It was like Christmas all over again when the Book group met at Doolally’s – lovely Kim had be-ribboned piles of the forthcoming book choices together in a fantastic 3-for-2 deal. I very nearly bought the package just for the ribbons! Anyone who didn’t make it to the February meeting should pop into the shop and get this deal while it’s still available.
Down to business: this month we’ve read Kamila Shamsie’s much-acclaimed Burnt Shadows. I picked this one out because it featured in so many “Books of the Year” lists in the papers and, of course, it came with the recommendation of an Orange Prize shortlisting.
Unusually for the Berwick group, there was quite a consensus of opinion among those who’d got to the end of the book – the consensus being that Shamsie has perhaps taken on too much. The novel starts off on the day of the bombing of Nagasaki and follows the (beautifully-drawn) character of Hiroko, who loses her German fiancee in the atrocity. We all felt the writing in this first section was beautiful – lyrical and understated. We then follow Hiroko as she travels to India to seek out her fiancee’s relatives and falls in love with their employee, Sajjad. Here, the writing became somewhat reminscent of EM Forster and others of the genre- for example, a misunderstanding leading to a rape allegation, and the rather stereotypical English man who expresses himself through cricketing terms. We pick up Hiroko and Sajjad’s story in the 1980s in Pakistan, where their disaffected teenage son Raza becomes involved in a chain of events that cause tragedy for the family and haunts the characters through to post-9-11 New York. It was the final section that most of us found dissatisfying – too much action was packed into it, not all of it plausible, and some of the later key characters failed to engage us the way Hiroko, Ilse and others had done.
One reader objected to the way Shamsie’s political points – which I understood to be that the colonial actions of Britain and the US are largely responsible for the troubles of the world today – were rather too heavily made.
Where Shamsie succeeds is in her often beautiful and original imagery, her vivid scene-setting (such as in the Burton’s Indian garden, Karachi harbour and northern Pakistan where the mujahideen camp is sited) and her ability to bring disparate worlds together.
Yet again (how often has this happened now?), we found ourselves thinking that the book could have been a better one if it had ended before the third and final section. A plea for better editors perhaps? (And proof readers! We notice a creeping increase in the number of typos in new novels).
What else have we all been reading? Quite a few of us have read the Booker winner, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (a Christmas present for many a book lover, I suspect!). One reader couldn’t get past the first few pages but the rest of us loved it. Janet’s been reading Agatha Christie’s Secret Diaries, which sound fascinating.
Back into history for next month’s choice – but a much more recent period. We’re reading Gordon Burn’s Born Yesterday – The News as a Novel, which follows the real news events of summer 2008.
Hope to see everyone there along with lighter evenings and a sniff of spring in the air!
Next meeting: Tuesday March 2nd, 6.30pm at Doolally’s in Marygate, Berwick ( home to possibly the world’s largest scones). Discussing Born Yesterday – The News As a Novel by Gordon Burn.
Hi everyone
Here’s something to fire everyone up in these chilly days! It’s the new book choices for the next few months. I think they look really interesting.
As you know, in February we will be reading Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows.
March: New Writing North is planning to do a retrospective event for the Newcastle writer, Gordon Burn, who died of cancer last year. To tie in with this ,we will read his final book : Born Yesterday, the News as a Novel, which took topical news stories and fictionalized them.
April: The Shadow of a Smile by Kachi Ozumba
Kachi Ozumba teaches creative writing at Newcastle University and this is his first novel. It is about a Nigerian student who is imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit.
‘Ozumba has written a tragic story exploring the powerlessness of the law, and the ease with which it can be abused by those appointed its custodians.’ -The Independent.
May: Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. You can’t have escaped the recent publicity after this won the Costa Book Award!
June: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
`A gripping story, with beguiling characters . . . As well as being a supernatural tale, it is a meditation on the nature of the British and class, and how things are rarely what they seem. Chilling.’ – Kate Mosse, The Times, Summer Read
July: Over to You. Choose a summer party, a barbeque on the beach, a book swap, book quiz, have a list of favorites in June and then vote on them for July. July is the month for you and your book group to decide what you would like to do. Can we top last year’s literary picnic?
Hope this inspires everyone to keep reading – after all, once you’ve built a snowman, there’s not much else to do at the moment!
Kim at Doolally’s is away at the moment but I’ll contact her as soon as possible to get the books in stock.
See you all next month!
Three’s company for snowbound Berwick readers
Published 6 January 2010 Uncategorized Leave a CommentHow many readers does it take to form a Book group? This was the question I found myself asking last night as I sat for a few minutes on my ownsome in Doolally’s. Fortunately, this sorry state did not last long and two more hardy members turned up in defiance of the snow. Any date in January in Northumberland has to be prone to the vagaries of the weather but I think by now we would all be happy to send this snow and ice back to the pages of Child 44!
This month’s book was the fascinating novel by Linda Grant, The Clothes on Their Backs. It was a real shame that so many members couldn’t make it, because if the e-mails are anything to go by, then this Booker shortlisted novel was a popular choice with much to discuss.
The narrator, Vivien, is the only child of fearful refugee parents who keep her protected and isolated in their crumbling London flat. When she is ten, she discovers she has a relative – an uncle who turns up at her door in a brightly-coloured suit wielding a huge bar of Toblerone. But Sandor is chased by her angry father and eventually Vivien finds out why. Her uncle, dubbed ‘The Face of Evil’ in the tabloid newspapers, was a slum landlord (the character, according to Grant, was based on Peter Rachman). Vivien is a very passive character but this makes her a fascinating filter for Sandor’s story; we soon become aware of how much she is prepared to overlook in order to gain closeness with her exotic uncle. The novel’s events – which are small in scale, as this is definitely character-led rather than plot-led – lead up to the excruciating birthday party Sandor holds for Vivien. For me, this was a brilliant scene in that it was very vivid, funny and also utterly cringe-making.
We agreed that some of the characters in this novel are beautifully drawn – Eunice, for instance, and Sandor himself. The references to clothing which run through the book work very well and Ann particularly loved the ending: ‘A new dress. Is this all it takes to make a new beginning, this shred of dyed cloth, shaped into the form of a woman’s body? The crowd hurried past, their faces lit with anxiety and excitement. Our vulnerability suddenly touched me, all our terrible, moving weaknesses contained in a jacket, a skirt, a pair of shoes.’ (P. 293).
The discussion was great but because of the small number, necessarily shorter than it would otherwise have been. Which brings me back to my question: how many readers does it take to form a book group? Definitely more than one… two is a little awkward … three is probably quorate! But the more the merrier – so let’s hope the weather unfreezes by February, when we’re reading the Orange Prize shortlised novel Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie.
Next meeting: Tuesday 2nd February, 2010. 6.30pm at Doolally’s, Marygate, Berwick upon Tweed. Discussing Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie.
It certainly was no Christmas Carol – but many of us were expecting great things of this month’s choice, Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. As the first thriller to be longlisted for the Booker (in 2008), it was obviously going to be a very literary example of the genre. Indeed it was – but the general consensus was that the final 80 pages or so rather spoiled the rest of the book.
Where Tom Rob Smith excelled was in his sense of place and description of the pitiless Stalinist Russia of the 1950s. This had particular resonance for one reader, whose mother was born in a part of Estonia which borders with Russia – her more recent visits there suggest that many grim aspects of this landscape can still be seen today. For this Book Group member, the descriptions were highly authentic. Tom Rob Smith also raises some fascinating questions – how a relatively good man can be so faithful in serving a rotten and corrupt regime and how fear can infiltrate all parts of society, including personal relationships. Yet it seemed that these issues were not fully developed and were sacrificed for a racier plot, particularly towards the end of the book.
Ann summed up the problem of the ending very nicely: “I could almost hear the machinery creaking as the cogs strained to bring the two brothers full circle.” For many of us, the ending was just too contrived and implausible – from the identity of the serial killer and his motive to the escape scenes and the final attempt at redemption (or a sequel, depending on how cynical you are). We wondered how much pressure the author was under to write this way, which Margaret described as rather like an Indiana-Jones scenario. And that feeling that we were reading more of a screenplay than a novel bothered several of us. And our resident crime/serial killer expert Janet found it had so many conventions that it seemed to her like “a thriller by numbers.”
So although some of the writing was well above the average in the genre, we were surprised that it made it onto the Man Booker longlist.
There was, however, something of a split – some readers found it so gripping and realistic that they rated it very highly. So – an interesting choice that did prompt a lively discussion.
And just so that I don’t sound too much like Scrooge, I have to give an honourable mention to Kim at Doolally’s and her fabulously festive mincemeat shortbread. The new book list should be out in the next few days and Kim has also promised her brilliant 3-for-2 deal again for the new choices, which is a fantastic offer. Kim offers the Doolally’s cafe and the book discounts entirely out of goodwill – so it’s important that we support our local bookshop in return.
Look out for the new book choices shortly and if it’s not too late, see if Santa can swing past Doolally’s to pick them up for you. Merry Christmas to everyone – and may all our stockings bulge with books!
Birdwatching thriller wins over Berwick’s bookworms
Published 4 November 2009 Uncategorized Leave a CommentWhat a great turnout for this month’s book group! The big draw for the November meeting was the visit by the author Sally Hinchcliffe, who came to talk about her first novel Out of a Clear Sky. This book not only received great critical acclaim when it came out but was also a Radio4 Book at Bedtime last year. So as readers we were expecting great things – and we weren’t disappointed.
Sally’s talk gave us some great insights into the writing and the publishing process. She began by telling us the source of her idea for the dark and highly literary thriller, which began with her image of a raven with its carrion. A keen bird-watcher herself, she had been struck by the idea of how twitchers effectively ’stalk’ birds and how interesting it would be if someone was also ‘watching the watcher. ‘ The novel was started when Sally was doing her Creative Writing MA at Birkbeck and although she wrote the first draft in just five months, it took a further three years of revision and rewriting before the final draft became the novel on the shelves today.
For anyone who hasn’t read it, it follows birdwatcher Manda, whose life begins to unravel when her boyfriend leaves her. Not only does she lose her circle of friends but she discovers that she is being stalked. We soon learn that Manda is an unreliable narrator with a very troubled past.
The questions then flowed for a good hour! Readers were interested in how the character of Manda was formed into this untrusting person who the readers in turn cannot trust. Sally told us how readers often tell her that they worked out who the real ‘baddie’ was early on – which she finds interesting, because she herself hadn’t worked it out until quite a long way through writing the book! We enjoyed the bird imagery and the way these were used to form the chapters. Sally Hinchcliffe has shown quite a rare talent in being clearly very knowledgeable about bird-watching, but not allowing that to intrude too far into the narrative itself. For some of us, Manda’s back-story, of her troubled childhood and relationships with her parents, worked particularly well.
“Really enjoyable” an “a real page-turner” were just two of the comments about the novel – and any regular readers of this blog will know that the Berwick readers are not always easy to please! When I e-mailed Sally to thank her for her visit, she replied to say she had enjoyed it very much and found the questions and discussion “insightful and fascinating.”
We were delighted to welcome yet more new members to the Berwick group and hope they’ll also become regulars. Next month’s choice is another ‘literary thriller’ – the acclaimed Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. Set in 1950s Stalinist Russia, this has also attracted hugely favourable reviews and should be an ideal December read. Put the date in your (Advent) calendar!
Next meeting: Tuesday December 1st. 6.30pm. Doolally’s, Marygate, Berwick. Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith.
Another “challenge” from New Writing North with this month’s choice, poet Jacob Polley’s first foray into novel-writing, Talk of the Town.
An off-putting cover and the realisation, on the first page, that this was another novel written entirely in dialect were just too much for some members. Two book group stalwarts failed to get through it and said the problem of wading through the dialect was the main issue. It probably wasn’t helped by the all-too-recent memories of Ross Raisin’s God’s Own Country, which employed a similar device. Polley’s decision not to use punctuation to mark out the dialogue also irritated some readers, although others said they got used to it.
Those of us who did make it to the end, however, were surprised by a numberof very impressive elements to the book. The first was Polley’s poetic language – not surprising, given his literary background, but often a joy to read in the text. Here’s quite a nice example: “I reckon his grey eyes can see clean through us, as if me face is shaller watter with me lie trapped in it, flickin its tail.” (P. 250).
This poetic language, however, sparked an interesting discussion about whether it was authentic for the voice of the 16-year-old narrator. We couldn’t all agree on this. For some, it was hard to believe that Chris would use such lovely phrases and imagery and this interfered with our ability to see him as a real character. Others, however, felt the use of the poetic imagery was in fact a deliberate distancing ploy by the author; also that Chris was in fact a lot more sensitive a soul than he tried to make out to his peers and therefore this use of language was not entirely out of character.
Most of us were taken along by the plot, which we found gripping, although there were mixed feelings about whether we cared what happened to Chris, Arthur and Gill (who we felt was a great character but under-used!). Personally I did want Chris to be okay – although the ending for Arthur was nicely ambiguous.
We also thought it gave a convincing portrayal of bored, disaffected young people and those groups who operate on the outside edge of society and the law. The use of landscape helped – waste ground, arcades, telephone boxes etc all added to the bleakness and the sense of time (1986). It made for an uncomfortable read but most of us thought it had much to commend it and that it was a very promising first novel.
It was great this month to welcome two new members – and also Catriona from New Writing North who dropped in to chat about the Read Regional project. Thanks again to Kim at Doolally’s for her top-notch bakes!
I always ask members what else they’ve been reading because their recommendations are often so interesting and inspiring. This month was no exception!
Margaret suggested Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News, which she says is very different to the writer’s earlier works. Mike enjoyed Alasdair Gray’s modern classic Lanark, while Keith has just re-read Robert Graves’ Goodbye To All That, which he says gives him new insights every time he picks it up. Maisie suggested Washington journalist David Boling’s Guernica and there was also praise for Ian Rankin’s new detective novel The Complaints, featuring a new detective character to rival the popular Rebus.
Finally – don’t forget next month’s meeting when we’ll play host to Scottish-based author Sally Hinchcliffe, who’ll give a short talk on her work and answer our questions.
Next meeting: Tuesday 3rd November, 6.30pm at Doolally’s on Marygate, Berwick upon Tweed. Out of a Clear Sky by Sally Hinchcliffe.
The Berwick Book group is a year old this month! Time’s flown – as it always does when you have your nose in a good book.
The September meeting got the autumn season off to a great start, according to Ann, who very kindly facilitated the group because I was still away on holiday. (Yes, I did read the book! It took quite a leap of imagination to feel the Greenland cold while lounging about in the Florida temperatures of around 100 degrees – but all credit to the author for doing such a good job in describing the landscape and conditions).
It makes sense to reproduce Ann’s report on how the group went – so here goes:
“It was a really interesting discussion. We all found Cold Earth an intriguing read and there was plenty of speculation about themes, motives and the psychological journeys of the characters.
Margaret can’t abide ghost stories, so she was pleased when the plot took a turn into psychological territory- but there was enough of a ghost story element also to please those of us who relish a good scare. Margaret also liked the food passages. Janet appreciated the coherence of the story and the clarity of the plot. Mike was the least impressed with the book. He felt that there was a good concept there but that the execution failed to deliver. We thought the characters were very well drawn – particularly Ruth and her pain – but that the author had created a bit of a rod for her own back by writing exclusively in the form of letters home. She just about got away with it, we felt, because the characters were academics and therefore, presumably, adept and expressive writers. We all thought the characters’ ‘voices’ weren’t different enough, however, in their speech patterns etcetera. There was much discussion about what was real and what was illusion. Maisie used the example of the soapstone chess piece – and we realised that everything could be explained logically, without Nina’s dreams. Paula in particular felt that the ending was only in Nina’s mind and that there was a good chance she was hallucinating the happy return home as she lay dying in her tent! We all enjoyed the lyrically horrific passages describing what had happened to the original Greenlanders. Jill had only read the first 30 pages but she enjoyed listening to the discussion – and she was very struck by the characters having to swallow their toothpaste! She said she would have to take a small bottle with her to spit into and then take it away with her. Other discussion subjects included Yianni and his hidden violence – how he turned out to be the most damaged and rigid, yet fragile, character in the end, whereas Nina turned out to be rather tough and maybe the most humane. We relished the irony of Yianni’s mother having his ashes scattered on the dig site when he had been so resolute about leaving nothing behind. We discussed whether the book was too short to explore both the initial ghost story and then the psychological drama, as they realised they were on their own and would probably die there. Survival tactics (or their lack of them!), the very convincing depiction of the bone-numbing cold and the growing hunger, landscape as character, the common humanity reaching across the centuries, why the ‘ghosts’ stopped appearing, were also explored. We finished off by speculating on what little luxury we would pack in our own rucksacks (the characters had packed items such as very good chocolate, a tin of anchovies etcetera). Suggestions included an ipod, champagne and chocolate, cake, a big bag of oats for porridge, and vodka and caviar!
Doollally’s had a 3 for 2 offer on books and quite a few of us took the opportunity to stock up on the next three books.”
(Back to me – can I just add a personal, snarky comment? If the character of Nina was such a linguistic pedant, how come she used the annoying and incorrect phrase “bored of” in the last chapter? Or was this supposed to be a subtle indicatation of some mental slippage on her part?)
Anyway, it sounds like a really interesting meeting and I’m sorry to have missed it. Looking forward to next month, however, when we’ll be reading Carlisle author Jacob Polley’s Talk of the Town. This is a choice which all the New Writing North groups are reading and it links with the author’s forthcoming event at the Durham Book Festival.
See you then – and don’t forget the new earlier monthly dates – first Tuesdays of the month from now on!
As I write, the sun is beating down, the air is full of those annoying litle black bugs and the weather experts are assuring me it all won’t last. It’s hard to even think of darkening autumn evenings – but they’re on their way! So it’s nice to know that we have a list of new books to see us through the chillier months.
Here are the dates and books – and I’ve done a bit of Googling to let you know a little about the selection.
Tues Sept 1st – Cold Earth by Sarah Moss. This is a debut novel set in a remote part of Greenland around an archaealogical dig. It gets great reviews on the web!
Tues 6th Oct – Talk of the Town by Jacob Polley. This is a New Writing North “Simul-Read” which all the groups are reading to give some momentum to an author event at the Durham Book festival. The author is a poet writing his debut novel and its narrator is a 14-year-old boy.
Tues 3rd November – Out of a Clear Sky by Sally Hinchcliffe. This is linked to the visit to the Berwick Book Group by the author. The book’s a psychological thriller featured as a Book of the Week on Radio 4 last year – and Hinchcliffe’s writing has been compared to Ian McEwan’s.
Tues 1st Dec – Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. This is a thriller set in 1950s Stalinist Russia.
Tues 5th January – The Clothes On Their Backs by Linda Grant. Set in the 1970s, it’s the story of Vivien, the daughter of Hungarian-Jewish immigrants, and her struggle for identity.
New Writing North will be asking Kim to stock the books as soon as possible, and do remember that she offers a 5% discount on the choices to Book Group members. I think it’s important we support the shop as we’re really lucky to have such a great venue for our meetings.
I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into these books! Ann will be kindly facilitating the September meeting as I’ll still be away on holiday on 1st September, but I’ll keep on top of the blog and hope to see everyone in October! Have a great summer.
Barbara
There’s something about summer, isn’t there, that can make otherwise sensible people throw caution to the wind. And that definitely happened with this month’s Book Group – resulting in a weird but definitely wonderful outdoor evening.
Ann had the inspired idea to hold the July meeting on the beach at Spittal. That was back in the day when the Met Office had rashly predicted a “barbecue summer” – and we all know how accurate that’s turned out to be. The other part to Ann’s plan was to bring along a piece of writing about food and even some of the food itself. It was a wonderful idea – but anyone who’s arranged an outdoor event this month may have already spotted the slight potential for disaster!
In fact, we may have ended up with the strangest meeting ever, but it truly worked well. The rain held off – but the brisk breeze threatened to cover our literary picnic with a fine layer of sand. Undeterred, we took our recommendations and chosen readings down to the prom and arranged our blankets in the 1930s stone shelter. (We’ll leave aside the possibility that the wine may have put us in breach of a few local bye-laws. And we pay tribute to the considerate dog owners of Berwick who veered their pets away from us every time they showed interest in the food).
Clustered around a picnic that my son would describe as “random,” we each read out a piece of food-related writing that we’ve enjoyed. I was so impressed by the variety of these selections and the way everyone rose to the challenge so well.
What was on our Menu for the Mind? Mike started with the wonderful poem by William Carlos Williams, ‘This Is Just To Say:’
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.
Then he read a chunk of James Joyce’s Ulysses – and I think everyone was grateful he didn’t actually bring along the giblet soup, gizzards, hearts etc that the passage described! Staying with the Irish influence, next up was a reading from Beckett’s short stories, More Pricks Than Kicks, with a fantastic description of Gorgonzola cheese – which Mike did provide.
Margaret took many of us back to our own childhood with her choice of Jack Common’s Kiddar’s Luck. This was a great description of Sundays in turn-of-the-century Heaton and what would be cooked and eaten on those days. They were traditions that certainly were kept until the 1960s and early 1970s on many parts of Tyneside. And she made a mouth-watering lemon cake which gave many of us a real taste of our own youth again (with apologies to Proust!).
My choice returned to the cheesey theme with the part of Three Men In A Boat when the author gives his reasons why they should not take cheese on their boat journey. I ignored his advice and brought a selection of cheeses along!
Jill was the only one of us who found a section of very good writing by a real cookery writer. Her reading from the excellent Elizabeth David had everybody drooling.
Ann chose a sure-fire winner with her reading from Joanne Harris’ Chocolat. The extremely chocolately cake that she made lived up to the expectations created by the reading!
Paula also brought a cake – but a very different one. She told us the story of her grandmother’s recipe for what she called Egg Cake (served sliced with butter) and then read a lovely passage from Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day which ended with the perceptive little sentence: “She was a person who needed cake.” (How many of us recognise ourselves there!)
Maisie read a wonderful short story by Helen Dunmore. It was the title story from the collection Ice Cream. And yes, she truly did bring along a coolpack full of a selection of enough ice-creams to put Mr Forte to shame.
The evening wasn’t over. To the background of the crashing waves on the Spittal shore, we then all gave some recommendations for summer reads. I’ll list them all, along with some of the reasons why the group members put them forward!
Stieg Larsson’s The Girl who Played with Fire (the second in a trilogy; very well-plotted Scandinavian crime fiction);
Home by the American writer Marilynne Robinson;
The Leopard by Guiseppe de Lampedusa;
another Sicilian writer, Andrea Camilleri’s The Scent of the Night (a crime novel);
C J Sansom’s novel about the Spanish Civil War, Winter in Madrid;
Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone ( a long-time favourite of the recommendee);
Thackeray’s classic Vanity Fair;
Paul Auster’s Oracle Night;
Helen Dunmore’s short story collection Ice Cream (recommended to be read alongside a box of Cornetto or Magnum);
Carol Shields’ Dressing Up for the Carnival;
Sadie Jones’ The Outcast;
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson;
Stef Penney’s The Tenderness of Wolves;
Anya Seton’s historical novel set neat Hexham, Devil Water;
Gary Paulsen’s non-fiction book about observing a sledding race, Winter Dance (exciting and adventurous);
Mal Peet’s keeper, written for the 12-plus age group but a great story about football, ecology and a quest;
Lorrie Moore’s Collected Stories;
Justin Webb’s Have a Nice Day (about America and challenging the European’s lazy habit of criticising the nation).
Wow – that’s quite a list! – and we only have a month before the next season of Book Groups gets under way!
In September the meetings will be back in the safe and wonderful little oasis that is Doolally’s on Marygate in Berwick. The new books for the autumn are being considered now, so watch this space!
Remember, the group is open and new members are welcome, so do recommend the meetings to anyone who may be interested. But be warned – joining the Berwick Book Group may seriously affect your waistline!
The usual smooth running of the Berwick Book group took quite a knockback this month – with a bit of confusion over dates. It meant a last-minute change of venue – and apologies to Kim at Doolally’s and anyone else who ended up affected by this little chapter of accidents.
The short version of the story is that we found a pleasant seat and some coffee in the beer garden at the Kings Arms – and attempted to leave a note on the Doolally’s door for people to find. Colin (clearly a former boy scout!) tracked us down, but some people didn’t spot the piece of paper and assumed the meeting had been cancelled. In the manner of a Government inquiry, we won’t apportion blame – but I will try to ensure nothing like this happens again!
Onto the book itself, which was Alice de Smith’s Welcome to Life. The book was chosen by New Writing North as part of its Read Regional promotion of local authors. It’s set in 1989 and told from the viewpoint of 14-year-old Freya as she describes her unconventional family and the troubles of adolescence.
For me, this was an original and enjoyable book, although I found it rather lightweight. On the whole, however, it wasn’t well received by the Berwick readers who e-mailed me their thoughts. “Didn’t enjoy it”…”Couldn’t get into it”…”Didn’t think much of it…” Even Jill, who’s usually able to find something positive about all the choices, failed with this one!
Having said that, when the small number of us who did meet this month held our discussion, we found rather a lot to talk about. The character of Millie, Freya’s mother, was fascinating (the men, we thought, were rather less well drawn). We thought the writer did a great job of evoking the late Eighties era and some of the events, such as the housing market crash and the recession, are, of course, very topical for us today.
I also thought her teenage voice, using the popular slang of the time, was very accurate. I loved the sentence on P.34: “I wanted to fall asleep and wake up when I was eighteen.” I’m sure every teenager feels like this at some point!
This Sleeping Beauty image was one of a number of fairytale allusions, as Ann pointed out. The “false mother” figure of Mrs Glinka is reminiscent of the witch in Hansel and Gretel, with her enticing kitchen and her promise of gingerbread. The vain mother who seems almost threatened by her growing daughter is of course a fairytale standard (Snow White, perhaps also Cinderella?).
We spent most of the discussion, however, on the troubling final chapter or Epilogue. (NB: Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t finished this book, I’m about to give away a wholly unpredictable ending!) We simply couldn’t understand why the author had done what she did to her best character, Millie, who is left devoid of all her personality and her ability to do anything. So she was no longer destructive – but she also was no longer herself in any recognisable way. It’s the sort of thing that would make me snort with indignation if the writer had been a man – but given that this author is a young woman, we were all baffled as to why she felt the need to contain Millie in this way. The description of this virtually brain-dead woman as “more beautiful than ever” was very disturbing. Ann was reminded of The Stepford Wives and also of a short story by Ursula le Guin, set in a world which is perfect but depends upon the regular sacrifice of a child. She was also reminded a little of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
We weren’t sure what Alice de Smith was trying to say with this rather devastating ending – or whether she was simply (to use Ann’s wonderful phrase) “dropping an alligator through the skylight,” which is a writerly way of saying that something totally out of keeping or beyond expectation was allowed to happen. Either way, we all felt that the book would have been a lot more satisfying if it had finished at the end of the preceding chapter, with Millie’s final note to her daughter.
Other aspects of the Epilogue were irritating too – we were not convinced the father and Millie’s lover Edward would have set up home together and it just felt like the need to tie up all the loose ends was rather patronising to the reader.
If you like the “adolescent struggling with unconventional family” thing, I would recommend Barbara Trapido’s Brother of the More Famous Jack. And for a really detailed evocation of the (earlier) 1980s and a very powerful description of a boy growing up in this time, I loved David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green.
Ann also alerted us to a non-fiction book which sounds absolutely fascinating, written by Daniel Pennac about his struggle to persuade his children to read. It’s called The Rights of the Reader and the little paragraph she read out was really interesting.
We spent the rest of the meeting talking about how the book groups should go in the future – thanks to everyone who’s given me their views on this, which are being fed back to New Writing North. Any further comments happily received!
And finally – don’t forget our final meeting before the autumn, which will be on Tuesday July 28th at the usual time of 6.30pm. This will be an unconventional meeting in which we will be bringing along our favourite passages of writing about food – and also bringing along a related edible, to form a little picnic. It promises to be what my 12-year-old would describe as “random.” Weather permitting, we’ll be holding this meeting on Spittal Beach but with a Plan B to adjourn to my house if the weather’s atrocious! I’ll be putting the full details in an e-mail very shortly.
Fingers crossed for sunshine … and no more evidence of Murphy’s Law!
Next meeting: Tuesday 28th July. 6.30pm. Venue: Spittal Beach. Theme: Recommending summer reads and food-related writing!
