Orange Is The New Black

Orange is the New Black – Bookclub meeting write-up

All but one of the group had finished the book and we all felt the same about it – it was good but not outstanding.  We all felt that it was, in general, very well written and in an engaging style, but we also felt that there were areas which left us scratching our heads, wondering what was going on.  Partly this was due to the fact that the author has a habit of jumping around in time without always making it clear that she is doing so, and partly it was due to the fact that we felt the characters were not very well drawn.

We all said that we found it difficult to remember who was who.  Apart from Piper and Larry the only other person we could remember was Pop, because she was a central character.  All the other prisoners were interchangeable in our minds.  We had none of us seen the TV show based on the book and we thought that maybe it would be easier to identify with the characters if we had, as we would then have a picture in our minds of what they looked like.  We did feel that there wasn’t enough in the book to make a TV series but somebody said that the TV series was a lot more about relationships, so it would appear that it doesn’t stick religiously to the original text but is more of a development of the characters in the book.

We liked Larry very much and his love and support for Piper came through strongly.  We also liked the fact that Piper, her family and her friends were non-judgemental.  We felt that we learnt something from the book, which is that there is more to every situation than first meets the eye.  The women in the prison were mostly locked up for crimes which their background made it very hard to avoid, and they were mostly not bad people but victims of their environment.  Piper obviously felt very strongly the injustice of locking up vulnerable people, teaching them nothing, and then turning them back out into society with very little in the way of advice to help them not return to prison in the future.  Her anger at this shone through and we felt that her punishment was to see the effect her unthinking actions could have had on these people.  By participating in the drug trade she, who had everything on the outside and didn’t appreciate it, had made life more difficult for these people who had very little but valued what they did have. 

We liked the way the prisoners interacted and worked together to make prison life a bit more bearable by sharing what they had, whether that be possessions or skills like knitting or writing.  However, we did feel that the overall impression given was that Danbury prison was quite a cosy place to be and, although the loss of liberty and control of your own life was a hardship, because of the way the book was written we didn’t see as much of that as we did of the women being kind to each other and the little pleasures they gleaned from every day.  We felt the parts that best reflected the awfulness of what was happening to Piper were the first few chapters, where she has to fact up to her crime and wait to begin her prison sentence, and the final few chapters, where she is locked up in a much tougher prison and cut off from her support group.  Although we did feel that, on balance, prison should be more about redemption than punishment we also felt that, the way it was reported in this book, Danbury didn’t really do well on either count and seemed like a bit of a waste of time from the point of view of being an effective deterrent. 

Overall this was an easy read but disappointing in parts.  We gave it an overall mark of 6.5

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

Everyone in the book group found this book hard to read, we felt that this was because we had all gone into it thinking it would be a ripping good mystery story. However, in actual fact it was more like a history book that just happened to be about a historical murder mystery. If we had read it thinking of it more as a history book we might have enjoyed it a little more.

Most of the people in the group enjoyed reading about the well known historical characters mentioned in the book such as Charles Dickens. We also enjoyed finding out just how different the class system was in Whichers day rather than today. We felt that he didn't manage to get on with this particular mystery very well because he wasn't of the correct class to talk to people or get information from people. However, we also felt that given that detectives were such a new thing Whicher seemed supremely well suited to being one, he certainly had the ability to notice things which the other police officers seemed to either ignore or not notice at all.

We were a little disappointed at the end of the book given that there was no real conclusion in our eyes, but then again this is the way in real life things aren't always tidy. As readers we weren't able to seen the evidence as clearly as either Whicher or the author, we were in fact seeing things through at least two different pairs of eyes before we got anywhere near the information. Either of these pairs of eyes could have massively distorted the information. Not to mention no-one can know the real truth of the matter unless you're able to get into the brain of the killer.

Most of the characters in this book we felt were very dry and one dimensional, we didn't really get to know anyone as they were just mentioned as pieces of evidence. This meant that we didn't come to like any of the characters, who were in fact real people although it is hard to keep remembering this fact. We weren't sure whether someone like Philippa Gregory might have gone about writing this story in a completely different way, however she does tend to take liberties with some historical people which may have had a detrimental effect on this murder mystery.

Overall we gave this book 3.5 out of 10. We felt that it needed to be made clearer that this is much more like a historical document than a murder mystery.

The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher - Questions

Hello everyone,

I hope you’ve all been enjoying this months book, don’t forget that the meeting is on 29th May 2014 (next Thursday). Please let me know asap if you will not be attending as this helps when i’m baking.

Here are some questions to keep in mind while you’re reading:

-    Summerscale delves into the vocabulary of detection, from “coppers” (46) to “clue” (68) to “detect” (157). Which word origins were the most surprising and interesting, and why?

-    Which recent murder cases have caused as great a sensation as the murder at Road Hill of 1860? Why might murder prove so riveting in the press and in fiction, both in the Victorian era and today?

-    What role did privacy play in the Road Hill case? How did notions of privacy impede or advance the case? How do Victorian ideas of privacy and domesticity compare to today’s concept of the home?

-    Discuss the importance of class relations to the Road Hill case. What was the relationship between the Kent family and the villagers of Road? What were the sources of class tension between Whicher and the local police?

-    How was the Road Hill murder case a product of its time? What features of the Victorian era were especially prominent in the case? What was the influence of Charles Darwin’s emerging theories?

Life After Life - Kate Atkinson

We found that the start of this book was very difficult to get into as it was , by necessity, very start stop as the main protagonist dies quite regularly. Once we got past this part of the story there were only a few starts and stops as she dies and then starts her life over again. We felt that most of the different lives followed on logically, with each one getting her just that little bit further on in age. But there was one which appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the book that caught us all by surprise and seemed not to link in with the rest of the story.

The reading style of this book is very easy, it seems to flow as you're reading it. The writing style was very sparse, making very complex and disturbing elements seem very simple and almost beautiful. However, the starting and stopping and the differences between the different lives can make it difficult to remember the story line. It was also found that some of the storylines that were started just suddenly stopped and weren't gone into with as much detail as we as readers would have wanted.

We had a short discussion about whether the protagonist was aware of the way she was living her lives, sometimes she seemed to know more than others that she had lived this particular bit of her life before. It seemed like a really interesting premise for a story. We wondered whether if we were able to live our lives over and over again, firstly, would be accept that gift, or would we prefer to just do it the once. Secondly, if we accepted the gift would we want to be aware of living our lives over and over again or would we prefer to not know. We also wondered if making changes would make our lives any better, or any worse, or even affect those around us detrimentally. This led onto whether we actually are doing the second option and we just don't know that we're living our life over and over, and also whether anyone else in the book was doing this or just the main protagonist. At this point we started to feel confused and a little uncomfortable.

We all enjoyed the bits about the Second World War, epecially as it was shown from both sides of the divide and various different places. As we've already read some books about the war, mostly from the English or French viewpoints, it was a revelation to see if from the German perspective. Although some elements felt a little far-fetched, but this may be due to our own lack of knowledge of that side of the war.

Overall we gave this book 6 out of 10. The view was that the original story idea was good, and it went along quite well but the ending wasn't as good as we felt it could have been.

Life After Life - Questions

Hello everyone,

Firstly, could i please have a show of hands to let me know who will be coming to this months meeting?

Here are some questions about this months book Life After Life. Please be aware that some of these questions may contain spoilers!

-    Small moments often have huge ramifications in Ursula’s life. Do you think certain moments are more crucial than others in the way Ursula’s life develops? Why, and which moments?

-    Do you think Ursula’s ability to relive her life over and over is a gift or a curse? How do you think Ursula looks at it? Do you think she is able to embrace the philosophy amor fati (“love of fate,” “acceptance”) in the end?

-    As time goes on, Ursula learns more about her ability to restart her life—and she often changes course accordingly, but she doesn’t always correct things. Why not? Do you think Ursula ever becomes completely conscious of her ability to relive and redo her lives? If so, at what point in the story do you think that happens? And what purpose do you think she sets for herself once she figures it out?

-    How does Atkinson capture the terror and tragedy of the Blitz? How does war become its own character in the book? What type of commentary does Atkinson make on the English approach to war? Why do you think Atkinson portrayed one of Ursula’s lives in Germany, experiencing war and the bombing from the opposing side?

-    What are the biggest questions this book raised for you? How did it change the way you think about the course of your own life?

See you all on Thursday 24th April!

The Light Between Oceans

There were only five people present at this month’s meeting due to a lot of members being on holiday or having other commitments.  Despite this, the discussion was lively and we all enjoyed the lemon cake which Amy brought along!

Everybody enjoyed this book.  It was compared to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which has been our favourite book so far.  We liked the style of the writing and found it easy to read.

We spent a lot of time discussing whether Tom and Isobel did the right thing in keeping the baby.    We felt that Isobel’s decision was influenced by the fact that she had just lost a baby of her own, and also that she had seen the orphanage her friend’s baby had been sent to and knew what would happen if both parents had died and she and Tom didn’t keep the baby.  There is no doubt that they had a lot of love to give and if they had reported what had happened and it had transpired that the mother was also dead, Lucy’s life would have been a much less happy one.  So, given the circumstances as they presented themselves, we felt we could not blame her for the decision she made.  We then discussed whether it was right to disobey the law and decided that it is sometimes for the best, but we felt that if Tom had recorded what had happened in the book that would have been better, because then whatever happened they could say that they did what they thought best at the time.  But by not recording the event, he made it clear that he knew it was wrong, which was damning evidence when the truth finally emerged.

We also discussed what was best for Lucy/Grace.  She was eventually taken from a home and people that she loved and given to a family who, even though they were her blood relatives, she did not know at all.  We related that to true-life stories that have been in the news where adopted children are taken from loving families to be given back to their birth parents and how much it upsets everyone when this happens.  We concluded that there is no right or wrong in this situation and that the whole thing is just very sad.  We thought that the original wrong-doing was the persecution of Franz which led to him jumping into the boat with the baby.  Everything that was done thereafter was done for good-hearted reasons and might be excused, but this kind of bullying was definitely wrong.  However, it was mentioned that you could go back even beyond that to the causes of the war which made people hate the Germans so there is a continuum of events and the decisions made at each point influence the future.

We had all thought at one point that the person leaving the notes might be Isobel, and when we found out it was actually Tom after all we did feel that that was a kind of a betrayal on his part, even though, in the strictest sense, it was “the right thing to do”.  We were pleased that Tom and Isobel came back together at the end and we wished that Lucy/Grace had managed to get there before Isobel died as we felt sad that she didn’t get to see her again.  In some ways that was felt to be her punishment but we thought that the axiom “it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” held true.

Overall, everyone really enjoyed the book and it moved many to tears.

The overall score for this book was 9 out of 10 and the people present declared it their favourite so far!

The Light Between Oceans - Questions

Hello,

Here is a link and some questions about this months book that i thought you might find interesting.

http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/830.M_L_Stedman?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=2012-12&utm_content=stedman
This is an interview with the author about the book ** SPOILER ALERT** Do not read this until you have read the entire book.

- Tom is haunted by what he witnessed—and what he did—during his enlistment in World War I. The narrator reflects that he’s not “one of the men whose legs trailed by a hank of sinews, or whose guts cascaded from their casing like slithering eels….But he’s scarred all the same, having to live in the same skin as the man who did the things that needed to be done back then.” (page 10) How do you think Tom’s experiences as a soldier impact his decisions throughout the novel? What other outside elements, like the war, influences the narrative?

- Which characters won your sympathy and why? Did this change over the course of the novel? Did your notion of what was best or right shift in the course of your reading?

- M.L. Stedman makes it clear that there is no one perfect answer to the question of who should raise Grace/Lucy. She seems to undermine all notions of absolutes. It is clear that she will not dismiss all Germans as evil either. There is Hannah’s husband, ripe for persecution, and yet he is utterly innocent. Discuss the places in the novel where easy certainty turns out to be wrong.

- What did you think of the conclusion of the novel? What emotions did you feel at the story’s end? Did it turn out as you expected? Were you satisfied?

See you all on 28th March 2014!