Tag Archives: Book Club

1st Wednesday Book Group – Wolf Hall

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aaaTitle:Wolf Hall

Author:Hilary Mantel

Book Summary:

‘Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,’ says Thomas More, ‘and when you come back that night he’ll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks’ tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.’England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey’s clerk, and later his successor.Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages. From one of our finest living writers, Wolf Hall is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion and suffering and courage. Continue reading →

Last Thursday Book Group – The Goldenland

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aaaTitle:The Golden Land

Author: Di Morrissey

Book Summary

Natalie is a young Gold Coast mother with a loving husband, two small children and a happy lifestyle. While helping her mother move house, she finds a little box containing a Burmese artefact. When Natalie learns its unique history through a letter left by her great-great uncle, it ignites an interest in its country of origin and her uncle’s unfulfilled plans for this curio. Her investigations collide with her own dramatically changing circumstances and create a catalyst for a moral dilemma that challenges the core of her marriage as she finds herself immersed in two very different golden lands.

Group Comments Continue reading →

2nd Tuesday Evening Book Group – Red Sorghum

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aaaTitle: Red Sorghum

Author: Mo Yan

Book Summary

Spanning three generations, this novel of family and myth is told through a series of flashbacks that depict events of staggering horror set against a landscape of gemlike beauty as the Chinese battle both the Japanese invaders and each other in the turbulent 1930s. As the novel opens, a group of villagers, led by Commander Yu, the narrator’s grandfather, prepare to attack the advancing Japanese. Yu sends his 14-year-old son back home to get food for his men; but as Yu’s wife returns through the sorghum fields with the food, the Japanese start firing and she is killed. Her death becomes the thread that links the past to the present and the narrator moves back and forth recording the war’s progress, the fighting between the Chinese warlords and his family’s history.

Groups Comments

Only 2 readers in the group actually finished the book and they found the book well-written and intriguing. The different values systems displayed by the different warring sides highlighted the inhuman character of war. Continue reading →

1st Wednesday Book Group – Pied Piper

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2nd October 2013

piedTitle: The Pied Piper

Author: Nevil Shute

Book Summary

During John Howard’s holiday in France, the Nazis invade and he is forced to try to escape back to England with the two small children of some friends. The roads become impassable and Howard also comes across five more children who need his help. He ends up leading this motley group of youngsters through the French countryside constantly beset by danger yet heroically protecting his charges.

Group Comments

NOTE COMMENTS MAY CONTAIN PLOT SPOILERS

  • I was initially not keen to read the book, but I really enjoyed it. Very interesting to read about the War from the perspective of someone who was around at the time? Continue reading →

Last Thursday Book Group – Foal’s Bread

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26th September 2013

foalsTitle: Foal’s Bread

Author: Gillian Mears

Book Summary

The long-awaited new novel from the award-winning author of THE GRASS SISTER tells the story of two generations of the Nancarrow family and the high-jumping horse circuit prior to the Second World War. A love story of impossible beauty and sadness, it is also a chronicle of dreams ‘turned inside out’, and miracles that never last, framed against a world both tender and unspeakably hard.  Set in hardscrabble farming country and around the country show high-jumping circuit that prevailed in rural New South Wales prior to the Second World War, FOAL’S BREAD tells the story of two generations of the Nancarrow family and their fortunes as dictated by the vicissitudes of the land. It is a love story of impossible beauty and sadness, a chronicle of dreams ‘turned inside out’, and miracles that never last, framed against a world both tender and unspeakably hard. Written in luminous prose and with an aching affinity for the landscape the book describes, FOAL’S BREAD is the work of a born writer at the height of her considerable powers. It is a stunning work of remarkable originality and power, one that confirms Gillian Mears’ reputation as one of our most exciting and acclaimed writers.

Group Comments

NOTE COMMENTS MAY CONTAIN PLOT SPOILERS Continue reading →