May’s book

May’s Book
After the success of April’s meeting where most of us had read a different book (only two of us had read the same book!) we thought we would continue the idea.

The suggested titles are –

Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks (2005)

What is it to be human? This question, as in Birdsong, is at the heart of Human Traces.

The story begins in Brittany where a young, poor boy somehow passes hismedical exams and goes to Paris, where he attends the lectures of Charcot,the Parisian neurologist who set the world on its head in the 1870s. With afriend, he sets up a clinic in the mysterious mountain district ofCarinthia in south-east Austria.

If The Girl at the Lion d’Or was a simple three-movement symphony, Birdsong an opera, Charlotte Gray a complex four-movement symphony and On Green Dolphin Street a concerto, then Human Traces is a Wagnerian grand opera.

The Observations by Jane Harris (2007)

This book is in paper back and has been shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.

Synopsis

So there I was with two pens, my two titties, Charles Dickens, two slice of bread and a blank book at the end of my first day in the middle of nowhere. Except as it turned out it wasn’t quite the end …Scotland, 1863. In an attempt to escape her not-so-innocent past in Glasgow, Bessy Buckley the wide-eyed Irish heroine of “The Observations” – takes a job as a maid in a big house outside Edinburgh working for the beautiful Arabella. Bessy is intrigued by her new employer, but puzzled by her increasingly strange requests and her insistence that Bessy keep a journal of her most intimate thoughts. And it seems that Arabella has a few secrets of her own – including her near-obsessive affection for Nora, a former maid who died in mysterious circumstances. Then, a childish prank has drastic consequences, which throw into jeopardy all that Bessy has come to hold dear.

Caught up in a tangle of madness, ghosts, sex and lies, she remains devoted to Arabella. But who is really responsible for what happened to her predecessor Nora? As her past threatens to catch up with her and complicate matters even further, Bessy begins to realise that she has not quite landed on her feet.

Dates for 2007 meetings –

Tuesday 26 June Letter Home Karen Alanizi
Tuesday 31 July
Tuesday 25 September One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
Tuesday 30 October
Tuesday 27 November

You will notice that there is not a meeting for next August – as we will be busy with the Festival.

General suggestions –

June’s reading
Letter Home Karen Alanizi
The author contacted our blog site, so we thought we should read it….Would your book club members like to read something a little different? My book ‘Letter Home’ is about my experience as a British woman married to a Kuwaiti, during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. I would love to get any feedback from you and would be happy to answer any questions you may have about the book. You will find more information about the book at the link below. It is also available from major on-line bookstores.

The compelling true story of Karen Alanizi, and her Kuwaiti husband Salem during the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Based on a letter written to her family in England her story reveals the heart-wrenching emotions, fears and the often amusing and sometimes bizarre side of life during the Iraqi occupation. She describes the desperation of their separation, and the journeys that eventually re-unite them in England. As the Gulf War unfolds they fear for their family and friends left behind in Kuwait and wait impatiently for the Liberation of the country that they love so much.

September’s reading
One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
Synopsis- It is summer, it is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident – an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander – until he becomes a suspect. With “Case Histories”, Kate Atkinson showed how brilliantly she could explore the crime genre and make it her own. In “One Good Turn”, she takes her masterful plotting one step further. Like a set of Russian dolls, each thread of the narrative reveals itself to be related to the last. Her Dickensian cast of characters are all looking for love or money and find it in surprising places. As ever with Atkinson what each one actually discovers is their true self. Unputdownable and triumphant, “One Good Turn” is a sharply intelligent read that is also percipient, funny, and totally satisfying.

Who wrote this?

I’ve just been browsing a friends blog and she pointed out that according to a website, she writes like a man. Is this good or bad? So far there’s one comment from a man, saying that apparently he writes like a woman. I got the impression that he was distinctly not pleased …

Want to try it?

Here’s the website. You need to have an example of your writing that you can paste in (it could be fiction, non-fiction or a blog entry).