“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!

“The Outsider” by Albert Camus (May 5, 2021)

 There was a good turnout for dinner at The All Nations before book group started. It was nice to have a bit of extra time to talk and socialise, though really that’s a lot of what happens during an ordinary book group meeting.

There wasn’t a lot of love for Witi Ihimaera's Whale Rider. To me it just seemed run through a checklist of topics where the protagonist was shown to be woke, meeting his cousins in Kings Cross and seeing them in drag and while it worried his companion it was fine with him, seeing the racial prejudice directed against him and others by the family he stayed with in New Guinea, the environmental issues, it just all seemed a bit pat. Tom noticed that none of the characters developed through the story – they were all the same with the exception of the grandfather who came to see that instead of holding his granddaughter in disdain because she was a girl, she had worthy character traits.

I liked the use of the Maori language throughout and the strength of the family connections between the characters in the book was really interesting but perhaps a bit didactic.

We had the feeling that it might be a book that was really aimed at children and that it wasn’t really aimed at an adult audience, though I also wondered if coming after Toni Morrison’s Beloved if anything wasn’t going to be a disappointment.

For our next book we’re reading another Nobel prize winner’s book, The Outsider by Albert Camus. See you at the All Nations on May 5.

“Whale Rider” - Witi Ihimaera (Mar 3, 2021)

[I’m writing this some time after the meeting]

What a book! Toni Morrison’ s Beloved is an amazing excursion into another world, filled with nuance, horror and oppression. The discussion in book group was really energetic with people picking out one part of the book after another.

There were parts of the book that really stuck in my mind: the scene where the slaves were locked in their shallow pits in the soil all chained together while the rain teemed down until the walls started collapsing. Have to pull themselves out all together knowing that if one were to die, they would all perish because of the chain. Tugging and pulling on the chain to communicate and using the chain itself to pull out those who couldn’t get out themselves. There’s an amazing metaphor for using the instrument of oppression to set them free.

Myself and others had trouble through the book in keeping track of which character was which. I wonder whether Morrison had done that deliberately, a way of breaking these peoples’ identities so that they were less like individuals and more like objects, just possessions.

I was also shocked that the characters in the book had become so broken that they unleashed acts on each other that were like their masters’. They became their own enemies.

There was agreement that Morrison had been awarded a Nobel prize with good reason, I haven’t read any of her other work but I thought this book was a masterpiece. Beautifully written, deeply challenging.

After some to-ing and fro-ing at the end of the meeting, the first candidate was put aside because people felt it was too new and would be hard to find. We settled instead on Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera, a NZ author.

Next meeting is at The All Nations on Mar 3, 2021!

“Beloved” - Toni Morrison (Feb 3, 2021)

Back again at The All Nations this month and it’s starting to feel a bit more like the new normal after so many months in lockdown. It was a good turnout and it was great being able to sit outside in the beer garden.

Our book was Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky  one of his first works. Noone seemed to care for it as a book much. Every now and then it would find its stride and the prose and dialogue would be engaging, a lot of the rest of the time it was just lots of words on the page that I felt I had to wade through. Interestingly, Richard listened to the audiobook and felt that the author was really into the story and made it very good to listen to. I had wondered whether maybe something had been lost in translation.

We then reverted to form and spent an enormous amount of time discussing which book to read next. There was a lot of talk about reading another of Dostoevsky’s books, The Brothers Karamazov, which are apparently much better but they all fall well outside the length limit. We eventually decided to go back to recent topic and decided on Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I’m looking forward to it, she’s a Nobel prizewinner no less!

See you at The All Nations on Feb 3, 2021!

“Notes From Underground” by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Dec 2, 2020)

It was an eerie experience rolling up to the All Nations last night after such a long break between book group meetings. As I was locking up my bike, I said to Edward that it felt almost a bit naughty being out in public to catch up with people.

Even entering the pub had a very different feel to it. We were asked to scan our drivers’ licences in and leave our phone numbers so they could contact us if necessary. On the chit that they gave us, someone noticed that they gave themselves permission to contact us with marketing material. No opportunity left untaken …

Rohan had made a booking (and coincidentally was having a birthday) and we were seated in the dining room I think to spread people out; I would have preferred being outside. Everyone seemed so excited to see each other — well, anyone they didn’t live with — that there was constant chatting, a good deal of it about the US election. We eventually rearranged the tables to make it a bit more conducive to talking as a whole group and got on with talking about the book.

The book we had read, We Have Always Lived In This Castle by Shirley Jackson, was great and prompted all kinds of discussion about the different aspects of it, an insight into a broken mind and how the little rituals are used to make sense and somehow influence the world, however futile that might be. The destruction that she has wrought on the family is mindblowing, yet she has no remorse. She senses that her cousin Charles coming to visit to get his hands on their money will shatter her world and possibly take away her precious sister Constance, she acts again.

Constance is such a strange character: she is utterly compliant, happily cooperating with every demand, to make uncle Julian a lunch of his choosing, cleaning the house each week for regular visitors who are barely tolerated. It’s only when she seems to loosely team up with Charles that she questions her role in the house. After Merricat’s last great act though, she just seems to slump into her sister’s mania and they take up new roles in the burnt shell of a house.

There were questions about whether Merricat and Constance were in fact the same person, mashed together in Merricat’s broken mind. I didn’t think that was right because there were other characters in the story that referenced them separately. I do think that the nursery rhyme that the neighbourhood kids jeered as they saw her was internal to Merricat though, convincing her how she detested them and they her.

The book was fantastic really. Everyone really enjoyed it and talked about it enthusiastically. Highly recommended. Thanks Mark for suggesting it. The background to the author’s life was similarly shocking, dying at 47, addicted to amphetamines, alcoholic, morbidly obese and agoraphobic. A sad end for a great talent.

There was the usual long and circuitous journey to find the next book but we settled on a classic, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground.

I’m hoping we’ll be back at the All Nations on December 2. See you there!

“We Have Always Lived In This Castle” by Shirley Jackson (Nov 4, 2020)

It was a wide-ranging and fast moving book group meeting, starting off with a crazy discussion about the merits of cauliflower steaks and whether any vegetable is better boiled than baked. Yes, really …

The book discussion moved amongst a number of themes that were explored in the book. A layered story of the protagonist’s descent into addiction and in spite of the people around him who liked him and tried to help, he was really unable to stop or even check the rate of descent.

There was also a lot of commentary about social strata and how that impacted peoples’ relationships. The African man who went to live in France with his white wife and how he was treated there. He talks of going to a dinner party where the hosts query whether he’s from the French Congo or the Belgian Congo, as if the nationality of the colonists defines who he is.

I think people liked the book. There were a lot of funny moments in it (like the pissing competition) which were really nicely drawn and involving. The “bicycle chicken” (bbq’ed) and “TV chicken” (microwaved) bought from the street vendor with manioc gave a sense of life in a small African town.

The discussion then moved onto quite a long talk between everybody about Trump, covid, conspiracy theories and the US voting system. It was great having Matt along because he has a lot of first-hand experience there.

We managed to decide the next book relatively smartly thanks to Mark coming along with a book he though would be a good choice and which we ultimately decided to read next. There were a couple of alternatives thrown up though, Palace of Dreams by Ishmael Kadare, and Caste by Isabel Wilkerson.

See you on November 4 for our next meeting!