The Gold Finch Feb 2015

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Our first meeting of the year and we met at Jane's  in Feb 2015.

The book has been described as "brilliant" although some felt it was a bit of a let down at the end.

Lee's comments :
"Huge book, I loved every page until towards the end with the strange business in Amsterdam and the conclusion and the author's summing up as it were at the end.  I didn't feel that it was a particularly 'literary' work but nevertheless a great read."

Ratings averaged 7-8/10

Our next book is Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty and will be on Thursday March 12 at Megan's.

Hundred Year Old Man

The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
by Jonas Johasson

Blog written by Marty

Allan Karisson, the centenarian, decides to leave his nursing home and avoid the imminent celebration in search of adventure (to which he is no stranger as we learn).

Having climbed out the window (slippers and all) he embarks on exploits of magnitude somewhat unbelievable. He befriends would be criminals hotdog stand owner an elephant and owner and a future partner all made possible by the acquisition of a case of money.

In a Forest Gump style his life background purports to have experienced and witnessed many important 20th century events relating often to explosions. This was indeed his early life passion. His travels and meetings include encounters with Stalin, Churchill, Truman, Mao,
Franco and de Gaulle.

The book keeps one quite intrigued as to who the next character will be and what anecdote will be revealed with the use of flash backs in time.

The general opinions were:
A fun bouncy clever story
Quirky
Cartoonish
A bit long and wearisome
Coenesque
A geriatric fairy tale
Slightly unbelievable
Well written

The average rating was 7 out of 10

From "A Novel Approach" :
Thank you so much Marty for a beautiful end of year meeting.  Hope everyone has a restful and enjoyable holiday.
Our next meeting is at Jane's on Feb 12th 2015, Thursday.
We will be discussing the Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Please bring along your 2015 book selection.

Lolita

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Blog written by Melissa

Of course Lolita caused a bit of discomfort for all, as I believe it was intended to do by the author, Nabokov. With the current Royal Commission into child abuse, the subject matter of the book was particularly topical. There was a variety of responses from club members…  Clever, unsettling, brilliantly written, tedious, disturbing, difficult to finish, delight in the literary style and the exuberant dance of words, over-written, frighteningly seductive, challenging/intriguing vocabulary, darkly witty, confronting, offensive, clever, sad… One member felt the need to disguise the book title when reading in public!

Recommend reading Nabokov’s Afterword which is helpful.

The book raised many questions which served as interesting discussion points for the group, including:

• How can we effectively separate the literary style from the subject matter?
• How would this book have been received if it were published today? Would it have been banned in this era?
• Does it reflect a perspective held by a previous generation of male authors and publishers?
• How did both films compare with the book?
• If the author could write this so well, was he also afflicted with some element of the protagonist’s illness or did he simply have a brilliant imagination & literary skill?
• How believable was the story?
• Did the ending become melodramatic?
• What are the reasons this book is listed as one of the top 100 works of modern literature?
• Is the story a reflection on the society/country it is set in?

• Did the protagonist, ‘Humbert’, in his own warped way, actually love Lolita?
• What would the impact truly have been on the character ‘Lolita’?
• How might Lolita have voiced her experience if the book had been written from her perspective instead of it being fully interpreted by ‘Humbert’?
• Did Lolita play any culpable part in the tragedy or as a minor is she fully innocent – even if she ‘initiated’ the early engagements.
• What do girls do with their blossoming sexual curiosity when the boys their own age can be much less mature and interesting to them?
• How might the book be experienced if the protagonist was a female ‘cougar’?

• What should society do with/about/for paedophiles? How should they be treated? Can they be ‘cured’? Is their behaviour primarily to be dealt with as an illness or a crime?

• What causes this kind of distorted lust? Is society in some ways responsible for creating a conducive environment for paedophilia? (E.g. Advertising using sexually explicit nymphettes. The culture of ‘youth’. Emasculation of men…. Etc.)

Here's a bit of extra information to follow up on the book and topic:

I don't usually advocate Wikipedia as a credible source but it does provide some interesting basic data on Lolita here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita

Here's that link to the Louis Theroux's program on ABC about a place in America where pedophiles are 'kept'.  Raises the question of 'what to do with them?' It's pretty creepy for various reasons but if interested, you can watch it here.  https://archive.org/details/LouisTheroux-APlaceForPaedophiles

For those of us who cared to rate this novel, it averaged a 6.6 out of 10.

Descriptions apart from those already mentioned by Melissa : a book ahead of its time, eloquently written and brilliantly structured.

Our next book is Trafficked by Sophie Hayes and the meeting will take place on Thursday Nov 20th at Robyn's. 

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

Blog written by Lee


A novel about love or a novel about war?  Flanagan combines both themes into a compelling poetic work.   

His characters, whether Australian or Japanese, men or women, all suffer from an self awareness of their own personal flaws.   

Poetry helps some to cope with the trials they face, Dorrigo Evans remembers Tennyson and the Roman poets and Nakamura and Kota come face to face with the beauty of nature and their personal frailties in the haiku of Issa and Basho.  

The title of the novel is taken from a book of haiku by Matsuo Basho a 17th century Japanese teacher and wandering poet.

 

Dorrigo’s love affair with Amy, the wife of his uncle, begins his journey into the war, his ‘narrow road’ takes him to the war in Cyprus and then to South East Asia where his platoon is surrendered to the Japanese in the fiasco that is the capture of British Singapore.   

The novel follows the fortunes of Dorrigo and his men during the horrors of the building the Burma Railroad and the hell of the jungle POW camps.  

Some die horrific deaths, others survive to return to alienated lives in Australia.  None will ever be the same.  

Flanagan’s writing is astonishing in it’s poetic beauty, whether he is describing a meeting in a book shop, a beach scene,  the tropical rain in the Thai jungles, or the hell of an Australian bushfire.  Each character’s story is given it’s full due and no story remains untold.  

There is no great fanfare in the telling of each of the character’s stories and their conclusions can be unexpectedly shocking but always poignant.  

Everyone in our group praised the novel and ratings ranged from an 8 to several giving a 10.

Our rating averaged 9.2 out of 10 and described as " compelling".

Our next book is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and will take place on Oct 9th Thursday at Melissa's.

The Chemistry of Tears

The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey

Blog to be posted by Sally





















We rated the book 7 out of 10.  Descriptions : curious; curiouser and curiouser; confusing; intriguing layers; frustrating.

Our next book will be The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan and the meeting will be at Lee's on Thursday August 28th.

Beautiful Ruins

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Comments below by Melissa :

I really enjoyed the theme of the book and its amusing and ironic commentary on the crass commercialisation of creative work (particularly literary, dramatic and cinematic writing) and the extent to which even people's lives can be 'optioned' and 'tweaked' to make a buck.

I especially loved the juxtapositions - eg. Plastic people (Deane) beside genuine people (Pasquale). The Hollywood Pitching room beside the early authentic war torn coast of then unpopulated Italy.  The brash efforts of some to sell anything at any cost (Reality Tv show with a house full of anorexics) beside the innocent efforts of others (Hotel Adequate View). The has-beens beside the Hopefuls, the past beside the present, the sincere beside the false, the 'Failures' beside the 'Successes' and who actually defines these…

I enjoyed the focus on the whole world of 'selling stories', given the whole world is telling stories (as history, as art, as memoir etc.) and how we all have our own and how some people view theirs with celebration and others with regret.  How people try to matter, in more or less meaningful ways. How beautiful things can be destroyed...ruined by greed, war, denial… and how some things ruined can still somehow be beautiful (people's mistakes, a love never consummated, an ageing face, death…)

I think people who have worked for some time in the literary/performing arts industries are most likely to connect with the book's themes. I'm not surprised it was a New York Times bestseller. I'm sure it also did well in LA.

Yes, I thought it was a clever, fun, lightly tragic, ironically tongue-in-cheek look at life as art and the art of life.

Our rating for Beautiful Ruins is 7 out of 10.

Our next book is The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey and the meeting will be at Sally's on July 24th.

The Casual Vacancy

The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling

Blog to be posted by Sarah





















Our next book is Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter and the meeting will be at Megan's on June 24th.

Gone Girl

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Blog to be posted by Jane





















Our rating for Gone Girl is 7 out of 10.  It is "clever, entertaining, readable and speedy".

Our next book is The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling and the meeting will be at Sarah's on Thursday May 29th.