel was going to be The Red House by Mark Haddon but this has now been changed.
The new choice is The Light Between Oceans by M L Stedman.

The next meeting will be at Megan's on Thursday July 25th.

A Visit from The Goon Squad

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

An intriguing title from a National Book Award Nominee writer which promised to be an interesting choice for our book group.  However, once again, many of us found the book hard to get into and the story quite disjointed.  It's a story about time and the author attempts to echo contemporary society's rapid fire lifestyle.

Melissa's insights into this novel are quoted below :

"An interesting juxtaposition - while the characters experience a kind of jaded cynicism about the superficiality and brevity of various kinds of success, the novel is written in a highly contemporary, vigorous and energetic style. Fresh writing about 'staleness' which is both curious and confusing for the reader.

The footnote on page 180 by the character journalist Jules Jones, seems to sum up the author's possible anger at the way Western society measures people. Assessing whether you're 'in' or 'out', acceptable or not, based on foundations as fragile as celebrity and corruption.

The author, in her quirky ambitious style, seems to be mourning the loss of important values and is rapping, if you like, to use a musical term, about the degradation of contemporary measures and morals. It is an important theme for discussion and although the author is quite brilliant at representing multiple points of view in an unexpectedly wide variety of literary (and non-literary) styles (eg. Powerpoint/text messaging), jumping around chronologically like someone reporting an event on Speed - the overall experience for the reader can be quite alienating. Whilst the author presents people in various states of indifference/oblivion and suggests perhaps that we are not caring enough about what actually matters, at the some time do not seem to care about the characters in her book and we get lost in the epic interconnecting stories which feels too hard to work out along the way.  If this was indeed her message, for it to have been more effective, we needed to care more."

We rated this novel 3.6 out of 10 (Only 5 of us finished the book and there was a low score of 2 and a high of 7).

Our next book is That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor by Anne Sebba.
It will be at Robyn's and on Thursday May 30th.

The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez

This novel was easy read and follows on quite well from our previous book of the Infidel.

This is basically a story about the lives of Afghan women as seen through the eyes of an American woman Sunny who owns a coffee shop in Kabul.  The most compelling story is that of Yasmina, who was taken in by Sunny whilst pregnant with child from her dead husband and who is desperate to save her younger sister from a fate of being sold off to settle her uncle's debts, just like herself.

Deborah Rodriquez paints a good picture of love and friendship in a wartorn city.  But as the novel progresses, it starts to resemble a Mills & Boon story as Deborah proceeds to tie up all the loose ends too nicely. We found the change in Ahmet, Halaya's son, who was very traditional in the novel, extraordinary and hard to believe--not only does he become a loving husband for Yasmina and father to her child, he even accepts his mother's old love as her new husband!

Our group found that Sunny's character was a bit too contrived and wonder why is she in Kabul anyways?
Isabel's journey into the heartland of the Taliban in search of a mother and child was also unbelievable.
The character of Halajan was quite inspiring as she understands the dilemma of her son and doesn't condemn him.

We rate this novel 6.75 out of 10.

Our next meeting is on April 11th and Patricia will be sending out the venue details.
The book we will be discussing is A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

I believe that Meredith has chosen her book : The Dinner by Herman Koch but I'll confirm that at the next meeting too.

Infidel

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Our first book of 2013 is Ayaan's amazing journey from Somalia to Holland where she applied for refugee status, worked hard for a university education and was elected to be a Member of Parliament.

This book shows us the life of a Muslim woman and the abuse and oppression she had to endure in countries where men subjugate their women in the name of Islam. There were some horrific scenes of female genital circumcision and corporal punishments.  It was sad that her younger sister, who had originally appeared the stronger, succumbed to mental disease and died.

Ayaan tries to reconcile the violence and inequality that she and other Muslim women are subjected to with the Muslim teaching of a peaceful and loving Allah. Her path from being a woman of faith and prayer to becoming an atheist is almost entirely based on intellectual reasoning.

Why are women supposed to suppress their sexuality in the name of modesty while men are free to live in society without any such restrictions?  Interestingly, in the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago, there was an article about such extremist views but coming from Israel. To read the article : http://www.dailylife.com.au/life-and-love/real-life/stoned-for-having-short-hair-20130130-2dkd1.html

The short film which she produced with Theo Van Gogh called Submission Part 1 and for which Theo was assassinated in Holland is available on You Tube  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGtQvGGY4S4

Melissa came across this radio programme and here is what she has to say :

"Thought you might be interested in the Radio National program that was played yesterday on feminism in religion. Malay women activists were talking about polygamy, sexual prohibitions on women, patriarchal inheritance and other matters of inequality that are enabled by shariya law. Also discussion on burhka-wearing by choice, the gendered God, and the "third sex" in religions - fascinating"
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/encounter/women-program/4478874

And thanks Marty for this very interesting debate "Is Islam a religion of peace?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFvklPpGZtA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

We rate this book 8.3 out of 10.
Infidel ties in very nicely with our next choice, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez.  
The meeting will take place at Jane's on Thursday March 14th.