Beautiful Ruins - Questions

Hello everyone,

I hope you have all been enjoying this months book. Here are some questions for you to think about before Thursday!

•    The book's opening is reminiscent of a lush, epic romantic film—the beautiful dying Dee Moray steps off the boat and into Pasquale's heart. Although the book veers off new directions, is it still a love story? What kinds of love are presented in the novel? What, ultimately, does the novel have to say about love?
•    The book's timeline, locales, different voices and unusual text treatments (Hollywood film pitch, biography, unfinished novel, how-to book) are jumbled. Did you find it confusing, hard to follow, irritating? Or was the variety intriguing? What might the author be hoping to achieve by scrambling everything up? How would the book be different if it were told in chronological order with a straightforward narrator?
•    What is the significance of the novel's title? (It was first used by a journalist to describe Richard Burton many years after his marriage to Taylor.) Who else, or what, are the "beautiful ruins"?
•    The first sentence in the final chapter begins with Michael Deane proclaiming “This is a love story.” The chapter then reveals the stories of most of the characters in the book, ending with Pasquale and Dee. Discuss how their stories are lives, as the title suggests, of beauty and ruins.

The Girl With All The Gifts - M R Carey

** warning this post may contain spoilers**

We all felt that the book was written in a very cinematic way and we're at all surprised that the author wrote a screenplay for the book at the same time as writing the book. There certainly were a lot of highly dramatic and often gory parts to the book that we felt would work well on screen as well as they did in the book. This was also made clear by the fact that the book was written in the present tense but not in first person which made the book feel really fast paced.

This book is said to be about zombies but some of the book club didn't notice this at all, they didn't realise that the monsters in the book were zombies. We had a discussion about whether they were zombies or whether they were more like a vehicle for the fungus, we felt that as they didn't technically die until the fungus had completely taken them over that they maybe weren't zombies. This was also shown a bit by the fact that some of the zombie like characters seemed to retain some of their humanity especially the newly made zombies.

We felt that the author was sympathetic to the zombies rather than painting them all as monsters with no control which was a different way to go compared to the monster books of old. It was interesting to have a human painted as the monster rather than the zombies, although as we discussed the book we wondered whether we would be on the side of the human monster (Caldwell) or the softer outlook that Miss Justineaux portrayed. It seemed that the book was more about the relationships between the different characters rather than them just constantly trying to escape the zombies. We especially liked the relationship between Melanie and Miss Justineaux, this seemed to be the central point to most of the middle of the book.

We felt that the characters in the book were obviously tropes of traditional horror story books with the army types, the softer sympathetic character, the hard scientifically oriented character etc. but they were so well written that we didn't really care how obvious they all were.

There were a few interesting moral dilemmas within the book such as the one that Gallagher faces, we wondered if we would do the same as he did. We also discussed whether humans have a right to carry on existing and when would you give up the fight and realise that maybe it's the right thing for humans to no longer exist, at least in their current format. The ending of the book we felt was hopeful for planet earth, if not entirely for humankind.

Overall we gave this book 8 out of 10.

The Girl With All The Gifts - Questions

Hello everyone!

I hope you’re all enjoying this months book. Don’t forget that the meeting will be on 30th April. Here are some questions to think about while you’re reading:

-    What difference, if any, does the use of the present tense for the narrative voice make to our experience in reading the novel? Why do you think the author chose it?
-    This book provides the reader with a moral dilemma, do you side with Dr Caldwell in her experiments to save the human race, or with Helen Justineau and her difficulty with separating the children from what they really are?
-    How does the book portray the relationship between Melanie and Miss Justineau? Do you find it unsettling or reassuring? Does it change in the course of the novel?
-    How did the explanation for the apocalypse make you feel, did the scientific basis leave you impressed or terrified?
-    Do you view the ending as tragic or hopeful? And what do you think will happen next?
-    Did you enjoy this book, and would you recommend it? If you would recommend it would you let that person go into it blind?

See you all next week!

Cleopatra: A Life - Stacy Schiff

Only two members of the book group have actually finished this book and of those that haven't not many felt they wanted to continue with it. Everyone found this book incredibly hard going, it was dry, confusing, and in fact we found that we didn't actually leanr that much about Cleopatra. The language used caused some confusion as there were highly intellectual words used in the same sentence as much more parochial words which we felt clashed a little. We honestly weren't sure what kind of book this was meant to be, was it a highly intellectual history book, or was it trying to be a little more readable. Whichever it was trying for we felt it definitely missed.

We were all very disappointed that we didn't learn very much about Cleopatra, at least nothing that stuck in our minds given the odd language and writing style. We felt that we learnt much more about the male characters in the book, and even about the people who wrote about Cleopatra rather than the woman herself. Some of the facts that we did read we felt were things that the author could not possibly know, and she had no evidence to reallt back up, for example the fact that Cleopatra only slept with two men. Cleopatra did come across as someone very suited to the age in which she lived, she seemed to able to do almost anything to ensure that her name went down in history and that she and her children survived.

Along with the confusion of everyone having the same name and also changing the year when it suited them we felt that having some kind of simplified timeline would have helped the reader get their head around when everything was happening and how things interacted.

Overall we gave this book 1 out of 10.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson

The main problem most book club members seemed to have with this book was the hopping backwards and forwards in time. It was felt that these bits might be slightly superfluous to the main story, but without them the book would have been much shorted, and possibly more interesting. The only thing we learnt from the historical parts of the book was that the protaganist had been around for a very long time and happened to meet a lot of the great historical figures from the past 100 years. It was interesting to have that timeline to see what things had happened during his lifetime but it didn't really add anything more to the story.

Moving on from the historical passages in the book we though that they were pretty far fetched and wondered whether the protaganist was making them up as there is no-one around to be able to check with. We also wondered whether he had some kind of mental health issues related to lying and story telling. We then went on to wonder if he had actually run away at all or if it was all just a dream, or he was just telling himself a story to pass the time in the nursing home.

We wondered whether the reason we didn't enjoy it as much as we anticipated was because it has been translated from Swedish. They might have a very different sense of humour than we do, it certainly seemed to be a lot drier than we're used to. We came to the conclusion that the Scandinavians definitely do have a wierd sense of humour evidenced by this book and also the Moomins!

Overall we gave this book 5 out of 10.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared - Questions

Hello everyone,

As we have a book club meeting on Thursday of this week i should probably be sending out some questions for you to think about. Please let me know if you’re unable to come along to the meeting.

•    The One Hundred Year Old Man is a novel with the topic of ageing at its core. What are society's expectations of how the elderly should act? Talk about the ways—obvious and not-so-obvious—in which Allan defies the usual stereotypes. What are your own experiences, either as an older person yourself...or as someone who worries about an older friend or family member? Does society do a good job in terms of how we treat our older population? Have you read other novels that explore (and shatter) a strongly held societal belief?
•    History and politics sit lightly within the framework of this novel. When it comes to international relations, what worldview would you say the author seem to hold?
•    A definition of "satire" is "a literary composition in which vices, abuses and follies, etc are held up to scorn, derision or ridicule" (Macquarie Dictionary). Do you think this novel is a satire—and what is being satirized?
•    At 100, Allan’s life is filled with important moments. And yet he does not seem to see these encounters as momentous. Is he naïve? Innocent? What does Allan’s own attitude toward his past and his present tell you about him and his view of life? Do you hold a similar perspective?

Hope to see you all on Thursday for books and cake!

The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith

Most people at the meeting had finished this month’s book and everyone had enjoyed it.  However, two people had not finished it and therefore we tried to keep the discussion spoiler-free.  This was a difficult task but we managed it!

Everyone was aware that Robert Galbraith was a pen name for JK Rowling, which we found more off-putting than encouraging, as we weren’t sure how a children’s writer would tackle an adult book. But we needn’t have worried.  Many of the group had read the Harry Potter books and felt that, although there are similarities in the writing, (for example the strong character description) this book was quite different in style and content.

We thought that the characters were very well drawn and really liked the relationship between Strike and Robin.  Matthew was seen as a bit of a wimp, a boring person who was very different to Strike, with his military background.  We thought that Matthew was jealous of Strike and felt threatened by him, although he would never admit it.  Robin was originally very happy to be newly engaged and the centre of attention, but that slips away later in the book.  Matthew has very definite ideas of what a relationship should be, and Robin is originally happy to fit into this.  But working for Strike, and enjoying doing something that she has always been interested in, she begins to fell constrained by Matthew’s rather old-fashioned views.  We liked Robin and thought that she should definitely go for what would make her happy, but we did also discuss how she would feel if things were the other way round and Matthew had suddenly started a job he loved with a woman boss that he greatly admired – that helped us to better appreciate his point of view! 

We thought the plot was intricate, but that the clues were there to be found amongst the red herrings, so the finale made sense. The facts and motivations behind the murder are summarised towards the end of the book and some people found this useful (as an aide-memoire) while others thought it a little contrived, a bit like the TV programme “Death in Paradise”.

We discussed what impact the fact that Strike is an amputee had on our feeling towards the character, and we decided that it leant him an air of vulnerability but that although we did feel sorry for him we also respected him more for his determination not to let his injury define him.

Fame is a recurrent theme in the novel.  Strike is the son of a famous rock star but chooses not to capitalise on his father’s name.  However, it is clear that fame opens doors and other characters are much more susceptible to its allure.  We wondered if the characters are based on real people – for example, we felt that Evan Duffield was like Pete Doherty, and his need for the attention that fame brings was very obvious.  There are references to social injustice in the book and we thought that reflected the two halves of JK Rowling’s own life – the difficult years when she was trying to make it as a writer, and the sudden change to being in a position where everybody knows who she is and wants to be her friend.

Some of the group had lived in London and said that the descriptions of the city were very accurate.  Also, the cover was very atmospheric and gave a sense of place.  The things that we didn’t like were minor.  We wondered why the book was called the Cuckoo’s Calling, when the only person that called Lula Cuckoo was Guy.  This felt forced, as if it had only been written that way to justify the book title.  Also the use of the Latin aphorisms at the beginning of the chapters was felt by some to be rather pretentious.

Overall we thought this was a well-written book, with well-described characters who drove the plot, and written in an “old-school” detective style.  We gave the book 8.5 out of 10, with 8 being the lowest score.