Two very different books this month. A very creative novel in Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods' and a highly moving and thought provoking autobiography in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel'.

'American God's' follows the story of Shadow whose wife dies days in a mysterious car crash before his 

release from prison. On his way home he meets the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.

Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of prenatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

According to one reviewer this book is 'Dark, fun

 and nourishing to the soul'. 

See what you think!

 Ali was the Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament who faced death threats after collab

orating on a film about domestic violence against Muslim women with controversial director Theo van Gogh (who was himself assassinated). Even before then, her attacks on Islamic culture as "brutal, bigoted, [and] fixated on controlling women" had generated much controversy. In this suspenseful account of her life and her internal struggle with her Muslim faith, she discusses how these views were shaped by her experiences amid the political chaos of Somalia and other African nations, where she was subjected to genital mutilation and later forced into an unwanted marriage. While in transit to her husband in Canada, she decided to seek asylum in the Netherlands, where she marveled at the polite policemen and government bureaucrats. Ali is up-front about having lied about her background in order to obtain her citizenship, which led to further controversy in early 2006, when an immigration official sought to deport her and triggered the collapse of the Dutch coalition government. Apart from feelings of guilt over van Gogh's death, her voice is forceful and unbowed—like Irshad Manji, she delivers a powerful feminist critique of Islam informed by a genuine understanding of the religion.

Happy reading!

Two female writers this month, a couple of generations apart and with very different styles. This should give us plenty to discuss.

'White Teeth' by Zadie Smith is, according to the blurb on the back cover, ' .. is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among other things, with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-r

ead of a book.'

According to The Age '.. it takes literary tradition and moves it one notch along. It's a wise witty, wonderful book. Lie back and surrender to it.'

'Wide Sargasso Sea' by Jean Rhys. Here is one review:

Great novels should subvert certain traditions and conventions and Wide Sargasso Sea certainly does that. It provides the voice of 'the other', the unknowable mad wife, Bertha in Jane Eyre. Rhys' response to Jane Eyre is to provide us with a haunting, unnerving account of Antoinette, Bertha's real name. It has no chapter division and moves from one narrative voice to another without warning. This supports the overall theme of displacement and dreams. The issues of race and gender are accurately portrayed as more complex than black and white, male and female. Slavery and freedom are highlighted not just in the emancipation act but also in asking us who are now the real slaves, the former slave owners. Much of the character description is given through Antoinette's stream of consciousness and dialogue which must have been a shock to its English audience in the sixties when people were not that well-travelled. Overall, from its opening page providing hints of a dark past and a possibly thwarted future to its Thelma and Louise like ending this book holds us in suspense and makes us rethink assumptions held by many to this day.

Happy reading!

October

The over 900 pages of 'Shantaram' proved too daunting for most last month although those that read it found it fascinating. 'Amsterdam' provoked plenty of discussion, especially from those who had a "Molly' of their own in the past!

This month the books should prove more manageable. "Gould's Book of Fish' by Richard Flanagan and 'Disgrace' by J. M. Coetzee.

'Gould's Book of Fish' is a highly original novel. According to the blurb on the cover -

'Once upon a time that was called 1828, before all fishes in the sea and all living things were destroyed, there was a man called William Buelow Gould, a white convict who fell in love with a black woman and discovered too late that love is not safe. Silly Billy Gould, invader of Australia, liar, murderer & forger, condemned to the most feared penal colony in the British Empire and there ordered to paint a book of fish.'

According to the Observer the book is 'Ferocious in its anger, grotesque, sexy, funny, violent, startlingly beautiful and above all, heartbreakingly sad'.

'Disgrace'  is the story of a South African professor of English descent who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his cherished daughter.

According to the London Review of Books "Disgrace is the best novel Coetzee has written. It is a chilling, spare book, the work of a mature writer who has refined his textual obsessions to produce an exact, effective prose and condensed his thematic concern with authority into a deceptively simple story of family life. Half campus novel, half anti-pastoral, it begins quietly enough in Cape Town. (....) As so often in Coetzee's fiction, the characters in Disgrace have a metonymic or symbolic function." 

Happy reading!

Thanks to all those attending last month's meeting. 'The Slap' provoked some lively discussion; I'm sure we've not heard the last of it!

This month strap on your seatbelt as we're traveling around a bit! To Amsterdam for the ultimate standoff between friends and India for an amazing journey into the criminal underworld.

Ian McEwan's Amsterdam starts on a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence. Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer; Vernon is editor of the quality broadsheet The Judge. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, foreign secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister.

In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences neither has foreseen. Each will make a disastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to its limits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life.

In Amsterdam, a contemporary morality tale that is as profound as it is witty, we have Ian McEwan at his wisest and most wickedly disarming. And why Amsterdam? What happens there to Clive and Vernon is the most delicious climax of a novel brimming with surprises.

In the fictional story, Roberts' main character arrives in Bombay carrying a fake passport in the name of Lindsay Ford. Bombay was only a stopover on a journey that was to take Lin from New Zealand to Germany, but he decides to stay in the city. Lin soon meets a local man named Prabaker, who he hires as a guide but soon becomes his best friend and renames him Linbaba. Both men visit Prabaker's native village, Sunder, where Prabaker's mother christens Lin with the nameShantaram, meaning Man of God's Peace. On their way back to Bombay and after a night out, Lin and Prabaker are robbed. With all his possessions gone, Lin is forced to live in the slums, giving him shelter from the authorities and free rent in Bombay. After a massive fire on the day of his arrival in the slum, he sets up a free health clinic as a way to contribute to the community. He learns about the local culture and customs in this crammed environment, gets to know and love the people he encounters, and even becomes fluent in Marathi, the local language. He also witnesses and battles outbreaks of cholera and firestorms, becomes involved in trading with the lepers, and experiences how ethnic and marital conflicts are resolved in this densely crowded and diverse community.

This is a lengthy book so start reading NOW!

August's Book Selection

Two very contrasting books this month with plenty to get your teeth into!

When a man slaps someone else’s child at a friend’s barbecue, the small universe in the backyard begins to unravel. Not only are friends and family divided by the event, but it brings to the surface all the murk from below. The Slap is that rare and mesmerising combination of master storytelling and brilliant characterisation.

Spanning three generations, the eight characters we follow though the novel cover a vast range of emotions, opinions and experience, weaving together to create a maze of complex relationships. We see children coming of age, marriages teetering on the brink, and midlife crises erupting against a backdrop of lust, jealousy, deception and inadequacy.

Despite these raw themes, it is an incredibly sensitive read. The Slapcondemns Melbourne’s middle class; its acute mediocrity is vastly outweighed by the depths of its anger and frustrations. Yet Tsiolkas finds empathy for even the most despicable characters and shows us how to understand them, whether we want to or not. The eloquence, pathos and ruthless honesty of this new novel make it an unsettling, but thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding, read.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society must win some type of award for the most unlikely title for a book!

January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb…. As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever. Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises, and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.

Happy reading!

July's Book Selection

We are getting a wide variety of books to read over the months. This month a 'classic' set in the 1920's and a very popular novel set in Botswana.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby follows Jay Gatsby, a man who orders his life around one desire: to be reunited withDaisyBuchannan, the love he lost

 five years earlier. Gatsby's quest leads him from poverty to wealth, into the arms of his beloved, and eventually to death. Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby is a classic piece of American fiction. It is a novel of triumph and tragedy, noted for the remarkable way Fitzgerald captured a cross-section of American society.

This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith's widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to "help people with problems in their lives." Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency received two Booker Judges' Special Recommendations and was voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by theTimes Literary Supplement.

Happy reading!

June 09

Two contrasting novels this month, both set in the 1940's but their subject matter couldn't be more different!

The Boy in Striped Pajamas is a 2006 novel by Irish novelist John Boyne. The story is of an eight year old boy who moves with his family to near a Nazi concentration camp where he befriends Shmuel, a Jewish boy. 

One reviewer wrote '... It is elegant story-telling with emotional impact and an ending that in true fairytale style is grotesquely clever.' Others have criticised it's historical inaccuracies. Read it and make up your own mind.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a brilliant glimmer of the excitment of 40's New York starring the brashly beautiful Holly Golightly who entrances everyman she meets. Norman Mailer wrote 

"Truman Capote ...is the most perfect writer of my generation, he writes the best sentences word for word, rhythm upon rhythm. I would not have changed two words in Breakfast at Tiffany's which will become a small classic"

Happy reading!

As usual, two great books to enjoy this month. One classic novel written over 140 years ago and one fresh from the printing press!

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky is often considered to be the first 'modern' novel. It is a story of the brutal double murder and its aftermath. An impoverished ex-student, Raskolnikov, kills an old pawnbroker and her sister, apparently for financial gain. But as he encounters friends and family, strangers and adversaries, Raskolnikov is compelled to face the true forces that have led him to murder. Anyway, I don't want to give away the whole story; read it for yourself!

Breath by Tim Winton is the story of Bruce Pike, a paramedic, who arrives too late to save a boy found hanged in his bedroom. He knows the difference between suicide and misadventure. Pike understands only too well the forces that can propel a kid toward oblivion. Not just because he is an ambulance-man but because of the life he's lived, the boy he once was, addicted to extremes, flirting with death, pushing every boundary in the struggle to be extraordinary, barely knowing how to stop. 

A compelling novel and a great read.

Next meeting Friday 29th May 2009

April

This month a metaphorical novel and a heartbreaking story of caring for a friend with cancer.

The Alchemist by Paul Coelho is an allegorical novel which has been hailed as a modern classic. It follows Santiago, a young Spanish shepherd, on a journey to fulfill his Personal Legend. It has been described as 'a brilliant, simple narrative' and a 'wonderful tale, a metaphor for life'. It has sold more than 65 million copies so it will be interesting to see what we make of it!

The Spare Room by Helen Garner is , according to Peter Carey, 'A perfect novel, imbued with all Garner's usual clear eyed grace ... How is it that she can enter this heart-breaking territory - the dying friend who comes to stay - and make it not only bearable, but glorious, and funny?

Read it and find out!

Next meeting Friday 24th April.

March 09

One very funny book and one on a more serious subject this month!

'Naked' by David Sedaris and 'The Tale of Two Cities' by Charles Dickens. 

'Naked' is, according to the blurb on the back, 'A riotous collection of memoirs that explores the absurd hilarity of modern life and creates a wickedly incisive portrait of an all-too-familiar world. It takes Sedaris from his humiliating bout with obsessive behaviour in 'A Plague of Tics' to the title story, where he is finally forced to face his naked self in the company of lunatics.'

'A Tale of Two Cities' is set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution and starts with the famous line 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...'

Next meeting Friday 27th March.

feb 09

Two very contrasting books for this month!

'The White Tiger' by Aravind Adiga. A first novel and winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008

The story is about Balram Halwai who, over the course of seven nights, tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life. According to one critic 'At first, this novel seems like a straightforward pulled-up-by-your-bootstraps tale, albeit given a dazzling twist by the narrator's sharp and satirical eye for the realities of life for India's poor ... But the narrative draws the reader further in, and darkens, it becomes clear that Adiga is playing a bigger game ...'

'Twighlight' by Stephanie Myer. 'The sexiest vampire tale for years ... about teenage Bella's chaste romance with a beautiful vampire boy'.

Happy Reading!

See you on Friday 27th February. Please e-mail me to let me know you are coming.

Chris

chris@impactproductions.com.au