November 2007 - The Good Terrorist

I had been lovingly playing my choice over in my mind for weeks. Ahmadou Kourouma's Allah Is Not Obliged.

I've spent a good few years frustrated that I couldn't buy it for anyone I know because it was only available in French. How I've longed to discuss it with someone else. Lo and behold! An English translation. The two reviews I'd read, however, left me slightly concerned.

Picking up a copy two weekends ago confirmed my worst fears. The first page had me cringing and rapidly replacing the book on the shelf. The translation does not do it justice.

Something else was needed.

Lessing had just won the Nobel Prize. There was a gaping void on the shelf in the bookshop. We guessed the books had been taken to create a display...if so, it was well hidden. We returned to the shelf - two of us, two copies of The Good Terrorist. Book chosen.


In a London squat a band of bourgeois revolutionaries are united by a loathing of the waste and cruelty they see around them as they try desperately to become involved in terrorist activities far beyond their level of competence.

Only Alice seems capable of organising anything. Motherly, practical and determined, she is also easily exploited by the group and ideal fodder for a more dangerous and potent cause. Eventually their naive radical fantasies turn into a chaos of real destruction, but the aftermath is not as exciting as they had hoped. Nonetheless, while they may not have changed the world, their lives will never be the same again.

British Council: Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing website

Having been published in 1985 reviews on the web have been a little difficult to come by:

'Alice, the Radical Homemaker' Denis Donoghue. 22 September 1985.
'Bad Housekeeping' Alison Lurie. The New York Review of Books. 19 December 1985.
'Dark Times' Jane Rogers. The Guardian. 3 December 2005.

October 2007 - The Secret River

London, 1806 - William Thornhill, happily wedded to his childhood sweetheart Sal, is a waterman on the River Thames. Life is tough but bearable until William makes a mistake, a bad mistake for which he and his family are made to pay dearly. His sentence: to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. Sooon Thornhill, a man no better or worse than most, has to make the most difficult decision of his life...

The compelling new novel from the internationally acclaimed Kate Grenville is a universal and timeless story of love, identity and belonging.

Kate Grenville's homepage
bookgroup.info

Reviews:

'Bush Ballad' Geraldine Bedell. The Observer 22 January 2006
'Rivers of violence' Salley Vickers. Times Online 28 January 2006
'Cultures in Collision' Jem Poster. The Guardian 28 January 2006
'When God was as foreign as a fish' The Telegraph 5 February 2006
'The wind tells a different story' David Isaacson The Independent on Sunday 5 March 2006
'Hidden memories and a secret river' Times Online 7 July 2007

September 2007 The Busconductor Hines

Okay, okay. So I'm posting this a little after the event. The book has been read (by some!) and discussed. But I wouldn't want there to be a gap in the list.

Robert works on the buses and lives in a no-bedroomed Glasgow flat with his wife and child. His job is boring, the weather is lousy, and he's becoming increasingly aware that his plans to emigrate won't come to anything. Life, as he sees it, is a 'very perplexing kettle of coconuts'.

James Kelman's first novel is a humane, uncompromising and extremely funny portrait of a man's life.


About James Kelman:

Biography from the British Council
Writing Scotland
Interview in The Barcelona Review (February 2002)
Interview in The Guardian (August 2007)

July 2007 You Don't Love Me Yet

The blurb on the inside cover tells you this is:

A comedy of mismatched lovers, with delicious echoes of Jane Austen's Emma, You Don't Love Me Yet is another exhibition of Jonathan Lethem's prodigious range and talent.

Faber and Faber's website:

A comedy of plagiarism, usurpation, and sex, with delicious echoes of A Midsummer Night's Dream, You Don't Love Me Yet is another exhibition of Jonathan Lethem's prodigious range and talent.

Reviews:

'Steal this band' Zach Baron The Village Voice 01/03/07
'With the Band' David Kemp The New York Times 18/03/07
'Who Wrote the Book of Love?' Joe Heim The Washington Post 18/03/07
'Walls Tumbling Down' Edward Nawotka Houston Chronicle 20/04/07
'An anatomy of Californian manners' Alistair Sooke Daily Telegraph 17/05/07
'Songwriter's block? Call the complainer' James Urquhart Independent on Sunday 20/05/07
Henry Hitchings Financial Times 25/05/07
'Brooklyn Dodger' Jackie McGlone Scotsman 26/05/07
'The borrower' Aida Edemariam Guardian 02/06/07

June 2007 so many ways to begin

David Carter cannot help but wish for more: that his wife Eleanor could be the sparkling girl he once found so irresistible; that his job as a museum curator could live up to the promise it once held; that his daughter's arrival could have brought him closer to Eleanor. But a few careless words spoken by his mother's friend have left David restless with the knowledge that his whole life has been constructed around a lie. Bloomsbury.

Reviews:

'Lost souls in a tangled quest for roots' Carol Birch The Independent on Sunday 28/07/06
'Quiet acts of preservation' Tom Gatti Times 29/07/06
'Starting over' Lucy Hughes-Hallett Times 06/08/06
'Local Hero' Alfred Hickling Guardian 12/08/06
'Working back from a sorry end' Lesley McDowell Scotsman 12/08/06
'The wind cries Mary' Stephanie Merritt Observer 20/08/06

Suite française

Irène Némirovsky died of typhus in Auschwitz in 1942. The book she left behind was preserved in manuscript form by her daughter and is the first two parts of an epic account of the fall of France and the start of the Nazi occupation. When it was finally published in France in 2004, Suite Française was ecstatically received by French critics, and reawakened the controversy around wartime collaboration.


Reviews:

'The road away from freedom' Carmel Callil Times 04/03/06
'The Secrets of the Notebook' Peter Kemp Times 05/03/06
'History as a novel : the novel as history' Tom Payne Daily Telegraph 19/03/06
Andrew Riemer Sydney Morning Herald 23/03/06
'Generosity in the Face of Death' Anne Chisolm Daily Telegraph 26/03/06
'A Personal History in the Making' Jane Stevenson Observer 26/03/06
'Love in the Ruins' Alica Kaplan The Nation 29/05/06
'Unfinished Symphony' Cathleen McGuigan Newsweek 13/07/06
Complete Review

Journey By Moonlight

ANXIOUS TO PLEASE his bourgeois father, Mihály has joined the family firm in Budapest. Pursued by nostalgia for his bohemian youth, he seeks escape in marriage to Erzsi, not realising that she has chosen him as a means to her own rebellion. On their honeymoon in Italy Mihály "loses" his bride at a provincial station and embarks on a chaotic and bizarre journey that leads him finally to Rome. There all the death-haunted and erotic elements of his past converge, and he, like Erzsi, has finally to choose. Pushkin Press.

Reviews:

'Just Devine' Nicholas Lezard Guardian 20/07/01
'Bohemian Rhapsody' Daily Telegraph 18/08/01
Megan Stefan Daily Telegraph 28/02/03
The Complete Review

A Winter Book

Following the widely acclaimed and besteselling The Summer Book, here is a Winter Book collection of some of Tove Jansson's best loved and most famous stories. Drawn from youth and older age, and spanning most of the twentieth century, this newly translated selection provides a thrilling showcase of the great Finnish writer's prose, scattered with insights and home truths. It has been selected and introduced by Ali Smith.

Reviews:

From the publisher Sort of Books
'Alone with the Squirrel' Josh Lacey Guardian 18/11/06

The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton

'The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton' Lucy Hughes-Hallett Times 02/10/05
'The First Domestic Goddess' Rachel Cooke Observer 09/10/05
'My Week as Mrs Beeton' Kathryn Hughes Daily Telegraph 18/12/05
'Household Mismanagement' Ian Pindar Guardian 15/07/06
'Mrs Beeton - a perfect gift for mothers' Well, Kathryn Hughes would be saying that! Guardian 17/03/07

Dan Leno and The Limehouse Golem

'Set in a pea-soup foggy Victorian London in the world of music hall and pantomime, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem begins with the death-by-hanging of Elizabeth Cree for the murder of her husband. But was she guilty? What terrible secret was she hiding? And what are we to make of the late Mr Cree whose journal begins: "It was a fine bright morning and I could feel a murder coming on?" I could feel those goosebumps coming on from page one...this brilliant novel pervades the midnight movies of the mind and makes the blood run chilly' Daily Mail.

Snow

As the snow begins to fall, a journalist arrives in the remote city of Kars on the Turkish border. Kars is a troubled place - there's a suicide epidemic among its young women, Islamists are poised to win the local elections, and the head of the intelligence service is viciously effective. When the growing blizzard cuts off the outside world, the stage is set for a terrible and desperate act...

ORHAN PAMUK'S magnificent and bestselling new novel evokes the spiritual fragility of the non-Western world, its ambivalence about the godless West, and its fury.

Reviews:

'A taste of Turkish Despair' David Robson. Daily Telegraph. 31/05/04
'Frozen Assets' James Buchan Guardian 29/05/04
'A Blizzard of Contradictions in Modern Turkey' Richard Eder New York Times 10/08/04
'Headscarves to Die For' Margaret Attwood New York Times 15/08/04
'More Than A Winter's Tale' Sarah Emily Miano Observer 30/05/04

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Ten Sorry Tales

August 2006

The idea of a picnic in Hyde Park was readily welcomed by most but it would seem August is a particularly busy month. Finding a time suitable for all was impossible.

I am preparing myself mentally by visualising myself reclining in a boat, drifting along, discussing Ishiguro's latest with the ducks on the Serpentine. Different point of view to mine I should think. Should anyone else turn up I'll be overjoyed!

We'll try to choose something extra-specially good for September and hope that everyone has finished their holidays by then.

July 2006

The summer is upon us. Despite the fact I managed the heroic task of reading Dicken's The Old Curiousity Shop in three and a half days I was unable to turn up to discuss it. It would seem others had similar problems and the turnout matched August of last year. A glorious two!

I was given the deciding vote between Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. I decided on the latter as Lionel's a boy's name not a girl's.

Modernism

This isn't quite "what we're reading outside the group", but it's a cultural activity I undertook in the last month....

Went to the'Modernism' exhibiton at the V&A and really, really enjoyed it- a crackingly good exhibition! In fact I enjoyed it so much I became a member of the V&A on the strengh of this alone.

The reasons why are liked it are many... it's a well-presented exhibition with quality exhibits; I liked the variety of disciplines covered (art, design, architecture, theatre, industry, technology etc etc) and the different times and places brought together; it joined a lot of dots together in my mind. I also liked the strong infusion of politics, optimism and egalitarianism. Finally, I enjoyed the historical aspects- seeing what was going on when.... and, as is always the case with history, seeing how the past affects the present.

Anyway, well worth a visit!

Paul Sanderson

June 2006

The general opinion seemed to be that The Master and Margarita was an enjoyable read - even though a couple of us were a little scared we hadn't quite 'got the point' of the novel.



As ever, after staring at each other blankly for a moment the titles and authors started pouring forth for next month's read. We arrived at Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons) by way of Orwell, Ballard, Lord of the Flies and Edith Wharton. We were variously restricted at different points in the conversation by length, gender of author (had to be female) and price (Wordsworth Classics for a quid sounded popular!).