The Vintner's Letters by Peter McAra

 

Son of an Irish father and a French mother, Maurice George O’Shea was a famous Australian winemaker. Educated in France, he was also a man of passion, a romantic. In the cultured and elegant Miss Marcia Fuller, an accomplished pianist, he found his enduring sweetheart.

Theirs would be a many-faceted and often stormy romance, confronted by religious differences and tested by life’s vicissitudes. But their greatest challenge lay in Maurice’s other consuming passion – making fine wines. He could not tear himself away from his beloved Hunter Valley vineyard. Marcia, every inch a city girl, was appalled by the primitive living conditions of the struggling vigneron.

The Vintner’s Letters is based on their true story as recounted by Simone Bryce, their daughter, and on the letters written by Maurice to Marcia during their courtship.

This year’s first guest for our An Audience with program, Peter McAra, delivered a wonderfully entertaining and informative talk last Wednesday night at Dapto Library, discussing his novel The Vintner’s Letters.

Reading a novel based on real people and their lives can be an engaging thing. It is so easy to imagine their life, empathize with the characters, understand their difficulties and feel good about their pleasures. This is exactly what McAra has given us in his novel.

Firstly he explained how he came to write Vintner’s Letters (an interesting story in itself) then the process of bringing these two people to life and why the story was released as a novel and not a biography.

Maurice O’Shea provided the foundation for this story with his letters to Marcie over the years of their courtship. Then, with the help of their daughter Simone Bryce, Peter built an authentic, yet compelling story of a man swept up in his dreams of creating superior wine and balancing this with his love for a young woman, all during a time when transport and communication was far from as easy as it is today. 

The story has all the vital ingredients of a great novel … romance, relationships, family dynamics and as Peter explained, that crucial ingredient for a good story, conflict!

Author discussions provide great insight into the artistic process of writing a book and Peter gave us many wonderful stories relating to his research and method of crafting creative non-fiction. For those of us who had already read The Vintner’s Letters, we came away feeling more informed and intimate with, not only the characters, but with the writing process in general …  something always welcomed by avid readers.

And for those who had not yet read the book? It has now moved to the top of their reading list!

From our Book Clubs and readers, a big thank you Peter, for giving your time and sharing your stories in such a personal and friendly manner. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

 

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country’s vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera’s most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing.

It is a perfect evening – until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends and loves.

 

Differing opinions about a book brings out a lively discussion, regardless of the subject matter. But this month’s read gave us fascinating material … music, culture and political struggle with a dash of humour, romance and operatic drama.

When I say differing opinions, our group’s scores for Bel Canto ranged from 2 to 10. The low scores found the story slow and filled with mundane details regarding the hostages’ confined stay. There were also comments regarding the fantastical nature of the story, with little connection to the Lima Crisis of 1996, which it was based on.

Our high scores found the story enthralling with characters that drew you in and moved you emotionally. They found empathy for all of them, hostages and insurgents alike. It was mentioned that music itself became a character and that the whole story read much like an opera (Intentional? We think so), setting a scene, building the characters and rising to a climax.

The story could easily be represented on a stage, so this idea is not unrealistic and it found sound credit with us.

We had a great discussion on opera and how it resonates with people’s emotions. Combined with the cultural variety of the hostages and their evolving relationships, most of us found the whole concept a thoroughly entertaining and worthy read.  

The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Tom Ripley is struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors and the law, when an unexpected acquaintance offers him a free trip to Europe and chance to start over.

Ripley wants money, success and the good life and he’s willing to kill for it. When his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as it is shocking.

 

It is rare to have vastly differing opinions on one book, but not unknown to our group … and  something that Highsmith’s Mr Ripley managed this month. Denise found that the constant, repetitive internal dialogue of the main character (Mr Ripley himself) tediously dull and uninspiring. She felt the description of another hotel room, restaurant, train trip etc … would send her over the edge! Not only did she not like Mr Ripley, she had no interest in what would befall him (or those around him) next.

In direct contrast was Anne who thought the whole story clever … a psychological thriller that held her throughout the entire book. The impending likelihood that Ripley would be caught kept the reader in a perpetual state of speculation and doubt.

The perfect result for such a novel.

Other comments tended towards the positive. Some found it ‘quirky and funny’, others thought the sense of place was wonderfully done, bringing Venice in particular alive. We managed to do quite a good job of psychoanalysing Mr Ripley and although we considered him a most unhealthy individual, we mostly agreed that he was not a completely ruthless psychopath. More like your average everyday schizophrenic who sees no obstacle too difficult on the way to his aim. Would he have killed Dickie if the need had not presented itself? This is something we, as mere readers will never know, but the odds are good and thankfully, for those of us who want more of Mr Ripley, Highsmith has provided such through two more Ripley adventures – Ripley Under Water and The Boy who Followed Ripley.

The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent

Salem, Massachusetts, 1692. A young woman is hanged, unyielding in her refusal to admit to being a witch.

You Sarah Carrier is bright and wilful, openly challenging the small, brutal world in which her family lives. In this startling novel, she narrates the story of her early life in Andover, near Salem. Her father is English in origin, quietly stoical but with a secret history. Her mother Martha is a herbalist, tough but loving. Despite their conflicts, it is clear that Martha understands her daughter like no other. When Martha is accused of witchcraft, and the whisperings in the community escalate, she makes Sarah promise not to stand up for her in court. As Sarah and her brothers are hauled into the prison themselves, the vicious cruelty of the trials becomes apparent. The Carrier family, along with other innocents, are starved and deprived of any decency, battling their way through the hysteria with the sheer willpower their mother has taught them.

 

 

This novel was popular with most of our group. They felt the author created the time and place well, with believable characterisations, great language and descriptive passages. We had a good discussion on mother/daughter relationships and the notorious unpredictability of teenage girls. Joan mentioned the parallel traits of 17^th century girls and those of today. Is bullying through a Puritan court the same a bullying through Facebook? We all agreed that the passage of time does little to change human behaviour and went on to discuss the environment of fear that even today is created as a way of controlling society. Do we learn from the past? It would appear not.

Everyone found the account of Martha’s imprisonment graphic and at times hard to read. The combination of mass hysteria, ignorance and superstition had us all reeling from the injustice placed upon these poor people, and found ourselves incredulous of Viti’s story of some relations in a small village in Kent that seriously believed a homeless woman to be a witch. And this was in the 1970s!

There were some criticisms from a few members who found the story too much akin to The Crucible, and felt there was nothing new here. Also the slow start and unlikable personality of the narrator, Sarah, had both Nancy and Chris struggling to appreciate the book. But in general, The Heretic’s Daughter scored high with our group and, like our member Kathy, if you haven’t read The Crucible, you will no doubt thoroughly enjoy this one!

 

In the final years of the seventeenth century in a small town in New England, the venerable Colonel Pyncheon decides to erect a ponderously oak-framed and spacious family mansion. It occupies the spot where Matthew Maule, ‘an obscure man’, had lived in a log hut, until his execution for witchcraft. From the scaffold, Maule cries to the presiding Colonel ‘God will give him blood to drink!’

The fate of Pyncheon exerts a heavy influence on his descendants in the crumbling mansion for the next century and a half.

But although a distant family sin appears to have populated the old house with unhappy ghosts, held tenuously between life and death, the arrival of young Phoebe Pyncheon from the country breathes fresh air and sunshine into mouldering lives and rooms, and the novel begins to work against the crushing weight of history.

 

The dark and suppressive nature of a Hawthorne novel is not new to our group. We read The Scarlet Letter a few years ago, so there were no big surprises this month with our return visit to this American classic writer.

It could be the time of year, but most struggled to complete this (what some described as tedious) novel and were at odds to comprehend exactly where Hawthorne meant to go with it. The plot seemed non-existent, which didn’t help getting you through the monotonous rambling descriptions Hawthorne so loves.

We discussed the style that seemed so popular in the day and compared its likeness to Dickens and Bronte. In a time when there was little in the way of visual entertainment, novels of this sort would have been an important diversion from everyday life. So Hawthorne’s long and illustrative narrative may well be daunting to us modern readers, but we can see how it worked in a time of romance novels (when in fact all novels were considered ‘romance’).

The term ‘gothic’ was also bantered around and Cathy, who did not think she would take to this book, found herself quite enjoying this dark, boding tale and believes she could be reading one of the first gothic novels written.

In the end, we decided Hawthorne was able to weave an exemplary kind of magic with his words (his many, many words) and that alone is worthy of consideration, and a read.

From the civil rights struggle in the United States to the Nazi crimes against humanity in Europe, there are more stories than people passing each other every day on the bustling streets of every crowded city. Only some survive to become history.

 As two men – recently released from prison, Lamont Williams and Australian historian Adam Zignelik, try to survive in early twenty-first century New York, history comes to life in ways neither of them could have foreseen. Two very different paths lead to one greater story as The Street Sweeper, in dealing with memory, love, guilt, heroism, the extremes of racism and unexpected kindness, spans the twentieth century to the present and spans the globe from New York to Melbourne, Chicago to Auschwitz.

 

We have tackled some big books this year and Perlman’s The Street Sweeper is the last of them. A sweeping (sorry about the pun) novel of over 500 pages, its story content is dense and at times harrowing, but was given huge praise from the majority of our group.

Some of us did find its volume too daunting and at best ‘just another holocaust story’, but of those that read to the end, it was thought unanimously a well-written, emotional story that horrified yet moved us.

We found Lamont an endearing character and quickly jumped on his bandwagon for the duration of the ride. Adam was intriguing and contained many characteristics of Perlman’s other protagonists, particularly from Three Dollars and Seven Types of Ambiguity.

And then there was the ‘memory’ theme that wove strong throughout the book …

 Memory is a willful dog. It won’t be summoned or dismissed but it cannot survive without you. It can sustain you or feed on you. It visits when it is hungry, not when you are. It has a schedule all its own that you can never know, It can capture you, corner you or liberate you. It can leave you howling and it can make you smile.

This paragraph was sighted by a few of us as being very poignant to the storyline, as there were many aspects and views that needed to come together. And in the end history is written by memories … what they contain and what they miss.

Overall The Street Sweeper scored high with our group. An indication that this novel promises a high quality read for those looking for such. 

Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Book Store by Robin Sloan

 

 

 

 

The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon away from life as a San Francisco web-design drone and into the aisles of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But after a few days on the job, Clay discovers that the store is more curious than either its name or its gnomic owner might suggest. The customers are few, and they never seem to buy anything—instead, they “check out” large, obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. Suspicious, Clay engineers an analysis of the clientele’s behavior, seeking help from his variously talented friends. But when they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, they discover the bookstore’s secrets extend far beyond its walls.

‘Dan Brown meets Enid Blyton’, as summed up by one of our members. 

It may be over simplifying this modern take on fantasy-realism (nothing simple about that tag), but it does encapsulate what Mr Penumbra’s Bookstore held in literary terms for our group.

An interesting aspect of reading fresh young authors is our tendency to identify them within our already read literature. Finding something completely new in fiction does not happen often, but this one comes close. Sloan’s blend of today’s cutting edge technology coupled with theological presence, not to mention that fabulous bookstore, had the majority of us compelled to read on. It certainly took us away to somewhere entirely new.

The scores stayed high, 7-8 and it was generally considered to be an entertaining book with simple language and a well thought out plot.

No prizes for guessing what the main topic of discussion was … books, books, books!!