The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling and its gardens choked with weeds. The owners - mother, son and daughter - are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own.

But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely and how terrifyingly their story is about to become entwined with his.

As we start our new list for the year, we have been thrown the challenge of a supernatural theme in The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. But as we made our way around the table, it was soon clear that most of us found much more than ghosts within the walls of Hundreds Hall.

In fact, a few of us took in little or none of the spirit world and found its basic theme more about class structure, power struggles and human frailties. Was there ever a ghost or poltergeist in Hundreds Hall? Well, we differed in our opinions on this and a few others points. Some found the story slow to start, with predictable character lines and there was also the opinion that the book could have been a few hundred pages shorter!

On the up side, there were those who found the writing style gripping with wonderfully descriptive passages of the old mansion in its post-war deterioration, effortlessly transporting the reader into the halls and ballrooms of the past. Alongside these views, we did all agree on one dominating theme, and that was the presence of the social class structure and how it was eroding during the post WWII era.

By the end of our discussion (and it was unanimously thought to be a good one) we more or less agreed that the story was never intended to have a neatly tied-up conclusion and that the many loose ends are intentionally left dangling. However, two very interesting points were tabled by Nadine and Denise, Firstly, Nadine felt that the book was highlighting the unexplainable, and how we as humans need to have a clear and definite answer to anything that we cannot logically explain. And then, in the end, whose explanation is the correct one ... and correct to who?

And then Denise brought up an idea that I don't think any of us had thought of. Is Waters doing a calculated study of the old established families and their mansions? Why are so many of them supposedly riddled with ghosts of the past? And are these ghosts and demons simply a manifestation of the family's frailties in an insecure world where their position and status is threatened? Is the house simply displaying the family's madness?

We don't really expect there to be answers to these questions, but it was certainly fun rifling through them and then coming no closer to the truth about The Little Stranger.

December book - Breath by Tim Winton

When paramedic Bruce Pike is called out to deal with another teenage adventure gone wrong, he knows better than his partner, better than the parents, what happened and how.

Thirty years before, that dead boy could have been him.

Breath is a story about the wildness of youth - the lust for excitement and terror, the determination to be extraordinary, the wounds that heal and those that don't - and about learning to live with its passing.

Our last book for 2009 provided a lively discussion for our first meeting of the year. We divided into two camps over Tim Winton's Breath. We had the die-hard Winton fans who, to put it mildly, absolutely loved this book! It was brimming with Australian 'Winton' charm, superb characterisation and a wonderful sense of place ... his much loved West Australian coast.

Then we had the not so converted. This was grounded mostly in the writing style. It is true that Winton's style either works for you or not, with the latter being the case here. A few thought it just a surfing story with too much description and not enough rounding off of the main character's adult life.

His his fans strongly disagreed with these views and our discussion moved onto the other issues covered in the story; teenage recklessness and thrill-seeking, parent/child relationships, simply coming-of-age and something more sinister ... the control of young lives by dysfunctional adults. This particular issue was disturbing for some of our readers, mainly the inclusion of auto-erotic asphyxiation, but then, when has Winton ever shied away from stepping outside the boundaries?

Reagardless of its critics, Breath scored well with our group and I think it will be a contender for a 2010 favourite. All in all, a great start to a new year of reading. If you haven't taken the plunge yet, dive in and see what you come up with!

Favourte book for 2009

Well, another year of reading has come and gone and this has been one of our best for attendance yet. Every year we seem to grow stronger as book clubs become more popular and self-professed bookworms become more enthusiastic about sharing their reading experiences. If you love reading and haven't joined a book club yet, make it a New Years resolution and find a club that suits your needs. You won't regret it!

Here at Dapto we're all looking forward to 2010 and a new list of books to read ... but which was our favourite for 2009? It was a simple exercise this year, as The Book Thief by Markus Zusak won by a clear margin. We read this early in the year, so there is no review post for it, but I can tell you that it was close to unanimous that this is a fantastic read. Comments that were put forward included; wonderful characterisation, good momentum, beautiful language and original narrative. And of course the scores were high, which resulted in its first place among the year's books.

On the negative side a few of our readers thought the writing to be a little on the young level, aimed more at teenagers (although many of us disagreed with this) and it really was just another story about the holocaust, which there are too many of anyway. These few things aside, The Book Thief proved to be a popular choice and the first of its kind for more than a few of our members ... a worthwhile accomplishment for any book club.

December Book - Journey to the Stone Country by Alex Miller

Betrayed by her husband, Annabelle Beck retreats from Melbourne to her old family home in tropical North Queensland. There she meets and begins work with Bo Rennie, one of the Jangga tribe.

Annabelle is intrigued by Bo's modest claim that he holds the key to her future, and she sets out with him on a path of recovery that leads back to her childhood and into the Jangga's ancient heartland, where secrets are uncovered which have been buried in her family for a generation. The terrible moral force of these secrets will challenge the possibility of happiness with this man.

It is never easy to predict how a book will be received, but the outcome can be surprising never-the-less. Journey to the Stone Country is a good example of this. Disguised as just another Australian novel, Stone gave us all something worth expressing. Our levels of enjoyment and perception varied just enough to make for a great discussion. Not just on the racial or historical issues that pervaded the book, but also on the author's writing skills, research practice and particularly on how and why an author's views can be embedded into a story.

All these angles make for a great discussion, and everyone who read the book contributed. We did have two members who were unable to nab the book in time for our early December meeting, but through listening Denise was keen to have a go whereas Kathy believed it was not going to be on her Christmas reading list.

By and large comments went something like this;

"I connected easily with the characters"

"Well written"

"Good juxtaposing of the white and aboriginal country situation"

"The main character in this novel is the bush itself"

And ...

"Not well written"

"I didn't find the relationships plausible"

"Too much repetitive description about the bush"

This is just a sample of where our discussion led to, so regardless of scores (ranged from 3-10) it would have to be said that this book is bursting with great discourse material and a must for anyone looking for an authentic Aussie read.

November - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carsons McCullers

Set in the isolation of a small southern milltown in the 1930s, this sentimental yet powerful story centres around a deaf-mute, John Singer, and Mick, a teenage girl. Mick and Singer become friends, though they are separated by Singer’s lack of communication and Mick’s struggle with teenage traumas.
The lives of the people Singer touches are varied, linked only by him they include a deaf-mute, a drunk, and a doctor. Singer does his best to help those around him solve their problems, but who is there to help him solve his own?
Although the five central characters cross paths continually throughout the course of a year, they are not able to connect with one another, and their loneliness becomes the over-powering theme of this classic work.

Last month’s book, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers produced a mixed bag of opinions. We went from ‘absolutely wonderful’ to ‘rather indifferent’. These comments were directed mostly towards the book’s characters, which we all agreed were the driving force of this novel. In fact, it was the range of characters and their individual isolation which really pulled on some of our heart-strings.
Denise made comment on how she had never read an American novel that dealt so well with the anger of the working class and at the injustices of society. A few of us found similarities with Steinbeck’s work; the struggle and inequities of life tends to overflow in his novels, and Heart seems to find the same space. Here is a story of unique tenderness and love that lacks the ability to share and soar, leaving more than a few souls lost and forlorn. There are few who could not be touched by this exquisitely human dilemma.

Interestingly, Jeanette and Lorna found the character of Singer to be a representation of Christ, and their points were well taken by all of us. He was, to many a confessor, a listener, a sign of hope and a friend. And although this religious slant seems to be generally missed by most critiques that we read, it is a good example of the many diverse views a book club can unearth.

To sum up, we found this book to be beautifully written, considering the young age of McCullers, which was just 23, an incredibly mature book for such a young woman. The adolescent female character of Mick, we are sure, has some biographical foundation, and the supporting roles so exceptional that they certainly must have come from personal life experience.

This was not an easy book to get copies of, so approximately only half of us were able to read it before meeting. But as the others read and offer their views I dare to predict that it will be one of our best loved books this year.

October Book - Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital

In the ancient myth, Orpheus travels to the underworld to rescue his lover Eurydice from death. In this compelling re-imagining of the Orpheus story, Leela travels into an underworld of kidnapping, torture and despair in search of her lover. A mathematical genius, Leela has escaped her hardscrabble southern hometown to study in Boston. There she encounters Mishka, a young Australian musician who soon becomes her lover. Then one day Leela is picked up off the street and taken to an interrogation centre. There has been an 'incident', an explosion on the underground; terrorists are suspected. Her interrogators reveal that Mishka may not be all he seems. But as she struggles to digest all this, Mishka disappears ...

This book is the first of Janette Turner Hospital's that our group has read and generally the feed back was positive for her writing style and talent. We all found the story intriguing with a well drawn plot and praised the inclusion of current social and political issues. It was agreed that only a talented writer could pull this one off!

But on the other hand, a few of us had trouble relating to the characters, and in fact did not at anytime find ourselves able to empathise or particularly care much for any of them. This is an issue if you are a lover of character driven novels ... although in saying that, the book's characters are not necessarily meant to be sympathetically attractive. They are an obsessive, intellectual lot (with plenty of emotional baggage) stretched over three wars and three continents, so in actual fact, it would be asking much to connect with any or all of them!

Our scores rated high for this book though; from 5 up to 9, so it would be considered a worthwhile read in our view ... and if you do pick it up, take it to the end ... it may be a little whimsical, but with an interesting twist.

September's Book - Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Paris, July 1942. Sarah, a 10 year old girl, is taken with her parents by the French police as they go door to door arresting Jewish families in the middle of the night. Desperate to protect her younger brother, Sarah locks him in a bedroom cupboard - their secret hiding place - and promises to come back for him.

Sixty years later, Sarah's story intertwines with that of Julie Jarmond, a journalist investigating the round-up. Sarah's Key is an emotionally gripping story of two families, forever linked to and haunted by one of the darkest days in France's past.

Although this book rated high with our members, there was plenty of criticism on the author's writing style and story structure. On the positive side, many of us found the history compelling and some new knowledge gained around the Jewish arrests in France and particularly of the Vel-d-Hiv round-up by the French police. The sad treatment of Jewish children was a little too much for some, while others found it contrived and soapy.

But overall we had to agree that this was a very readable book and should certainly be suggested reading for anyone who normally finds historical reading not to their liking. It does impart specific knowledge of that time in a 'page turner' format.

Our numbers exceeded the usual complement this month, with 12 attending, so the opinions and ideas were varied to say the least. But it did create a good discussion, particularly about human nature and how anyone would know how they would react given a certain situation. It would seem that we have more than adequately covered the Holocaust of World War II though, and that we will, to the delight of a few of our members, give it a rest next year!