The Skull and the Nightingale by Michael Irwin

According to the cover blurb, The Skull and the Nightingale, set in England in the early 1760s, is:
‘A chilling and deliciously dark tale of manipulation, sex, and seduction.
When Richard Fenwick, a young man without family or means, returns to London from the Grand Tour, his wealthy godfather, James Gilbert, has an unexpected proposition. Gilbert has led a fastidious life in Worcestershire, but now in his advancing years, he feels the urge to experience, even vicariously, the extremes of human feeling—love and passion, adultery and deceit—along with something much more sinister. He has selected Fenwick to be his proxy, and his ward has no option but to accept.
But Gilbert’s elaborate and manipulative “experiments” into the workings of human behaviour drag Fenwick into a vortex of betrayal and danger where lives are ruined and tragedy is always one small step away. And when Fenwick falls in love with one of Gilbert’s pawns and the stakes rise even higher – is it too late for him to escape the Faustian pact?’
Well the novel certainly created ‘extremes of human feeling’ in the nine hardy souls who congregated in The Barrels on a freezing January night. Reactions ranged from ‘I absolutely loved this book,’ to ‘I loathed it’. Nothing new there, then!
Martin gave the book the alternative title of ‘A Rake’s Progress without artistry’. He writes:
There are enough descriptions both factual and fictional of the hypocrisy and misogyny displayed by Victorians without inventing yet another episode with a mild titillation for the emotionally challenged. I am most of the way through and have got to the murder of Mr Ogden and I’m wondering if it will be covered over or finally be his come-uppance and if I care either way. There must have been Victorian men who actually earned a living by working without inheritances and benefactors, who’s presence seem to be a sure fire recipe for moral decline. I expect there were some tender and loving relationships since the large families and absence of television seems to imply that procreation had some fans, possibly enthusiastic ones. The godfather getting vicarious thrills is barely credible but boring. The portrayal of Mrs Ogden as a prim matron suddenly launching into a languid description of her husband undressing then raping her can only be to appeal to the lower orders of Sun readers. Jane Austen’s characters were just as hypocritical but at least they were authentic.
Not worth the expenditure of paper and time.
In contrast, another member loved the way this ‘novel of ideas’ made them consider philosophical questions about the divide between ‘the Skull’ – the body and all things physical and sexual, and ‘the nightingale’ – the mind, spirituality and emotions. It captured the questioning ethos of the Age of Enlightenment and depicted it through the complex and interesting characters of Richard Fenwick and his godfather James Gilbert. She particularly liked the complex and self-aware Richard Fenwick, even though he was not always likeable.
Gwyneth was less convinced about the two main male characters; she disliked both and found Richard shallow and ‘too clever for his own good’. She did, however, think the book was erudite but with perhaps too many literary references at times.
Paula enjoyed the authentic evocation of the 18th Century, particularly the observations of the Age of Rationality, such as the research into Optics. However, she found the misogyny hard to take, even within the context of the story. We discussed the portrayal of the female characters. The ‘second tier’ characters such as Kitty Brindley and Mrs Hurlock were thought to be well-drawn, but Sarah Kinsey, the woman Richard loves, is not given much space by the author and so does not offer a compelling alternative to Richard when he makes his final choice to continue to work for James Gilbert. Paula pointed out that Richard is also repelled by the idea of the child Sarah will give birth to – the son or daughter of the man he murdered.
I thought 18th Century England, particularly London, was well-portrayed. The descriptions of the pubs, the masques, the drawing rooms were vibrant and entertaining. I also liked the Dickensian opening, which reminded me of Great Expectations, but this narrative quickly becomes much darker. I liked the way that Richard’s character has been shaped by his need to please (in order to survive). He’s always watching himself and judging how others might see him. However there is also a hardness and cruelty in him from the start. Most of the male characters are misogynistic, with women, in the main, the more sympathetic characters. I found the tragic story of Mr Quentin the poet/suicide and his wife Mrs Quentin, with the bad teeth, particularly affecting. The ending reminded me of a very different story, the film The Hurt Locker, where an American bomb disposal expert becomes so traumatised by his work that he cannot settle back into civilian life but signs up for another tour; he has come to need the danger and the adrenalin. I liked the idea that Richard determines to take on his evil godfather and maybe give him a taste of his own medicine, but I don’t think his intentions were all noble. A part of him enjoys the corruption. A cleverly written portrayal of the corruption of a young man that leaves the reader with no false hope and a somewhat jaundiced view of humanity.

Finally, we discussed our Christmas reading. Recommendations from the group included:

The Lunar Men by Jenny Uglow
Beyond the Wind in the Willows by William Horwood
The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane
H is for Hawk by Helen McDonald
The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth
Stoner by John Williams

Ann Coburn

THE QUICK by Lauren Owen

The cover blurb for this book reads:

‘You are about to discover the secrets of The Quick –

But first, reader, you must travel to Victorian England, and there, in the wilds of Yorkshire, meet a brother and sister alone in the world, a pair bound by tragedy. You will, in time, enter the rooms of London’s mysterious Aegolius Club – a society of the richest, most powerful men in England. And at some point – we cannot say when – these worlds will collide.

It is then, and only then, that a new world emerges, a world of romance, adventure and the most delicious of horrors – and the secrets of The Quick are revealed.’

The Berwick Book Group had an overall lukewarm response to ‘The Quick’. Although we liked some of the writing, the majority thought that it was an opportunity missed by the author.

WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD!

One member writes, ‘I gave up after 150 pages, through boredom, though I thought it started well – basically before the vampires set in. Loads of potential in the homosexual relationship; it seemed a waste not to see it through.  I thought it was a shame that such a potentially good novelist had chosen a silly subject. I’d been willing to give it a go, but didn’t even feel tense, let alone frightened. And couldn’t have cared less what was going happen. Vampires are in fashion, but

I need more convincing to bother with them. However I thought she was sometimes very good at characterisation. For instance ‘his face was like an empty plate.’ Brilliant!’

As for me, I was looking forward to reading this Victorian Gothic novel.  I like a bit of Gothic horror/ghostliness at this time of year; when the nights close in, a book, an armchair and a glass of wine is a very tempting option. The Quick, at over 500 pages, is nearing doorstopper status but I was prepared to commit to it on the strength of glowing reviews from two of my favourite writers.  Hilary Mantel describes it as, “A sly and glittering addition to the literature of the macabre . . . a skilled, assured performance. . . it’s hard to believe it is a first novel”, and Kate Atkinson goes even further with, ‘a feast of gothic storytelling that is impossible to resist’. Unfortunately, I found The Quick fairly easy to resist – and I probably would have done just that if it had not been a Book Group read.  It’s difficult to work out what is missing with this novel.  All the ingredients for ‘a feast of Gothic storytelling’ are there – the well executed faux-Victorian style of the writing, the authentic period detail, the well-drawn and likeable protagonists, and the ‘monsters among us’ story-line  – so why did The Quick feel like a bland and under-seasoned dish?

Perhaps because, although Shadwell and Adeline, James and Christopher, and Charlotte and Howland were all excellent pairings in theory, the spark does not ignite in the execution, even though there are some really interesting dynamics there.  I think the buttoned-up, faux-Victorian writing style might be to blame; the characters are all a little too reined in and veiled.  Maybe, with a little more balance between the social mores of the time and the real hearts beating beneath, they might have ignited.  This may be why the character of Liza, the child vampire, springs to ‘life’ more vividly and readily; she does not have to abide by the decorous standards of the middle-class adults.  On a side note, I did enjoy the nod to Fagin with Mrs Price and her vampire street urchins.

The vampires themselves are chilling – particularly the way they can invade our minds – and the Class/Gender war between the gentlemen vampires at the Club and the working class Mrs Price and her right-hand girl Lisa is entertaining.  However, the final confrontation is very tame – especially considering that there has been very little previous face-to-face interaction between the vampires and the quick (although the scene with little Liza and her child victim is truly horrible and chilling).

Pace is an issue – The Quick is actually far too slow, particularly in the third quarter. Perhaps, also, there is too much suspense and not enough denouements.  Suspense and suggestion are wonderful writing tools, but Lauren Owen seems to have bought into the whole ‘monsters are most frightening when left to our imagination’ school of thought a little too much.  Yes, glimpses are fine to whet the curiosity, but she almost perversely continues to guide us away from the meaty action, rather like a Victorian governess with her charges.  And sometimes the hints, annoyingly, come to nothing.  For example the line at the start of chapter 27 – ‘There was something stirring inside the room at the end of the passage.  A curtain, most likely, stirring in the breeze’ – which suggested to me that Adeline’s fiancé/Shadwell’s son might still be in there.  Maybe I missed something, but I don’t think that hint was ever followed through.

Finally, I did find this a dispiriting read, but not because of the dark themes; rather, there were too few extremes of emotion, particularly on the positive side.  Okay, it’s a Gothic novel, but that doesn’t rule out passion or joy or exaltation or victorious feelings; even negative emotions such as anger and hatred would have livened things up if they had been portrayed with more intensity.  As it was, these protagonists seemed defeated before they had even started.

I would not rule out reading another book by this author, but The Quick did not shine for me.

Ann Coburn

I CAN’T BEGIN TO TELL YOU by Elizabeth Buchan

‘Denmark, 1940. War has come and everyone must choose a side.

For British-born Kay Eberstern, living on her husband Bror’s country estate, the Nazi invasion and occupation of her adopted country is a time of terrible uncertainty and inner conflict.

With Bror desperate to preserve the legacy of his family home, even if it means co-existing with the enemy, Kay knows she cannot do the same. Lured by British Intelligence into a covert world of resistance and sabotage, her betrayal of Bror is complete as she puts her family in danger.

Tasked with protecting an enigmatic SOE agent, a man who cannot even tell her his name, Kay learns the art of subterfuge. From this moment on, she must risk everything for the sake of this stranger – a stranger who becomes entangled in her world in ways she never expected.

Caught on opposing sides of a war that has ripped apart a continent, will Kay and Bror ever find their way back to one another?

Elizabeth Buchan’s stunning new novel, I Can’t Begin to Tell You, is a story of bravery, broken loyalties, lies and how the power of love can bring redemption even to the darkest of places.’

It was a qualified thumbs-up from the majority of the Berwick Book Group for this novel set in Denmark in WW2.  A number of members, including Jill, particularly enjoyed the amount of research and the attention to detail – evident in the descriptions of the intricacies of morse code, or the amount of dust produced by the bombings: ‘The dust… the dust had nearly choked her. The bombing had released so much of it. It was everywhere – on surfaces, between the sheets, on window frames, sifting into everyone’s clothes, hair, nose and ears. When would they ever be properly clean again? When they came to write a history of wartime, historians must write about the dust, she thought. London was buried in the stuff and it hung in the air – minute particles of brick, stone, wood… and other more terrible things she wasn’t going to think about.’

However, the attention to detail was a real turn-off for one member:

‘For me, this is a story with potential that failed to live up to its promise. Admittedly I gave up half way through, but to read over 200 pages only to find that nothing of any significance has happened is disappointing at best. I was bored. My impression was that the novelist was more concerned to demonstrate the research she’d done than tell a good tale. I might have been interested, for instance, in the technical detail of morse code but not several pages of description, and, in a similar vein, a whole page quoted, from an ostensibly real life secret manual, was simply unnecessary. The characters were neatly paired up according to sexual attraction on both sides of the North Sea: it was all very predictable and unconvincing. And, while allowing that I was reading an advance copy (typos I accept), some of the writing struck me as sloppy and careless. I also found the dialogue unconvincing especially that between the spies: the novelist seemed more concerned to relay info to the reader about this or that aspect of the situation than to depict people actually talking. Since the story is essentially about secret goings-on and espionage, there was a very disappointing lack of tension. At no point did I feel anxious or even concerned. Is this bog standard romantic fiction? Perhaps so: ‘Bror undressed her and she trembled with the daring of what she was about to do. With each garment he despatched to the floor, he paused to look. ‘You’re beautiful, Kay.’ So was he.’ Overall, I thought it was a good idea gone badly wrong unless, of course, you’re looking for a totally undemanding read. But, for me, there are better novels about WW2 even in the romantic mode.’

In contrast, Martin loved the book: ‘It kept me up until 4.00am to finish. It beautifully illustrates the dilemma for individuals and families facing war and oppression. Do you grit your teeth and lay low until it all passes over? Or do you fight knowing that you not only endanger your own life but those of friends, neighbours and family? When these fault lines go through a family then each decision affects not only the problem (the enemy) but also your relationships with other family members with often severe consequences. The fractured nature of the British intelligence services was very well drawn and I noticed she cited “Between Silk and Cyanide” as one of her sources; this is another remarkable and highly recommended book with the one annoying caveat that it is written by a man who was always right, in his own judgement anyway. The fossilisation of senior people in any sphere is well known but had devastating consequences in military areas when officers trained in sabres and horses sent their troops against tanks and machine guns.’

I couldn’t attend our November meeting and my thanks go to Jill for stepping in.  I missed my monthly dose of good beer and erudite discussion, and I’m looking forward to the next one when the focus is on a suitably gothic tale for a dark, December evening:  ‘The Quick’ by Lauren Owen.

Ann Coburn

GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT by Alyson Foster

‘The day of the accident, Jess is in the backyard with a chainsaw, clearing space to build the greenhouse she’s always wanted. And, as always, she is thinking of Arthur. Arthur, her colleague in the botany department, who never believed she’d actually start the project. Arthur, who has cut off contact, escaping to the subarctic to study the pines. But now there has been a disaster, connected to Jess’s husband’s space tourism business: the explosion of a shuttle filled with commercial passengers, igniting a media frenzy on her family’s doorstep. Jess’s engineer husband is implicated, and she knows there is information he’s withholding from her, even as the cameras turn to her for answers. Struggling, Jess writes to the only person she can be candid with. She writes to Arthur. And in her emails, freighted with longing, regret, and the old habits of seduction, she tries to untangle how her life has changed in one instant, but also slowly, and how it might change still. Unfolding through Jess’s emails to Arthur, written in glimmering prose, this extraordinary debut is a dazzling modern-day love story.’

This book split the Berwick Book Group down the middle. Some members absolutely hated it. Nichola writes: ‘In all honesty, I hated this book. I struggled with it from page one but seeing as it wasn’t very big I persevered. I finally gave up about half way through after deciding that it was overwritten and downright boring. Upon giving up, I skipped to the last few pages and can honestly say I didn’t feel like I’d missed a thing! I found Jessica uninteresting and didn’t connect with her at all’

Martin was another unimpressed reader: ‘This book is the reading equivalent of being trapped in a railway carriage while the person next to you carries on a very loud mobile phone conversation. At least in this case I could shut the book. About 1/4 of the book is taken up with pointless and repetitive Headers, which I dutifully scanned to try and glean some relevance. There was none.  About half way through I decided it wasn’t going anywhere and I wouldn’t care if it did. Horrible.’

Jill was still reading the book and was in two minds, but Bronwen and I managed to convince her to carry on reading because we had both really enjoyed it. Bronwen found the book original and richer than she was initially thinking in the opening chapters  – she thinks that the complexity takes a while to build.  She particularly loved the evocative descriptions of space. For her, Jessica – and her agonising about relationships – was a pain, but an engaging character nonetheless.  Bronwen also enjoyed the other characters which were all well-drawn, particularly Jessica’s sister who, despite her job as a psycho-analyst, was down-to-earth and practical, telling Jessica that sometimes all one can do is put one foot in front of the other.

I, too, enjoyed being in Jessica’s company.  She was brittle and flawed, but fascinating and full of feeling. I liked the one-sided email communications and I thought it was clever that we got to know Arthur only through Jessica’s responses to his unseen emails.  All the other characters, Jessica’s husband Liam, her children Corrine and Jack, and the documentary maker, Lecroix, are brought to the reader only via Jessica’s emails, so her voice and her story telling skills are crucial.  What she leaves out and what she chooses to emphasise all add to the narrative.  Alyson Foster absolutely nailed this for me. I decided that the title God is an Astronaut comes from Jessica’s realisation that stepping away from Earth/earth brings emotional distance and clarity.  Each time she goes onto the roof of her house, or climbs a tree, an important revelation occurs.  In the final space flight sequence, she realises that she must leave her broken marriage and start again. The flight is a wonderful way of distilling the essential conflict, placing her and Liam in an extreme situation which magnifies the cracks in their relationship. On one level this would seem to be a depressing plot – Jessica loses her husband, her lover, and she never completes the greenhouse she is building. However, this story is about Jessica reaching that moment of absolute revelation and understanding about what she must do and, in that sense, it is uplifting.  The symbolism of the red roses at the end confirms that.  The roses, the only survivors in her garden, are Jessica.

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE GROUP

Three from Martin:

1. The Universe versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence. This is a Harold Fry of a book. Quirky, lots of ups and downs with a real feel-good ending.
2. Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling. Imagine the characters from the play Abigail’s Party. All caricatures which somehow work together in a humerous if slightly “cringeworthy” way. The parade of prejudices and inadequacies on display surrounding a local bye-election are legion. There are no happy endings and no characters save the unbelievably awful but it exercises a strange compulsion to make sure I reached then end. This is not damning with faint praise I shall look forward to another.
3. Harbour Street by Ann Cleeves. She never disappoints. This Vera Novel has already been televised but this in no way interfered with the superior written tale.

Nichola suggested ‘Where Rainbows End’ by Cecilia Ahern (which was also released as ‘Dear Rosie). ‘It’s one of my all time favourite books and, like out October book, is made up of various written correspondences. That said, it’s much better done and is something I’ve read time and again without getting bored.

Jill recommends ‘Sing Jess Sing’ by Tricia Coxon.

Ann Coburn

‘I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM – DO YOU?’

This clever marketing campaign accompanied the publication of The Secret Place by Tana French, with luminaries such as Stephen King, Kate Mosse and Sophie Hannah all claiming that they knew who killed Chris Harper in ‘The Secret Place’ by Tana French. The Amazon blurb reads:

‘The photo shows a boy who was murdered a year ago. The caption says, ‘I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM’. Detective Stephen Moran hasn’t seen Holly Mackey since she was a nine-year-old witness to the events of Faithful Place. Now she’s sixteen and she’s shown up outside his squad room, with a photograph and a story. Even in her exclusive boarding school, in the graceful golden world that Stephen has always longed for, bad things happen and people have secrets. The previous year, Christopher Harper, from the neighbouring boys’ school, was found murdered on the grounds. And today, in the Secret Place – the school noticeboard where girls can pin up their secrets anonymously – Holly found the card. Solving this case could take Stephen onto the Murder squad. But to get it solved, he will have to work with Detective Antoinette Conway – tough, prickly, an outsider, everything Stephen doesn’t want in a partner. And he will have to find a way into the strange, charged, mysterious world that Holly and her three closest friends inhabit and disentangle the truth from their knot of secrets, even as he starts to suspect that the truth might be something he doesn’t want to hear.’

And now the members of Berwick Book Group also know who killed Chris Harper (no spoilers in this blog, I promise!) but, interestingly, our group of nine were sharply divided into those who were completely gripped by the mystery and those who couldn’t care less.

Martin was gripped. He writes: ‘Ten to midnight on Monday and I’ve just managed to finish reading The Secret Place. I had to squeeze it into a busy schedule because I loved it.  A well paced novel which introduced me to the secret, hothouse world of teenage girls and reminded me of the crass, obsessive world of teenage boys. Although set in Ireland it was managed without imposing a raft of foreign linguistics apart from the odd “Yous” and not one “eejit”. I still don’t know what an emo is but suspect it is abusive. The two detectives managed to chafe against each other quite merrily and navigate the perils of copper politics and prejudices successfully without falling into bed with each other at the end. My only reservation was the presence of supernatural powers but then it was a work of fiction so if it’s OK for Harry Potter I can tolerate it here. And O how it caressed all my prejudices against the rich, the religious and private education. This is her fifth book, I picked another up today and look forward to finding the other 3 soon.’

Bronwen, on the other hand, hated the book. She reads a lot of crime fiction but couldn’t get past chapter 2 of this one.  She really disliked the writing style and found the girls to be annoyingly over-hysterical virtually from page 1.

Janet, another crime fiction reader, and a published crime writer herself, also didn’t finish the book. She liked the relationship between Stephen Moran and his boss Conroy, but she couldn’t differentiate between the girls (not the only one of our members to express this thought) and had no interest whatsoever in most of the characters.  She also thought that there was no real plot. Nichola loved it and particularly enjoyed the use of two time frames – the one day investigation mixed in with a back story which took place over the preceding year. After finishing the book, she had gone on to read the first three books in the series and was about to start on the fourth.

Helen wasn’t impressed. She writes: ‘For a while I thought ‘The Secret Place’ was called ‘I know who killed him’ – possibly a better title?  I did find it quite heavy going.  I seem to have less and less patience with clever-clever writing.  What I want when I pick up a novel is a good story, well-told. I’m really looking for something with proper sentences and reliable punctuation.  Even if the narrator isn’t grammatical the author should be able to cope with this on behalf of her reader.  Tara French doesn’t; so for me it’s a no-no.  Sorry!’

Paula gave the book a thumbs-up. She enjoyed the exploration of the class differences between the school and the detectives. She thought the detectives’ backgrounds were very well drawn and she liked the writing style.  The placing of the investigation within one day worked well to increase tension, enhanced by the growing tiredness of the detectives and the claustrophobic atmosphere in the school.  For her, the plot was plausible on the whole but some elements were perhaps a bit extreme.  Other minor criticisms were that the girls in Joanne’s group were edging towards caricature, and she would have preferred the book to finish with the main plot denouement, a few chapters before the end. However, she thought it was a disturbing and interesting read.

Rose liked the book too, finding it an interesting comparison between the life of contemporary young adults and her life when she was a girl. She particularly enjoyed the strong and well-drawn characters. She described the book as more of a ‘why done it’ than a ‘who done it’.

I was absolutely gripped by The Secret Place.  It is topical in its use of texts and mobile phone footage and in its exploration of the dangers and consequences of teenagers’ use of social media, yet timeless in its depiction of the intensity of teenage friendships and the dangerous potency of puberty.  The title has two meanings, and everything else about this book is also complex and layered. The characters are flawed and complicated, and the teenage girls, in particular, change and shift before our eyes.  Conway and Stephen Moran, the two detectives, are also on a many-layered journey, testing the strength of their fledgling professional relationship and dealing with their feelings about the privileged world of the private girls’ school as well as trying to get to the bottom of the central mystery.  Even the lesser characters are beautifully drawn.  I particularly liked the power play between Conway and the headmistress, and between Stephen Moran and Holly’s father Mackey.  The structure, with its split narrative and two time frames, is very clever, and the prose is evocative and powerful with some beautiful descriptive passages. I was surprised to discover that the book is number five in a series – it reads perfectly well as a stand-alone story.

Ann Coburn

‘TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION…

…because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.’  Mark Twain

Our July meetings are different.  We don’t read and discuss one book; instead we choose a theme and we each bring along our favourite illustration of that theme to recommend to the group as a summer read.  Oh, and there are snacks, many, many snacks, all put together to create an impromptu, anarchic pub picnic with some very interesting flavour combinations. 

This year, eleven of us met at The Barrels, bringing a wide-ranging selection of non-fiction book choices covering history, science, medicine, world travel, dog-sled racing, the English language, space, cookery and the theory of evolution!  So, along with a tasty glass or two of Rivet Catcher from the Jarrow Brewery, courtesy of The Barrels, here they are:

Helen recommended Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip by Peter Hessler.  She liked the way it was written like a novel, concentrating on the characters, but also traced the development of China.  She enjoyed reading how each town in China today specialises in one very specific manufacturing process – for instance one town does nothing but make the little plastic hoops used to attach bra straps to bra cups!

Ann had two choices.  The first was The Chambers Dictionary of World History because it is fascinating to dip into; the second was Marie and Mary by Nigel Tranter , about Marie de Guise and her daughter, Mary Queen of Scots.  Although Ann found the style rather dry, she thought that Marie de Guise, who ruled Scotland alone and kept the peace between Protestants and Catholics after the death of her husband James V, was a fascinating character.  She was a powerful woman, who foiled Henry Tudor of England’s plans to marry her baby daughter to his son Edward and unite the two thrones under English rule by sending Mary to France.

Martin brought along The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg, which had shown him that English was an evolving, changing language, not the rigid structure he was taught about and expected to abide by at school.  Bragg describes language as ‘a living organism’ as he explores the evolution of ‘the words we live in, think in, sing in, speak in.’

Don’t You Have Time to Think? by Richard Feynman was Paula’s choice. She loved the way he challenges orthodox thinking and suggests going back to first principles, both in scientific inquiry and in the national school curriculum, which does not nurture questioning thinkers. Richard Feynman was no ordinary genius. Brilliant, free-spirited and irreverent, he upset those in authority, gave captivating lectures, wrote equations on napkins in strip joints and touched countless lives everywhere. He also wrote hundreds of letters to friends, family, critics, colleagues and devoted fans around the world. The book is a compilation of these letters. 

Just Looking Thanks!: The Straight-forward Guide to Creating Brilliant Customer Service by Alf Dunbar was Nicholla’s suggestion.  She enjoyed reading about Alf’s personal experiences in retail and thought that the lessons in the book could easily be applied to other walks of life.

Man and Space: Life Science Library Series, 1970, written by none other than Arthur C Clarke was an important book for Rose.  She brought along the copy she had been given as a 9 year old girl, which inspired in her the desire to become an astronaut.  When she was told that astronauts were men (the title says it all!), her response was ‘why can’t I be an astronaut?’ – a question which challenged the status quo and which she has been asking ever since.  Although some of the information and speculation in the book is now very outdated or just plain wrong (dry-pack food anyone?) parts of it are still surprisingly accurate – the illustrated spread on spacesuits has some very weird combos, but the basic 21 layer spacesuit is probably not much different from those worn today.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung – Jill loved the way the book delves into the unconscious, particularly the analysis of the archetypal symbolism of dreams – and also the ‘life’ wisdom of the old man, whether he be a peasant or an academic. Jung began writing his life story In 1957, four years before his death. But what began as an exercise in autobiography soon morphed into absorbing piece of self-analysis: a frank statement of faith, philosophy and principles from one of the great explorers of the human mind.

David tempted us with The Vegetable Book by Jane Grigson, who apparently hails from Whitley Bay, so she’s a local(ish) lass!  David chose this because it is much more than a recipe book.  The writing is funny, with historical amuse bouche thrown in.  David particularly liked the story about Alexander Dumas, involving D’Artagnan, Aramis and some New Zealand spinach.  He says the recipes are all excellent too, apart from the Pan Haggerty; in his opinion, Jane Grigson has got it wrong!  David, just to let you know, I’ve ordered this book and will be testing the recipe. 

Darwin: a Biography by Adrian Desmond and James R Moore was Bronwen’s choice. This biography of Charles Darwin attempts to capture the private unknown life of the real man – the gambling and gluttony at Cambridge, his gruelling trip round the globe, his intimate family life, worries about persecution and thoughts about God. Central to all of this, his pioneering efforts on the theory of evolution. Bronwen described the writing as cross-disciplinary – scholarly yet written in a style to entertain a mass audience.  She thought it a wonderful portrait of an essentially Victorian man who married into the Wedgewood family, and was captured by the portrayal of the struggle he underwent to choose between the Christian belief he shared with his wife, and his need to share his scientific discoveries. He delayed publication for a long time because he knew his theory would change everything.

I wanted to bring The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot – the best example of creative non-fiction I have come across – but I couldn’t find it.  I suspect it is out on loan – I do keep shoving it into people’s hands and saying ‘read this’.  Here’s the book blurb: Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells — taken without her knowledge — became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta’s family did not learn of her ‘immortality’ until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences . . . Balancing the beauty and drama of scientific discovery with dark questions about who owns the stuff our bodies are made of, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an extraordinary journey in search of the soul and story of a real woman, whose cells live on today in all four corners of the world.

So, my second but by no means inferior choice was Winterdance: the Fine Madness of Alaskan Dog Racing by Gary Paulsen.  This passion for sled racing, combined with a passion for the wild, beautiful landscape of the Arctic, is explored in Winterdance – a powerful, almost unbelievable adventure, told with humour, pathos, vitality and excitement. Beautiful, funny and laconic, it is ‘a book about men and dogs and their souls’.

Ann Coburn

AMERICAH-NO

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngosi Adichie may have been shortlisted for the 2014 Bailey’s Prize, but it received a thumbs-down from Berwick Book Group. We had all previously enjoyed ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, Adichie’s novel about the Biafran conflict, and so we had great expectations for this ‘richly told story of love and expectation set in today’s globalized world’. Perhaps we were expecting too much; ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ had a big tale to tell but, despite the cover blurb claim that it spans ‘three continents and numerous lives’, Americanah is a much smaller story.
The book follows Ifemelu and Obinze from their teens to their early thirties. The cover blurb reads, ‘As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face?’
We all found Ifemelu , the main protagonist, to be a somewhat unsympathetic character, particularly in the ways she treated the other characters. Bronwyn described her as ‘unattractive, pious, arrogant and judgemental’. We discussed whether the author was writing this character with any sense of distance or irony but Glynis thought not because there was no counterpoint, plus she found the authorial voice just as ‘hectoring’. Anne described Ifemelu succinctly as ‘a whingeing waste of space’.

Feeling that Ifemelu had taken enough of a battering, I asked what the group thought of Obinze, the male protagonist. The main complaint here was about stereotyping. Martin didn’t like the Nigerian stereotypes around graft and corruption, and Glynis was equally critical of the stereotypical characters Obinze meets in London.

Plot was another issue. Glynis found it boring and Bronwyn thought it was classic Mills & Boon ‘girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl finds boy’ plot. Martin could not really comment on the plot because, as he later wrote, ‘I didn’t get very far into the book. A world where a person can make a living from a blog is beyond my understanding. Who pays them? I got as far as Nigeria and a man whose sole interest was in getting rich by operating a swindle set up by another man who’d been doing it longer and more successfully was anathema. I gave up. Shallow, dreary and unbelievable.’

Although I had also found Americanah an uninspiring read, I was beginning to feel sorry for the book! I wondered whether anyone had liked anything. I offered Ifemelu’s Nigerian perspective on America when she first arrived there. Everyone agreed that her healthy, commonsense attitude set against the American tendency to pathologise made for some amusing episodes.

We finished with some reading recommendations from members:
The Wool Trilogy by Hugh Howey
The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith
The American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
Courtiers by Lucy Worsley
The Player of Games by Iain M Banks

Ann Coburn

CANADA by Richard Ford

Seven of us met up at the Barrels Alehouse, having managed to read the biggest book on our list this year (okay, so I hadn’t quite managed it – but that was down to time constraints rather than lack of will!). Richard Ford’s ‘Canada’ arrived at our book group meeting trailing clouds of glory – described by critics as ‘ A vast, magnificent canvas …one of the first great novels of the 21st century’, and as possessing ‘Pure vocal grace, quiet humour, precise and calm observation’.
The cover blurb reads: ‘When fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons’ parents rob a bank, his sense of normal life is forever altered. In an instant, this private cataclysm drives his life into before and after, a threshold that can never be uncrossed. His parents’ arrest and imprisonment mean a threatening and uncertain future for Dell and his twin sister, Berner. Willful and burning with resentment, Berner flees their home in Montana, abandoning her brother and her life. But Dell is not completely alone.
A family friend intervenes, spiriting him across the Canadian border, in hopes of delivering him to a better life. There, afloat on the prairie of Saskatchewan, Dell is taken in by Arthur Remlinger, an enigmatic and charismatic American whose cool reserve masks a dark and violent nature.
Undone by the calamity of his parents’ robbery and arrest, Dell struggles under the vast prairie sky to remake himself and define the adults he thought he knew. But his search for grace and peace only moves him nearer to a harrowing and murderous collision with Remlinger, an elemental force of darkness.
A true masterwork of haunting and spectacular vision from one of our greatest writers, Canada is a profound novel of boundaries traversed, innocence lost and reconciled, and the mysterious and consoling bonds of family. Told in spare, elegant prose, both resonant and luminous, it is destined to become a classic.’
Would ‘Canada’ live up to the hype for us?
We all agreed that the opening line promised much.
‘First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.’
From that point onwards, however, we were split into those who thought the book was over-long and lacked plot, those who loved the voice and the descriptive detail, and those who sat somewhere in-between.
Martin was in the first camp. He writes: Canada: What a disappointment. After the first two lines, one of the best hooks in writing, I was looking forward to an interesting, thought provoking tale. However, the writing immediately turned into porridge and slowly thickened getting more turgid and pointless as the book progressed. Even the two events, the robbery and the murders, were written as though Mr Ford wanted to bore his readers to death. It took great determination to plough on to the end to see if there was any resolution and forty years of marriage and a teaching career could have afforded one but like so much they were lost in verbiage or totally ignored. I learn he married Claire almost as an oversight. We cannot know what others think or feel which is why I turn to fiction for the writer to give me his suggestion for his characters. 511 wasted pages. My life is that much shorter and poorer for them.
Helen felt that, although she found the characters believable, the pace was too slow – partly because we were ‘told, and told again’. Glynis loved the descriptions of Canada and the duck shooting, and she totally believed in the 15 year old Dell – although she was less convinced by Dell’s sister, Berner, who ‘didn’t make sense’. She was gripped by the book but agreed with Martin that a good editor would have improved it. Rose also disliked Berner and, although she thought it a good yarn, found that the slow pace and the flat narrative voice tended to put her to sleep. Paula thought that Dell was a very immature fifteen year old at the start, but that he coped very well with the later incidents. Helen’s favourite character was the flawed father. We all thought the description of the arrest of the parents in their family home – the ordinary and the extraordinary sitting side by side – was particularly strong.
As for me, I found all the character portraits – minor characters as well as protagonists – exquisite, and I relished Ford’s beautiful writing style. His description of the family the evening before the parents attempt to rob a bank is poignant and powerful in its evocation of place and time. I liked the way these flawed characters all moved away from normality in small increments, one decision leading to another until, almost imperceptibly, they had reached the point of no return.
On the whole, we all found something to enjoy about the book, but we would not describe it as the masterpiece some critics claim it to be.
This month’s book recommendation from Paula: ‘Fallout’ by Sadie Jones.
Ann Coburn

THE NIGHT FLOWER by Sarah Stovell

On the evening of 1st April, fourteen of us squeezed into the cosy side room of The Barrels Alehouse in Bridge Street. Ten of us – nine current members and one potential new member (it was good to meet you, Nicholla!) – were there to welcome Sarah Stovell, the author of The Night Flower. Three more had come in for a drink but decided to stay for the meeting.
Sarah – one of New Writing North’s Read Regional authors – had travelled up to Berwick from the Tyne Valley to talk with us about her ‘hugely entertaining Victorian gothic’ novel in which ‘a Romany girl and a disgraced governess are transported as convicts to Tasmania’. The genre, then, is historical fiction, but we were quick to point out the contemporary echoes. This was a story of ethnic cleansing, with Romany girls being specifically targeted for transportation as part of a deliberate campaign to send more women to Tasmania after the authorities had requested more female convicts to soften the brutality of the men already out there. Sarah agreed, stating her opinion that historical fiction must shed light on contemporary society otherwise what’s the point of writing it?
We began by chatting about the origins of the novel. Sarah had originally intended to tackle American slavery in the 1850’s but changed tack to write about female convicts being transported to Tasmania in 1842. Sarah began the novel while she was pregnant with her first child and so it is not surprising to find that the concept of motherhood is one of the main themes. Miriam, a Romany girl from Newcastle’s Lime Street slums, and Rose, a middle class governess from Fourstones near Hexham, have one thing in common; they are both young mothers who, because of their convict status, have no say in the fate of their children. Their children carried the ‘convict stain’ – in other words, they were believed to be infected with the ‘bad’ blood of their mothers. Trust and betrayal is another theme, as is the exploitation of women and the sexual double standards of the time. The ‘Night Flower’ of the title is Victorian slang for prostitute.
Miriam and Rose are two of the narrative voices in this novel. The third voice is that of Reverend Sutton – one of the most moustache-twirling Victorian villains you are ever likely to meet. The split narrative makes the reader question who is telling the truth and further doubts are planted through the other ways of telling – for instance, letters and court records – employed by Sarah.
We discussed whether there were any heroes in The Night Flower and decided that Miriam, honest, funny and warm, was the hero with whom we all empathised. Rose was more of an unreliable narrator and her casual racism made us less inclined to like her.
The settings in Hobart, Tasmania (or Van Diemen’s Land as it was known then) – the Liverpool Street Nursery for the Babies of Convict Mothers, the Cascades Female Factory and the Black Horse brothel – were all strongly conveyed. We asked Sarah how she went about researching the novel. She claimed to have done very little, depending on her imagination for much of the contextual detail. Martin was impressed by this revelation, writing afterwards, ‘I was convinced that the germ of this book would have come from a diary or journal of someone who’d actually experienced transportation. It just shows how I should never under estimate the power of a writer’s imagination to knit a seamless and credible tale from just a few historical anchor points.’
We were all fascinated by the language, particularly Miriam’s Romany dialect – words such as Kushti, Kumpania, Gadje and Chey. For Martin, this grated somewhat. He wrote, ‘the preliminary section dealing with the gypsy life in Newcastle was the weak part of the story and I found the dialect frankly boring and over used. An obsessive scholar might do a “cushtie” count. It would be very high.’ Other book group members liked the colour and life of Miriam’s language and Paula pointed out that Berwick children all used these words in school because there has always been a strong Romany presence in North Northumberland and the Borders.
However, Martin was in agreement with the rest of us that the book had been a good read. He writes, ‘the story begins, for me, with the journey and penal life. This is vividly portrayed in all its gory details. Sarah is merciless in showing our capacity for self deception whether the gypsy, the lady or the preacher in observing only those parts of the world which correspond to their own prejudices. Nothing has changed. Our present day leaders, both religious and secular, display an overbearing interest in their own advancement coupled with a desire to condemn the sexual and work ethic of vast swathes of the population. A true taxonomist would have labeled us Homo Hypocriticus. End of soap box. Good book.’
Sarah’s next novel will also be about women, this time a family saga spanning three generations of suffragettes.

We finished the meeting with some book recommendations:
Sarah Stovell recommended ‘The Taste of Sorrow’ a biography of the Brontes by Jude Morgan,
and ‘Falling Angels’ by Tracy Chevalier
Recommendations from the group included:
‘Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict’ by Laurie Viera Rigler
‘The Goldfinch’ by Donna Tartt
‘Lucky: a memoir’ by Alice Sebold
‘Treachery’ by S.J.Parris

Our thanks to Sarah Stovell for visiting our book group. Next month we will be discussing ‘Canada’ by Richard Ford.

Ann Coburn

LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson

‘What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?
During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath.
During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.
What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?
Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, Kate Atkinson finds warmth even in life’s bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here she is at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.’

If the Amazon description of Life After Life is not enough to whet a reader’s appetite, then the deliriously enthusiastic reviews from other great contemporary writers does the job. But does the book live up to the blurb?

Six of us met at The Barrels to share our thoughts – or had that discussion already taken place? If so, we vowed to discuss again, only better!

It very soon became clear that, for our members at least, Life After Life was a ‘Marmite’ book. Some of us loved it and some of us really disliked it. Martin wrote,
‘I have read and enjoyed everything else she has written. In previous works I was delighted by her crafting of several seemingly unrelated stories into a seamless whole.
The blurb describes the book as allowing several attempts at living your life until you finally got it right. It implied some volition on the part of the subject who seemed to die needlessly at birth at the whim of circumstance. There was a suggestion of some sort of relationship with Hitler but no sense of if her assassination was successful and what the consequences were.
I have the sense of a collection of ideas which were unfulfilled, cobbled together in a hurry. Did she have a book contract to fulfil and sent this in disgust so she could get on with a more interesting project?
Was her editor on holiday?
Could do better and has, often.’

Anne was of a similar opinion. She had expected great things because of Kate Atkinson’s reputation but, still only part-way through the novel, she was finding it boring in style and – in a neat ‘on-topic’ reference to the hours in a life – felt that there were not enough hours in her life to waste time reading the rest of this book.

One frustration of the ‘dislikers’ was the lack of answers to narrative questions – for instance, did or didn’t Ursula assassinate Hitler? – and the repetitive ‘back to the start’ nature of the structure.

For the ‘likers’ – or should I say ‘lovers’- of the book, this was not an issue; they were too busy enjoying the, as Glynis put it, ‘playful and clever’ exploration of time, of a life re-lived, and of the sometimes unexpected ‘butterfly effects’ of changing one small detail. Paula thought this was the best book she had ever read. She was totally wrapped up in each variation, and devastated at the deaths of some of her favourite characters. Bronwen thought it was illuminating in its randomness.

We all particularly enjoyed the section set in the London Blitz, which contained some of our favourite characters. Other stand-out characters were Izzie the wayward aunt, Ursula’s father Hugh, and Ursula herself – particularly the way she changed/developed in each re-telling, for instance becoming more damaged after the ‘life’ when she was raped as a teenager, became pregnant, had an abortion and subsequently thought of herself as ‘worthless’ enough to stay with and, eventually, be murdered by abusive husband Derek.

We spent a long time discussing the implications of each re-lived life and the ‘practice makes perfect’ phrase used several times in the book. The one life where Ursula lived until 1967 as a lonely single woman particularly intrigued us. I loved the very moving passage towards the end, when Ursula finally realises she is a ‘witness’ and all the thematic imagery of snow, the silver hare, the dancing leaves and the darkness are brought together in a stand-out piece of writing. Ursula embraces all her past lives, friends and family and ‘her heart swelled with the high holiness of it all. Imminence was all around. She was both warrior and shining spear. She was a sword glinting in the depths of night, a lance of light piercing the darkness. There would be no mistakes this time (…) A clock struck somewhere in sympathy. She thought of Teddy and Miss Woolf, of Roland and little Angela, of Nancy and Sylvie. She thought of Dr Kellett and Pindar. Become such as you are, having learned what that is. She knew what that was now. She was Ursula Beresford Todd and she was a witness.’.

Ann Coburn