#64 - Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake (Choice: Eamonn's)(Venue: Meson Don Felipe)

Present: Gill, Nic, Jen, Eamonn and special guest star (and honorary member) Liz.
Date: 7th May
Two things can be whole-heartedly agreed:

1. Meeting on the same date (7th) of each month has not been the hoped-for success;
2. Gill and I will turn out for every meeting!  Hardcore, we are.

So, we had a complete failure to meet in April, following a partial failure in March, followed this evening, by agreement that we'll abandon the "7th of the month" in favour of regular Thursday meetings (Jen having mastered the Italian language and no longer being in lessons).  This is likely to find favour with all as it was long the preferred day and an opportunity for a slightly later night than we've allowed ourselves on Mondays and Tuesdays!

Our numbers have also been slightly reduced: Alex is taking a "lurve sabbatical" and Nathalie wants to push on with reading her own choices; but, most embarrassingly, Jennie (as opposed to Jen) was frightened off by the prospect of seeing us again and choosing a book after only one meeting (admittedly that one meeting was "The Messiah" and a robust discussion).  Oh dear - we were trying to be inclusive and instead were just scary. 

Back to tonight.  Sherry to start, red wine to follow with an array of excellent, rustic and very tasty tapas: salted almonds, delicious olive oil (though Liz, in briefly from Italy, was, in preference, lapping up the butter like there was no tomorrow), meats, cheeses, octopus salad, chorizo, patatas bravas and many (really, many) more.  Only the bread was less-than it could be: I fear Jane has turned us all into bread snobs!

The book was not widely discussed and, Eamonn aside, who thoroughly enjoyed it, reaction of those present could be summed up in one word: Groan.

We start a fresh page, with renewed vigour on Thursday 28th June, Jen's choice.  Here's hoping for a good turn out and great book, failing that we'll have as always, excellent company and a slap-up dinner.

#56 - The Thirteen ½ Lives of Captain Blue Bear – Walter Moers (Choice: Eamonn’s)(Venue: Rosa’s, Soho)

Present: Gill, Nathalie, Alex, Eamonn, Jen, Nic, Jane

This book was not generally well liked but it did stimulate an interesting debate about whether this is (i) a children’s book (ii) a book for adults based on a children’s character or (iii) a table. 

I put this firmly into the children’s book category being very basic in structure and generally simplistic with discrete chapters that might be read by a generous parent with a high boredom threshold as a bedtime story.  It has no content worthy of adult cognitive ability and no value as a work of literature or, indeed, entertainment.  However, the long, made-up words pointed others to classify it as a book for adults.  And, as Jen pointed out, not even a child would find it exciting enough to want to hear more (and this from the book’s strongest supporter!).

We recognised that our appreciation may have been hindered by a lack of cultural background as this book was written for the German market where Captain Blue Bear is a children’s television phenomenon, however, most of us declined to cut it any slack on that basis as someone had approved it for UK publication, where it stands or falls on its merits.  The early chapters were initially engaging but there was no character development or plot direction and no driving purpose to engage the reader and make them read on.  Notwithstanding that, Jen and Eamonn finished the book, a feat which evaded the rest of us.

I convinced Gill (who’d been stuck in trial and not purchased the book) to take my copy home – I’m not sure whether she read it or decided it was best used as a table.

Let’s talk about the food.  Yum, yum, tom yum, yum.  Alex and Nathalie ordered sensible meals.  The rest of us ordered “one of everything” from the starters which we ate communally as tapas and then ordered some more until we ended filled to the brim and saying “never again”.  But you know we will.

#45 - The Road - Cormac McCarthy (Choice: Eamonn's)(Venue: Automat, Mayfair),

Present: Nic, Eamonn, Jane, Alex, Nathalie and Gill (if memory serves)

A controversial choice and a divided table: Eamonn loved this book; Nathalie appreciated it; Gill and Nic loathed it passionately; as I recall Jane disliked it.

Possibly the stark, deconstructed writing - "sentences" weren't sentences but phrases or words separated by inappropriate full stops; lacking cohesion and structure and having, usually, either subject or predicate but rarely both - reflected the apocalyptic breakdown of society but mostly it smacked of illiteracy.

There were occasional, breath-taking portraits of degradation and desperation - the farm of humans in the cellar, kept alive to provide meat being an obvious example - but mostly the characters were unappealing and so slightly sketched that it was hard to know them and, therefore, to empathise.

We knew the mother had committed suicide and the father hadn't and had undertaken the care and upbringing of his child alone but throughout the whole novel we learned nothing more of him than that he loved his child and had taken that decision. (Except that he had an uncanny ability to find barely hidden cellars full of food that had gone undiscovered by the other desperate survivors who had passed by previously. Perhaps he had a great sense of smell?)

We have no reason to think the mother didn't love her child but she reached a different decision. Presumably this made the father morally more commendable but, really, to what purpose and why? What was the value in the life he and the boy led while we followed and, if the devastation was so wide spread as it appeared and danger so omnipresent, what value would there ever be?

I'm not sure the mother was wrong.


Carl's Comments:

#36 - Welcome to Life - Alice de Smith (Choice: Eamonn's)(Venue: Jane's Manor)

Alex:

Product Description from Amazon
"Welcome to Life" is a novel about family, friendship and becoming a grown-up. Adolescence is never easy. But for fourteen-year-old Freya - brought up by parents who act like teenagers, and surrounded by teenagers all too desperate be grown-ups - it's bewildering. All she wants is a bit of attention...But her parents are too wrapped up in their own dramas to register Freya's. Her mother, Millie, is inconsistent, irresponsible, and wants her daughter to be her best gal pal. Unfortunately she finds her utterly inscrutable, a disappointment and a chore, and her fondest communications reach Freya in the form of notes left on the fridge door: 'Feed rabbits'; 'Sandwich for lunch - cheese in fridge only one day out of date', and 'Be less scary'. Freya's dad, Hugh, is in the property game. 'When there's a recession on, you have to keep an eye on the figures,' he told her once. If only he'd listened to his own advice...In desperation, Freya goes looking for love in all the wrong places. And when her parents break dramatically with marital convention, they leave Freya in turmoil as she realizes that, for Millie and Hugh, three is not a crowd...

~

It was interesting for me to read this book, as I was living in Cambridge as a (slightly older) teen than heroine Freya at the time the book is set. It is a very interesting snapshot of eight or so weeks of burgeoning womanhood, a time when the summer holidays made all the difference (so we thought) to the person we would be on the return to school. I think Alice de Smith captures the agony of these teenage growing pains very well.. and Freya is never quite sure who she is and what's expected of her... Where is she in life? The story is incredibly slight and the surrounding characters are given very little flesh and for literary creations behave annoyingly inconsistently. People are described as one thing, and then behave in others - it is a fault in the writing not in the character make-up.

Also, I didn't recognise Cambridge... Her geography is all wrong. Occasionally landmarks are thrown in for good measure, and local celebs from my youth spring up but for no reason. De Smith would have been better served creating extraneous characters and places using her talent as a writer, rather than relying on exisitng places and people that brought nothing to the story...

On the whole I found the book fairly amusing, and whilst the subject, style and moral are nothing new, it reminded me a little of Victoria Wood's stand-up.. Snappy, zippy, some GREAT one liners, but ultimately you never learn anything from it...

Nic:

Wow. You got so much more out of this than I did! It's such a shame you weren't at the lunch to lend a different perspective (and enjoy a fabulous lunch!).

I wondered who Alice slept with in order to get this trite, underdeveloped, poorly-written, uninspiring (I hesitate to call it) book published.

After lunch walk:

#26 - Any Human Heart - William Boyd (Choice: Eamonn's)(Venue: Savoir Faire)

#18 - Fall on Her Knees - Ann Marie MacDonald (Choice: Eamonn's)(Venue: Fakhreldine)

#12 - Black Swan Green - David Mitchell (Choice: Eamonn's) (Venue: Gaucho)