John’s Comments (group member since Jan 25, 2016)

John’s comments from the MidCoast Libraries Better Reading Bookclub group.

Having just finished rereading ‘The bookshop’ I feel very glad I had an incentive to do so. It is a beautifully written book, which in a short space brilliantly evokes the isolated East Anglia town it creates. There are several memorable characters, notably the charming but ultimately rather odious Milo and the unsentimentally delineated youngster Christine. The bank manager and solicitor are minor figures but entertaining and convincing caricature worthy of Dickens. Though the final utter triumph of evil over decency, of social privilege and ‘connections’ over unprivileged courage make the vision somewhat bleak, it is sadly convincing, and much sly humour makes the bulk of the book a very enjoyable read. John K

Many thanks for your comments, Chris and Bev. I am glad you found ‘The bookshop’ a rewarding read. I think words Chris suggests - ‘dark’ and ‘honest’ - are highly appropriate in describing the novel. One does, as Bev suggest, feel for poor Florence, so totally crushed by people whose ill doing goes undetected.

I also am no fan of national stereotypes, but I do think there is something distinctly English middle class about what happens. I have no doubt there are people in Australia, America, Ireland, Scotland, etc., capable of equal malice, but perhaps their activities would usually be more obvious and less tainted by class consciousness?

It is not long since I read the book, but I look forward to rereading it when I get home. I am holidaying in Queensland and decided not to cart around a library book from place to place.

John

It is a long time since we had a new book to read and discuss on this club list. Several of us have of course been very busy.
Bev Dillon suggested yesterday that I might propose a book. Could I suggest ‘The bookshop’ by Booker Prize winner Penelope Fitzgerald? It is short -156 pages - and not a difficult read, though I think it is thought provoking and beautifully written.
Forster library has a set of the book, which can be obtained in the normal book club manner,

John Kennedy

Thanks, Bev. Great point about what the novel says about facing up to the truth and not doing so. John K

I enjoyed this book. It provides a fascinating and convincing picture of life along the Hawkesbury River in the 1830s. The Sydney colony is about fifty years old, and some people, including the family of William Thornhill, whom many of us encountered in reading Kate Grenville’s ‘The Secret River’ (or seeing one of the dramatisations) now live very well. But many of the snobberies of Old England have taken root, with an additional element stemming from the fact that some like Thornhill who live like wealthy country gentlemen came to the colony as convicts and are not entirely acceptable in all sections of society.

The story told is an absorbing one and the central character, Sarah Thornhill, is an attractive figure - like very many young female characters in novels set in the nineteenth century, something of a rebel against convention. (I suppose a conventionally meek and submissive heroine would make for dull reading!)

It does help a little to know the plot of ‘The Secret River’, particularly as regards the murder of ‘inconvenient’ Aboriginals carried out by William Thornhill and some companions. The guilt he feels for this is a major element in ‘Sarah Thornhill’, haunting him and eventually Sarah also.

This brings me to what I think is the book’s main weakness - its ending. Married and with a young child Sarah is rather easily persuaded to leave her family and make a trip of atonement to New Zealand to speak with the Maori grandmother of a child taken from New Zealand to Australia because the girl has Thornhill blood. The trip would have been extremely daunting at that time - British rule in New Zealand started in 1840 - and the country could hardly have been considered safe . There is a bit of a ‘New Age’ fantasy quality about the ceremony in which Sarah engages with the Maori women who do not understand her language any more than she does theirs.

One presumes that in making the trip Sarah is atoning not merely for the treatment of the half Maori child, who pines away in Australia, but also for the treatment of Aboriginal people by her family. It all seems a bit contrived. (Sadly it might also be added that if the work of historian Henry Reynoæds is to be believed, a lot of European settlers at the time had very few misgivings about eliminating Aboriginals they considered in their way.)

All in all a ‘good read’. It certsinly got me thinking. John Kennedy

Thanks for your postings, Chris and Bev.

I have to say my reaction to the novel was far more negative. It really is a difficult read, as we are constantly moved from story to story, between different times and places, and sometimes between what is 'real' and what is dreamed or imagined, all with minimal assistance from the novelist to guide us as to where we are, who is speaking, etc. I really do not see what artistic gain is achieved by this here.

I found the prose style hard to endure after a while. The constant short phrases and incomplete sentences became for me a tiresome mannerism long before I completed the four hundred pages.

I have read some reviews and I know some respected critics greatly admire the book as a philosophical reflection on the nature of narrative, the process of ageing, etc. But I have not seen any explanation of how the Japanese and French/Algerian narratives are meant to relate to each other. The novel often seems obscure for the sake of it: what, for example, is the relationship between Jovert and Thibaut, and why is Jovert, the senior officer, not meant to know about the street into which Thibaut is driving him (p. 263)?

I can understand that for some readers the lyricism of the novel might appeal, as perhaps might its quality as a set of puzzles. I have seen suggestions that one would get more out of the book on a second reading. But there are a huge number of good books waiting to be read, and a novelist who seems to set out to frustrate his readers, for whatever artistic purpose, is not one on whom I want to spend time.

You are probably on track, and in line with Du Maurier's approach, Julie. But for me it is still a somewhat weak point in an otherwise well worked plot. John

Thanks, Julie. Interesting comment on the point I raised in my P.S. But who would have known that Rebecca told Max the baby was not his? I don't think they had DNA testing back then. (I don't have the book with meso can't check page 313 at the moment.) John

Like Chris and Bev I enjoyed this novel. I did find it a bit slow much of the time, but I stayed up reading the last hundred or so pages well past midnight.

Atmosphere, physical and social, is magnificently evoked. Manderley and the society of which it is part come to life. The plot is at times melodramatic ( Mrs Danvers urging the heroine to jump to her death, Maxim's murder confession, the destructive fire with which the novel ends), but our interest is maintained and we read on.

The novel posed several questions for me. Amongst them are
(1) Is it a story of a timid and painfully ordinary young women (an everywoman never named) who wins the love and respect of a formidable, rich, and powerful older man by demonstrating in a crisis her true worth - the romantic interpretation? Or does the young woman begin as the virtual slave of a tyrannical old woman and finish as the virtual servant of an older man in a comfortable but pointless expat existence?
(2) Maxim murders a wife whom he believes to be pregnant. Should we feel sympathy for him because of Rebecca's misdeeds, or should we feel he has used his privileged social position to avoid justice (and that Du Maurieris somewhat blind to what she is really presenting)?
(3) How should we regard Rebecca herself? There are certainly strong suggestions she is narcissistic and even psychopathic, but we never meet her, and we are largely relying on accusations, largely by her murderer, with little in the way of concrete instances of her misdeeds. (Du Maurier was probably limited by the conventions of the time in doing more than hint at her promiscuity, but this did not apply to her duplicity in her dealings with servants, etc,) If we are tempted to see Rebecca as a monster it is worth remembering that by Maxim's admission the elegance and beauty of Manderley is largely her doing.

One could see these questions as indicating Du Maurier's genius, but I am not entirely sure that they do not at least partly reflect flaws in the novel.

I would probably never have read 'Rebecca' without the prompting of this group. I am glad I did.

John Kennedy

P.S. The journey to see Dr Baker in London near the end of the novel is a matter of great foreboding, and there is a suggestion it may doom Maxim (though of course this does not happen). I was unsure why it provoked such anxiety. If it had revealed that Rebecca was pregnant why would this have doomed Maxim? What do others think?

I am glad I was encouraged to read 'The north water'. It is undoubtedly bleak, and some of the descriptions are stomach churning. But it very vividly evokes time and place, and a grim but credible masculine world. The characterisation is impressive - the flawed victim of injustice Sumner, the vile but believably delineated Drax, the weirdly gifted Otto, and the truly despicable but 'respectable' Baxter are only a few of the memorable figures who appear. The intriguing plot retained my interest to the end.

Like Chris I would not recommend the book to everyone. The almost total absence of female characters may diminish its appeal for some. But it is a powerful and memorable work.

Test

Líka others who have commented, I am not a great fan of the murder mystery genre, but I too enjoyed The Dry. It is well crafted and keeps the reader interested, and although the murderer is not one of the obvious suspects who appear through the narrative, when the identity is revealed one does not feel cheated.

The town is convincingly evoked. It is not a happy place, and it has a full complement of moronic rednecks, but one feels the stress everyone is under as a result of the drought and the horrible deaths, and so some sympathy.

There are formulaic elements - the central figure is a honest policeman whose life has not worked out very well; at the eleventh hour everything threatens to go pear-shaped and then he has a sudden brainwave which leads to the denouement. But this is probably above average for the genre, and of course the small town Australian setting (in Victoria or South Australia - I was a bit unsure which) adds considerably to the interest.

Good holiday reading. John Kennedy

I have just belatedly finished my re-reading of 'The power and the glory' , prompted by Chris's reminder to return it! It is powerful and often grim reading - at times I forced myself to go in, though towards the end I found the narrative more gripping. The issues raised are profound, the evocation of Mexico unforgettable, and the characters indeed memorable and generally convincing (though I did wonder if the lieutenant entirely came to life - he seemed at times to function as a foil to the priest).

As Louise says, it is very much a Catholic novel, and this is perhaps both a strength and something that diminishes its universality. But few would read it unmoved, whatever their background and personal convictions.

John Kennedy

'The last painting of Sara de Vos' is the most enjoyable and rewarding novel I have read in 2016. The writing is beautufully lucid, and the plot creates a 'page turner'. The characters are convincing and sympathetic, and three very different worlds - The Netherlands in its seventeenth century Golder Age, 1950s New York, and Sydney in 2000 - are vividly evoked. The creation of art in the time of the Old Masters, the murky world of forging art In the twentieth century, and the politically charged world of modern gallery management and exhibition mounting are all brought deftly before us (and as an added bonus for Australian readers, the Art Galkery of New South Wales has a prominent role). I am grateful to Chris fir recommending a book which deserves a wide audience. John Kennedy

I finished reading 'Relativity' about a week ago and am about to send a copy as a birthday present to a cousin in Ireland, so I guess my overall view of it must be considered positive. As someone who grew up in Sydney I enjoyed the evocative references to that city, but like Chris I have no experience of the kind of personal situations the novel portrays. I did like the portrayal of the two children, Ethan and Alison. The account of the fraying of the marriage of Claire and Mark seemed plausible, and having gone through writing a PhD thesis I have a little more sympathy for Mark's 'losing it' than perhaps I ought! But perhaps the two adults are to some extent stereotypical middle class young marrieds.

I did not get past high school physics, and while I found the science references stimulating at first I grew tired of them before the end, and doubted they added much. I found Ethan's time machine rather implausible, even given his unusual personality.

The ending struck me as refreshingly unsentimental. Gains are made, but they don't 'live happily ever after'.

They writing is lucid and often beautiful. I am glad I was encouraged to read 'Relativity' and feel it deserves a wide audience. John Kennedy

Twelve fiction books a year is probably a realistic goal for me, too, as I have a bias towards non-fiction, particularly history.

John Kennedy