July Meeting

22nd July 2010; We will be reading American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld.

The Amazon review reads;

In the year 2000, in the closest election in American history, Alice Blackwell's husband becomes president of the United States. Their time in the White House proves to be heady, tumultuous, and controversial. But it is Alice's own story - that of a kind, bookish, only child born in the 1940s Midwest who comes to inhabit a life of dizzying wealth and power - that is itself remarkable. Alice candidly describes her small-town upbringing, and the tragedy that shaped her identity; she recalls her early adulthood as a librarian, and her surprising courtship with the man who swept her off her feet; she tells of the crisis that almost ended their marriage; and she confides the privileges and difficulties of being first lady, a role that is uniquely cloistered and public, secretive and exposed. Alice Blackwell, Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is not a novel about politics. It is a gorgeously written novel that weaves race, class, fate and wealth into a brilliant tapestry. It is a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.

Roughly following the story of Laura Bush... although definitely a fictional novel, not a biography, the book gives an intriguing glimpse into what life in the White House could be like.

April Meeting cancelled

Due to Easter and Church commitments, the April meeting will be cancelled and the next meeting will be held in May. The date will be the 13th May at 8pm. Please contact our email via the profile page to get more details of the location.

The book will be Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner.

March Meeting

Apologies for the late posting!
The March meeting was held on March and attended by 4 members.
All in all, those present had enjoyed the book, with at least one saying she had wanted to know the ending. One member did say that the opening had dragged a bit, but once the dog attack happened the story took off.
It's hard to write about a meeting without it becoming as dry as dust. Let's try it another way. We asked each other questions and talked them over between us. Here are a few, with some answers. See if you agree.

Q.What did you think of the narrator, Dr Faraday?
A. He seems to be obsessed with the Hall... look at how he took a piece when he was little. Do you think it could be him causing or starting the events? Does it all start when he comes along or was it happening before?
Isn't it strange how we never know his name. Why is that? Does it make him less of a character or make him more mysterious?

Q. Is he really in love with Caroline?
A. That's a hard one. Does he love her or the house? He seems to dream of them being the Lord and Lady of the manor one day... see how he reacts to her idea of selling the house.

Q. How important is class in the novel?
A. The Eyres have been rich, and aren't now. That wasn't unusual after the war, when a lot of big estates had to be sold and built on to pay taxes. They have a problem with being poor... they still act rich. The way they talk about the servants in one scene, skitting them and calling them names, seems very brutal, not at all polite. The servants are just servants. Why isn't Faraday a servant in the middle like he is at the beginning; he is very much a second choice as a doctor for them, yet by the middle of the novel he is a regular visitor and has his feet well and truly under the table. Even Mrs Eyre seems to accept him as an equal in a way she wouldn't at the start. And Faraday is definitely from'below stairs', his mother was a servant of the Eyres' for goodness sake. Also, Dr Faraday has a chip on his shoulder about class; he is very jealous of Dr

Q. When Gyp bites the little girl, whose reaction is most understandable, the baker-Hydes or the Eyres?
A. The Baker-Hydes seem more justified. Their child has been bitten by a dog, but the novel seems to work at making you see it from Caroline's point of view, that the dog isn't bad and shouldn't be destroyed. Because it is supposed to be a ghost story there's an element of it's not actually the dog's fault, that it's possessed.

Q. How satisfactory was the ending?
A. Very/ not very. (I'm not going to tell you what happens, you have to go and find out for yourself!)

March Book;The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Described as a 'ghost story' this 2009 book was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and was also chosen as the first book for the new series of the Channel 4 Book club. You can find the past episodes of the Book Club to watch here and what they had to say about 'The Little Stranger' here.

If you can't make it to the inaugural meeting of the bookclub, please feel free to comment on the book on this post. We'd love to hear from you even if you can't make it; Open Book is open to everybody.

Welcome to Open Book

The first meeting will be on March 25th at 8pm. Please contact the blog Editor for details.