“The White Girl” by Tony Birch (August 5)

There was an amazing discussion about My Childhood by Maxim Gorky. I was a bit puzzled while I was reading it because I never really felt that engaged but I found it easy to read and I’d surprise myself by reading more at a stretch than I’d intended. I think I was more engaged than I gave myself credit for!

The story of his childhood was one of relentless movement, cold, deprivation and suffering. These topics came up over again as we talked about the book: what the impact of the Russian revolution had been on the characters, the abuse of the children by regular beatings and how that contrasted to the moments of closeness that followed (as Richard said, this is the hallmark of child abusers), the diseases that the characters seemed to suffer from, the strictly patriarchal society – it was really engaging and rounded. There was even some discussion about land rights and somehow Rolf De Heer even came up.

It felt quite different than the past Zoom with four of the participants sitting together in Rohan’s kitchen (Rohan, Grant, Richard and Quinn) although the noise that they all generated was a bit intrusive. Mark’s daughter, Ebba, also tuned in briefly at his end. He remarked afterwards that he was surprised that we’d managed to get through the time she was listening without swearing(!).

After quite a bit of haggling and chopping and changing – ie, as per usual – we managed to settle on our next book The White Girl by Tony Birch, an indigenous author perhaps motivated by the Black Lives Matter movement which is very dominant at the moment.

I'm not sure whether the next meeting will be by Zoom or whether we’ll be able to get back to The All Nations. Rohan said that he’d contacted them and we would have been allowed to go there tonight but we would have had to have a meal. We have school holidays coming up so over that extra month things to do with lockdown are likely to change. I’ll advise in the WhatsApp group closer to the date!

“My Childhood” by Maxim Gorky (6 May 2020)

This was our first meeting using Zoom and it went pretty well really. We discussed My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout which wile interesting didn't seem to capture peoples' imaginations.

Our next book is My Childhood by Maxim Gorky and we’ll discuss that on Zoom again June 3, probably via Zoom again.

“My Name Is Lucy Barton" by Elizabeth Strout (1 Apr 2020)

We had a change of venue for this book group meeting, Le Bon Ton on Gips St in Abbotsford.  It was a warm but rainy night and after starting off at the front of the bar, we moved out the back under the cover of an awning.  It wasn't a bad place but there was something about that felt strange to me.  The coronavirus was in the offing and there was a bit of social distancing and just a leery wonder at what the future might hold; maybe the staff were a bit standoff-ish.

Everyone loved the book – Brave New World by Aldous Huxley – but the discussion was skittish and fragmented.  I wanted to talk a lot about it, I'd read it as a teenager and I don't think I'd really "got" the deeper themes in the book, the impotence of agency that comes with complete outside control of one's life, the strictures of social strata.  But the conversation jumped around and was good but didn't really stick to the book.

Mark had bought along a couple of books and we (almost too easily) picked one of them, My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout.  The blurb on the cover looked good and the page length – ~100 – sealed the deal.  Hope to see people at The All Nations next month but who knows what will happen.

“Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley (4 Mar 2020)

We had a very good discussion about our last book, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent.  I loved the prose, I thought it really made the story very vivid and engaging.  Edward felt that the book just seemed to lurch along, that as the author uncovered more documents while putting together her historical fiction, she’d slot that material into the story rather than producing a cohesive storyline.  Someone made the comment that the point of the book was to paint all men as arseholes.  I thought that the power imbalance that the book portrayed was a way of giving Agnes’s character justification for the actions that she took.

Grant bought along a copy of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and suggested that as the next book.  It was accepted with no complaint which was great.  See you at the All Nations in March!

"Stasiland" by Anna Funder (4 Dec [Changed to Dec 11])

[I accidentally deleted this post]

See you at the All Nations next year on December 4!

“Burial Rites" by Hannah Kent (5 Feb 2020)

I really enjoyed reading Stasiland by Anna Funder.  I found that in spite of the grey, oppressive and desperately sad stories in the book, it was beautifully written and compelling.  Not long before the meeting I found a link to an article by Anna Funder talking about thirty years after the fall of the Berlin wall which was absolutely fascinating and raised even more topics for thought and discussion. The on-going influence of the Stasi, the feeling of resentment towards those who did speak against the regime because it raises the question of why hadn't they too.  It's a very powerful article following on from a very powerful book.

The discussion at book group though was very fragmented and it was difficult to keep people on track without diverging off to explore Richard's recent trip to Clayton or famous soccer goals.  I'd been feeling really crook so I wasn't in good shape to keep people on track.  Quite a few people had read the book a long time ago and their memories while favourable, lacked that bit of freshness.

The next book, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, was picked in a bit of a rush and I'm sorry to say, breaks two of the book club rules: rule 1 (no long books) and rule 9 (no referrals from other book groups, specifically, the women's book group has already read this book).  My irresistible need to get home and get to bed made me drop my guard for which I apologise [Okay, this is mollified but the fact it's not that long (355pp) and it's over the summer break and my wife, Monica, assures me it's a great book].

See you at the All Nations next year on February 5!

"Slaughterhouse 5" by Kurt Vonnegut (6 Nov 2019)

A smaller group turned up to talk about Regeneration by Pat Barker.  Tom and Mark loved it and while I though the writing was excellent and the characters well-drawn, I didn't find myself as involved in the story a would have liked. To me, it seemed like a series of vignettes rather than an overarching story.

I was really surprised and delighted to read in the epilogue that Rivers was a real person and his work treating soldiers with PTSD was well recognised.  The contrast in his method of treatment with that of another doctor in the book, Yealland, whose methods seem callous and hurtful.

We were also interested to note that while the bulk of the book was men speaking to men, the few women that did appear had their own agendas and sexual agency and saved it from being completely male-centric.  The talk about how the war had taken away their men – to the delight of some of them – and given them employment opportunities really added another dimension to the book.

The selection of a new book prompted its own wide-ranging discussion before we eventually decided on Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5. I've read this book a few times and just love it so I'm happy to be going back again.

Can I also put in a good word for the movie which is a rare instance where the film is as good as the book, I have heard it said that it's better.

Our next meeting will be at The All Nations hotel on November 6 because of school holidays in October.  I expect there will be an extraordinary meeting on September 2.