I can’t believe
how quickly the months seem to be disappearing, holidays have been and gone and
so has another book club! (Jenny P has already mentioned we should be thinking
about Christmas outings!!) We
had two new editions to the group this time, I hope Eve and Kelly had fun and
will be coming back for more, they’ve added a couple of titles to our list so
that is a good sign! This month we met
up in our usual spot to talk about the wartime fiction work of Irene Nemirovsky
‘Suite Francaise’, a book that Nemirovsky was unfortunately never able to
complete, due to being detained at Auschwitz where she sadly died.
This was a book I
was really looking forward to as it’s the sort of thing I’d pick up if I saw it
in a shop. I’m not really into the
politics of war but I find the characters and the stories of how people lived
fascinating.
Although it was a
good book nobody felt the book was amazing, it didn’t have the wow factor of a
‘masterpiece’ (as described on the cover).
That’s not to say that we didn’t like it and there were some beautifully
written moments throughout the story. My
favourite aspect of it was the descriptiveness.
The way it was written allowed you to easily conjure an image of what
these people and their surroundings looked liked at that moment.
The main debate
of the evening…was it really an accurate portrayal of the times, how the French
really felt about the Germans during that time of the occupation? Yes it is fiction, but clearly the author
wrote with intent to describe what life was like at this time period using her
characters to take us to that moment in time.
It was interesting as some felt the author portrayed the French people
as growing to like and even to fall in love with the officers, as they became a
part of their daily lives, living amongst them in their homes. And why could this not be true, these
soldiers were just people, not unlike the husbands and sons they had sent away
to war. They too had families back home. Others argued that it was just too safe, that
surely the French were not this easily swayed and that simply the author was
writing this afraid of the Germans herself and so being restrained about in
which light they were portrayed.
After despairing
at book club that I had lost my notebook containing ‘the list’, I did manage to find the early list on my blog so that we could choose a book for next
month. We decided to pick at random and
the winning title was:
‘The Book Thief’
by Markus Zusak
Myself and a
couple of others in the group have actually already read this book, however we were so eager to encourage others to read it and indeed to find out what they
think that we are all quite content to re-read it. This is personally one of my favourite books,
which when I first read about 3 or 4 years ago blew me away. It will be interesting for me to read again
and see if I feel the same way the second time around…
‘Narrated
by Death, the
book is set in Nazi Germany, a place and time
when the narrator notes he was extremely busy. It describes a young girl's
relationship with her foster parents, the other residents of their neighbourhood,
and a Jewish fist-fighter who hides in her home during the escalation of World War II.’
Get
your book immediately and start reading, go on off you go!!
I
still haven’t found my notebook but have managed to compile this list which
includes the two added by our newcomers this week. Let me know if I’ve missed anything off
people!!
Childhood's End - Arthur.C.Clarke
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Before I Go To Sleep - S.J Watson
Me Before You - Jojo Moyes
Of Human Bondage - W.Somerset Maugham
Tess of The D'urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas
Bleak
House – Charles Dickens
The
Colour of Milk – Nell Leyshon
Cold
Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Wild
Seed – Octavia. E. Butler
Next Book Club Meet:
Date: Wednesday
26th September
Time: 7.30pm
Location: Half
& Half bar, South Croydon
My book club blog’s seem to
be getting longer, I hope you’re not falling asleep there in the back row!
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