“Our man In Havana” by Graham Greene (February 2, 2021)

 (no notes)

“The Reader” by Bernhard Schlink (December 1, 2021)

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“A Journey Around My Room” by Xavier Maestre (November 3, 2021)

 (no notes)

“The Siege of Krishnapur” by J.G. Farrell (October 6, 2021)

 Some notes I took during our Zoom meeting

- restraint of Victorian England

- Satirical picture of colonialism and Victorianism

- Characters are likeable

- No heroes in the book

- it’s not post-colonial, not Slaman Rushdie or Vikram Seth

- Great Exhibition is used as a touchstone

- never gets lost in the detail

- Phrenology

- Magistrate condemning all the poetry

- Loved the way that the shells falling on the masonry caused all sorts of problems, when they fell on the earth was best, kind of showing the trappings of civilisation

- The only role of women was to go mad with boredom

- Rank hypocrisy of the the system in which their embroiled

- None of the Indian characters are very developed. This was discussed at length because it denies them a voice and an opinion about what is going on around them

- It really struck me that this was the pomposity of the colonialists

- Why isn’t Ballard better known?

- Victorians putting so much emphasis on the machines they build, exemplified by the World Fair

- The auction of the food was brilliant

- Fleury killing someone is the unbelievable part of the book

- Trenchant critique of colonialism portraying the the characters as being woefully shirt-sighted about the situation they’re in. Putting a spear through the omnipotent

- Discussion about UK versus US humour, Monty Python versus The Office (US), a comment about how in Animal House, John Belushi smashing the guitar of some wannabe musician who’s wowing the girls show the difference: in the US Belushi’s the hero, in the UK it’s the guitarist

- Wanted to ask the author about why things happened the way that they did

- Notable difference between the 70’s (when the book was written) and (say) 1985 when Haneef Kureshi’s “Buddha of Suburbia”  was written. It feels like a world of difference between the two world views — the difference between seeing Indians as “other” as compared to a part of society

- Watching the colonial oppressors getting their just desserts

“The Mothers” by Brit Bennett (September 1, 2021)

 We’re back in lockdown again so that means we’re back on Zoom.

While I didn’t mind book, for one of the first times I wasn’t able to finish it due to pressing work commitments. I got about halfway through. It didn’t help that we’d gone into lockdown again and the book is a challenging read, the protagonist has an abortion and her mother commits suicide before we’re twenty pages in.

Matt made a very good point that really challenged the consistency of the book’s world: the protagonist’s boyfriend who has got the young woman pregnant borrows the money from her parents for the abortion. He found that very difficult to imagine and I tend to agree.

Without having finished the book it doesn’t seem fair to write much more.

We have a slightly longer book next month, J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur. Hopefully we’ll be back at The All Nations but I suspect it will probably be Zoom again, see you on October 6 in any case.

“Convenience Store Woman” by Sayaka Murate (August 4, 2021)

 Our book, Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev was apparently something of an upheaval in Russian writing but I found it very hard going to read. I didn’t care for the characters in the book much, they seemed pompous and brimming with entitlement and disdain for other people not of their class. The only character that seemed to have any sense of humanity was Madame Odintsova but even the interactions between her and the wooden and remote main characters never seemed to mesh, something that I’m sure the author was fully aware of.

Our book for next month is Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. I’m not sure quite how we wound up landing on this book but there was another of those long sessions as we bandied around all sorts of options and possibilities. See you at the All Nations on August 4.

“Fathers and Sons” by Ivan Turgenev (June 2, ,2021)

I was surprised at how lively the discussion was of our last book, The Outsider by Albert Camus, which I found difficult to put down once I’d gotten into the flow of the story. The book is written with a staccato phrasing which bought to mind what I imagine the Algerian sun must feel like.

The protagonist, Meursault, seems to lead this strange disconnected life where he just drifts along without much direction or care and through one of the other tenants where he lives winds up getting on the wrong side of a group of Arabs. This comes to an unsettling climax on the beach where Meursault winds up shooting an Arab in an unprovoked attack. Camus's writing is magnificent, I really felt the character’s confusion from too much booze early in the morning, wandering sunstruck on the beach and the ill-considered decision to use the gun that he had on him.

The book then drifts along exploring Meursault’s indifference to his fate as he’s imprisoned awaiting trial and then gradual realisation that things aren’t looking good, at all … His trial is almost a farce as his friends stand up to testify and do nothing to help him with his case.

After sentencing there is a powerful scene where a priest having tried several times to get him to repent his crime is confronted by Meursault. He shows a commitment and determination that he will not repent even though he could help his case by doing so, and after having spent so much of the earlier part of the story being so aloof to his fortunes.

I thought it was a great book, really giving me an insight into another person. We wondered whether these days Meursault might have some sort of diagnosis attached to his nature, perhaps some kind of autism.

When we studied the book while I was at school, the teacher talked about an experiment that was held during the French revolution where a person who was destined for the guillotine did a test to see how long someone stayed conscious after the blade has fallen. They picked up the head and watched how long they kept blinking, I seem to recall it was about 30-40s.

Our next book was proposed by Edward, Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev. See you at the All Nations on June 2!