The Hare with Amber Eyes

The Hare with Amber Eyes

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

A most interesting book which traces one Jewish family's experience through two world wars and the story of how a collection of 264 Japanese netsuke survived to remain in the family's collection to this day.

First we had a brief discussion on what a netsuke is. Lee's input here was invaluable as she describes how they were originally used to fasten a cord from which a small bag would be attached to a man's robe in the 17th century in Japan. They are very small ( less than 7cm high) and can be made of different materials like ivory and wood.  The pictures on Edmund de Waal's website show how intricate the carvings and decorations can be. To see the collection, click on the link below : http://www.edmunddewaal.com/hare_with_amber_eyes/hare_netsuke_gallery.html

The author is a ceramic artist who lives in the UK and is a descendant of the very wealthy Ephrussi family originally from Odessa in the Ukraine. To understand the survival and the story of the netsuke collection, he travelled to places where his family had settled starting with Vienna.  Some of us felt at this point that the book drags on a bit with the direction of the novel meandering.  However, once we get to the story of how Charles Ephrussi, a cousin of his great-great grandfather's, bestowed this collection as a wedding present to his great-great-grandparents Viktor and Emmy, the story became compelling.

This memoir gives a really good insight into the extraordinary wealth accumulated by the very rich Jewish families in the late 1800s and the horrors of their experience during Anschluss.  I found the fate of Viktor and Emmy particularly poignant.  This collection would not have survived without the actions of Emmy's maid Anna and it is unfortunate that her identity and fate is still unknown to this day.

Rating this book is a little tricky as 3 of us gave it 10/10 while one gave it only 5/10!  I think we were divided into 2 camps-- those who loved the book and those who just could not get into the story.

The weighted average rating of this book is 8.2 out of 10.
We would like to extend a warm welcome to Melissa for joining our group.

Our next selection is Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thorton and our meeting will be on June 13th (Wed) at Sally's.

The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett


We had a fun evening discussing our first selection for 2012. This is a first novel by Kathryn Stockett which was made into a movie last year with Octavia Spencer winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in the role of Minny. Incidentally, Octavia Spencer is also the narrator for the same role in the audible book available from Audible.com which is a highly enjoyable and captivating rendition.

Our discussion was mainly on segregation and whether things have really changed that much since the 1960s, the timeframe of this novel.
The author gave a good picture of what being poor, black and a woman must have been like.  Even though some of us found the voices who tell the story a little disjointed, we were quite captivated by some of these characters : Skeeter and her search for her maid Constantine, her relationship with her domineering mother; Celia and Minny's attempt at fooling Celia's husband; Minny, who was usually strong and speaks her mind, being finally free from an abusive husband; Hilly and her sanitation initiative and her "reckoning"; Aibileen and her attempt at bringing up Mae Mobley to be good and fair...

It is pretty amazing that these women managed to get their book on the truth of their relationships with their white employers published.  The ending was quite optimistic and uplifting.
The author's Epilogue gives a good insight into her reasons for writing this novel.  There was a suggestion to reread the beginning chapter after finishing the book to revisit many of the characters in the novel.

Those of us who saw the movie found it highly entertaining.
We do recommend this book and give it a rating of 8-9 out of 10.

Our next selection is The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmond De Waal and our meeting will be on May 2 (Wed) at Jane's.

Welcome to 2012 and another year of interesting reading!
We discussed a lot of options for our year's selection and below is a list of books which we have chosen for our group discussions :

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmond De Waal
Seven Days In The Art World by Sarah Thornton
All That I Am by Anna Funder
Please Don't Make Me Go by John Fenton
Inheritance by Nicholas Shakespeare

Books which we also considered were :

The Shelly Beach Writers' Group by June Loves
The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do
Solar by Ian McEwan
The Best American Non Required Reading edited by Dave Eggers
A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan

Our first meeting will be at Sharon's on March 29th Thursday and the book will be The Help by Kathryn Stockett.
See you then!

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

This novel is loosely based on an event which actually happened in Lima, Peru a few years ago when the country was under President Fujimori and terrorists stormed the Japanese Embassy.
We thought this was a very well written novel where Ann Patchett was able to tell the story from seemingly no one particular person's voice.  We were able to sympathise with hostages and terrorists alike and felt this has the makings of a good movie!
I was particularly inspired as I had just visited Lima and had my suspicions this novel was based there even though the author was deliberately vague about the country. The introduction of an opera singer and accompanist added a lovely element to the story.  You almost felt compelled to put on the particular piece of piano music or aria while Ann Patchett was describing the performances...

We rate this book 9/10 and would have given it a higher score if the love stories were a bit more toned down.  The ending also surprised a few of us.

Our suggested list of holiday reading :


Caleb's Crossing : A Novel by Geraldine Brooks
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton
The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

We wish everyone a safe and Happy Holiday and look forward to more good books in 2012!

Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi

This book gives the reader in insight into anorexia.  At times confronting, at times unbelievable, this biography of a model/actress who suffered from this all too common eating disorder of today's young girls paints a somewhat intimate picture of the state of mind of an anorexic sufferer.

There is no question that this is a mental illness which seems to consume the entire way of life of the anorexic person.  From the moment she woke up, Portia de Rossi was entirely fixated with how many calories she ate and how much she has burnt through the day.  She resorted to lying to her nutritionist and family and friends to hide how little she was actually eating.

She seemed to blame her mother for starting her down this path where she felt her self worth was entirely based on how she looked.  When she put on weight, she felt that she was an undeserving lazy person. This may be a timely reminder to mothers to be careful about the sort of message you send to your daughters.

I personally found the chewing gum binge scene quite disturbing.  I did ask myself while reading this book how someone can expend so much time and energy on something which should be nourishing your body to do other more meaningful things. This mental illness seems very much tied to one's self confidence and perception of one's self image.

During our discussion, we felt that this book didn't really explain how she in the end was able to conquer this condition and was able to enter into a much publicised relationship with Ellen Degeneres. Or that she was lucky enough not to suffer any longer term detrimental effects on her health. Her shameful feelings of being gay seemed very much tied to her anorexia problem.

We rate this book 6 out of 10.
Our next novel is Bel Canto by Ann Patchett ( a great read!) and will take place on December 6th at 7:30pm at Sharon's.
It will also be our Xmas party so please bring along any suggested holiday readings.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

This is a novel about early onset Alzheimer's and was a great read.  The novel is written from the perspective of the patient and you see her deterioration with each subsequent visit to the doctor.

We felt that this is a must read to get an understanding of this frightening disease.  The author deliberately chose a heroine who dispels our preconceived notions of a "typical" Alzheimer's patient.  Alice is intelligent, articulate, fit and young!  

It can happen to anyone and Alice had the unlucky gene and has passed on this gene onto some of her children.

Would you like to know if you have that gene?  If not, why?  Is it because there is no cure?  All these are very relevant questions.

We found several scenes in this novel particularly confronting : being totally disorientated on her normal everyday run, finding herself in her neighbour's kitchen thinking it was her own and not realising she had just said the exact same thing to her colleagues in a meeting....

It is also very realistic how everyone around Alice is not sure how to treat her once they find out--it is almost like a taboo subject.  Her husband's reactions deserve a mention here.  He is portrayed as quite selfish and cannot even stand watching her take her medications!

We highly recommend this book as it made us all think seriously about Alzheimer's and examine our own attitude towards dementia in general.  We rate this book 9/10.

Our next novel is Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi and our meeting will take place on Nov 2 at Robyn's.  That will leave us with just one more meeting this year where we will discuss the novel chosen by Patricia : Bel Canto by Ann Patchett.  That meeting will take place at Sharon's on Nov 30.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

This is a first novel from Marina Lewycka.  She was born in a refugee camp in Germany in 1946 and moved to the UK when she was one. Short History turned out to be quite successful, winning and being short listed for prizes and her subsequent novels are Two Caravans (released as Strawberry Fields in USA and Canada) and We Are All Made Of Glue.
This is an often humorous book about what happens when an 84 year old widower marries a young Ukrainian bombshell wanting to settle in the UK. Much of our discussion was prompted by Jane asking a list of questions about the characters in the book which I believe was taken from the author's own website.  If you are interested to hear Marina discuss her book and think about the list of the questions, this is the link : http://marinalewycka.com/tractors.html

The book is very much about the relationships in families--between an elderly parent and his grown daughters, between the two sisters, and how these relationships are threatened or transformed by the introduction of the young wife Valentina and her "genius" son into the picture.
Despite Valentina being portrayed as a "gold-digger", there were sympathies for her wanting a "better" future for her son.
We rate the book 7 out of 10.

Our next book is Still Alice by Lisa Genova (another debut novel) and our meeting will take place at Megan's on September 21.

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

Our meeting on "The Year of Magical Thinking" did not unfortunately take place, again due to last minute cancellations.
Luckily we had a big enough forum to discuss the work of Jacobson.  It was a most enjoyable evening (thank you Sally) despite the fact that most members of the group struggled to finish the book!  Our impression was that this is very much a "blokes'" book and we found the characters and their voices hard to relate to.
We thought that the author was clever using "Finkler" to be synonymous with "Jew" in this novel.  He was then able to freely play around with this word and all it's connotations and variations.  We generally felt that we needed more of an insight into Jewish customs and vocabulary to fully appreciate the author's cleverness and humour.
We give this book a rating of 5/10.

Our next book is A Short History of Tractors in the Ukraine by Marina Lewycka and our meeting is now postponed to August 31st at Jane's.