Most of us quite appreciated the fable-like guise of the idea that we are all brothers, and have often in our own lives echoed many of the sentiments expressed in the story—ideas that were extremely radical for the author’s day but that have acquired currency in ours, at least superficially (that few people apply them is obvious by the state of current affairs). Froukje and I were struck by the veracity of the author’s portrayal of what we have decided is a universal human trait—perceiving people according to preconceptions to the point of totally changing our reactions to them depending on who we think they are.  That the characters in the story would change their manner of expression according to their interlocutor was also very convincing (who of us hasn’t modified her behavior for a desired end?).  Gillian liked the fact that the characters were convincing despite the fact that each was entrusted with a load of symbolic value and I loved finding the little jewels of concepts expressed perfectly within the story, like the nanny reminding Nathan that the Templar’s volatile nature was, granted, a drawback in certain situations but were he not that way it would have meant Nathan’s daughter burning to death with their house.

Where our group diverged was in the final feeling we had after finishing the book. Eva and, to some extent, Gillian were left with a sense of optimism that therein were lessons for what it would take for mankind to live peacefully—easily applicable, in the end, perfectly reasonable and inherently good. Margie and Froukje shut the book on the opposite end of the spectrum, feeling pessimistic about the fact that precisely because the concepts were so simple and obvious our failure to apply them was all the more terrible and proof of our simply not wanting to.  I would place myself someplace in the middle, despairing of our ever evolving to the point of embodying the author’s concepts but hoping with all my heart that we do.  This split carried over into our own behavior, the optimists trusting that by our personal ethics we can help change the world and the pessimists believing it matters only to ourselves.  We definitely all appreciated the many ideas and feelings we were spurred to discuss by the story and considered the book successful to that end, translation notwithstanding. (T)

THE COFFEE TRADER - David Liss

 Yesterday, March 25, 2004 – note that I am taking no chances this time of falling as behind as I did the last – we met at Froujke’s and this time, missing only Dominique, had a very lively discussion about “The Coffee Trader.” While we all agreed this was an extremely well documented historical novel that taught us things about a historical period and a place in time we did not previously know about there was enough dissension about other aspects of the book to make for an animated evening. 

There is no doubt that David Liss did his homework.  The setting of the city of Amsterdam is beautifully drawn and has inspired in some of us, Gillian in particular, a real desire to visit.  The historical facts about the raucous beginnings of today’s stock exchange are interestingly woven into the novel and into the fabric of the various characters’ lives and personalities.   For some of us that was enough for a thoroughly enjoyable read but for others, particularly Gillian and myself and, to a less emphatic degree Margie, that is where it all stopped—the story, which is the meat of any novel, was completely devoid of taste in our opinion – no passion, no emotion, no real connection with any of the characters.  They were historically perfect, interesting as a composition of the various tidbits provided by their creator as influenced by their times but wholly unengaging. There was a good historical reason each of them was the way they were – we simply didn’t feel a bit of it in any real way. 

This view was hotly contested by Froukje, Helle and Rosemarie, who felt Liss provided people so well grounded in their historical time as to make their choices and behavior as understandable and nearly as inescapable as those found in Greek tragedy.   Certainly Liss succeeded in realistically proposing what a person who had to live in a mask day in and day out for fear of the Inquisition might end up being like. He considered the consequences of the religious principles that allowed a wife no room to question, learn or understand but only to obey.  And he successfully brought to life the amazing vibrancy of the Dutch stock exchange where merchants and traders sought and accepted people from all parts of the world as long as they had connections and could contribute in some way to the flourishing Dutch economy that embraced both the tangible and intangible aspects of full throttle capitalism.   

Naturally the conversation branched out in all directions—from the enviable equality Dutch women enjoyed even that early in the history of the country to the way a body of men, created to protect and sustain a persecuted peoples, could nonetheless become corrupt and unethical for the simple fact that it is composed of human beings (how even the best intentions like political correctness can end up being oppressive).  There was quite a heated exchange on the meaning of gambling and whether investing in the stock exchange today equals a trip to Vegas.  Eva pointed out that owning stock today was often simply a way of allowing previously private or state owned companies to be owned by the shareholders, the same as putting money in a bank if one invests wisely while Rosemarie attempted to explain that anything done to make money without doing work or providing a service is a gamble—you can either gamble big and invest in futures or you can gamble conservatively and invest in Mercedes but just as the futures can collapse around your ears so, as we have recently seen, can respectable companies.  Only putting your money under the mattress can be considered anything but a gamble (unless of course your house burns down!). 

While I know we can’t be certain ahead of time that some of us will like a book and others will not it seems to me an essential element to our discussions – a book we all love leaves little to discuss.  Better one with good qualities and bad that makes us want to defend our positions and grudgingly give in (but only at the end) and allow that we can see the other points of view, too. (T)

LIFE OF PI - Yann Martel

 I apologize for the very long gap between our meeting and my summary. A great deal of outside work intervened and when I did have time to write I was bushed and didn’t want to. On Tuesday, February 10, 2004 we met at Francoise’s house and basked in the fortune of her having just returned from her trip with authentic spices. She made an unforgettable curry dinner which, considering the setting of the story, was quite a propos. We were nearly “al completo”, missing only Dominique and Eva, and one would have thought that a full house would have generated lots of discussion.  Strangely, however, perhaps because we all liked the book, the debate was rather muted 

We all enjoyed the story; we all admired the writing; we all laughed where it was funny and felt the sadness where things were sad.  In fact, the only untoward note – that Mr. Martel may have “lifted’ his book from one published by a Brazilian writer, Moacyr Scliar – left us unaffected because none of us have read Mr. Scliar’s book and noted that Mr. Martel did, in fact, say that he was inspired by Mr. Scliar’s “Max and the Cats.”  So unanimous was our appraisal of the book that in the end we seemed to have little to discuss. 

The only spark generated by the book was Helle’s feeling that the island of man-eating (or should I say flesh-eating) plants seemed completely implausible and hit a sour note because of the obvious authenticity in the rest of the book when it comes to animal behavior, animal training and the adaptation foreigners undergo. It was this adaptation that brought out the most animation in our group because we have all gone through it and the writer’s light-handed yet dead-on treatment of the soul searing difficulties foreigners face struck us immediately.  

Because we enjoy each other’s company, because babies have been born and trips undertaken it was not as though any of us considered the meeting a miss, but it is clear to me that when an author hits home for our little group, the renown Castelli book club resembles nothing more than a lovely evening with friends. (T) 

THE SECRET HISTORY - Donna Tartt

On Friday, January 23, 2004 I attended the coziest book club meeting yet—only four of us (three not counting our host!). Rosemarie waited, scheduled and rescheduled but there seemed no way at all to get us all together and short of postponing the meeting for yet another month she decided to hold fast to the chosen day and she who made it, made it. It was a pleasant evening and those of you who for various reasons could not come missed a truly delicious dinner, good wine by the fire and a fun discussion that at times resembled a sorority dorm party (Margie’s jokes on the author’s name, for example). It was Rosemarie, Eva, Margie and me for an evening that almost didn’t happen because of snow (of all things) so it felt special despite our small number.

 Curiously, our response to the book was evenly divided between the two who are not mother tongue English and the two who are. Eva and Rosemarie enjoyed the story, the characters and the overriding moral issues the story was meant to elicit; Margie and I found the characters unbelievable, the dialogue contrived and the glowing web reviews unexplainable. I, for one, was in college during the time period this story was set in and try as I did to stretch my imagination to take into account the small-town location and New England setting I found the characters false when compared with my experience. Nothing about the situation seemed plausible to me and the various conversations between the characters fit better for people at school during the thirties and forties rather than the seventies. So unrealistic did the scenes and people come across to me that I kept running up against complete disbelief, making it impossible to simply enjoy the story or the greater issues it tackles. Margie, perhaps because she is a teacher, took an even harsher stance, finding the writing itself to be mediocre when not silly. She was at such variance with the reviews found on the internet that she even began questioning her own ability to form a defendable opinion—how could everybody like so much something so poorly written?

 Rosemarie and Eva had none of our problems. Having no experience with American college life during any time period, the setting didn’t bother them, nor did the dialogue. They found the writing perfectly acceptable and were thus able to be completely drawn into the story itself and the greater lessons it offered about the good, the evil and the banal and how all can end up being one and the same given the right circumstances (bright but impressionable kids and a dangerously charismatic teacher). Thanks to their involvement in the story we were able to get past those things that bogged Margie and me down to talk about what the author surely intended as the major issues touched on by the story—how the need to be accepted can override any moral principle; how charisma does not necessarily mean care; the various justifications that can be concocted to excuse the very worst crimes. Certainly these issues are pertinent always and it was easy to find parallels in current affairs, just as it was a little scary to ascertain that most young people away from home for the first time could end up in our protagonist’s shoes. So while I can say that neither I nor Margie liked the book we did, thanks to Eva and Rosemarie, enjoy the discussion it produced (though I doubt either of us would read anything else by this author) and I, for one, did end up with some grudging admiration for Ms. Tartt’s overall view.

Aside:  I just wanted to mention that I did, a couple of weeks ago, see the movie based on our last book “I’m Not Afraid” and wish to place myself squarely in the ‘did not like it’ camp along with Gillian. Where the book was open-ended the movie, in one final rather syrupy scene, gave all the answers and with one blow took away all that made the story so realistic. (T)

IO NON HO PAURA - Niccolò Ammaniti

On  Wednesday, November 5, 2003, we met at Gillian’s house and enjoyed a lovely dinner and the warmth of a welcoming fire she’d made in the fireplace to make up for faulty heating.  It proved to be a cozy atmosphere to discuss a book Gillian had enjoyed immensely—so much so that she wanted us all to read it.  She considers it a substantial departure from the usual Italian style of writing in that the language is simple, the story direct and the characters real to life.  With next to no meandering and a complete absence of the flowery, page long paragraphs that often characterize work by Italian authors, “I’m Not Afraid” tells an emotional, suspenseful story that had many of us reading the entire book in one sitting just to find out how it ends.

It was, in fact, so universally liked that our discussion had little in the way of opposing viewpoints.  We all found it extremely readable, realistic and very easy to relate to as the various children in the story and their interpersonal dynamics are true to life, as is the kidnapping which is the core of the story.  Only Eva had an unusual interpretation of the book.  She read it in another key—not as a straightforward story of a boy who stumbles onto a kidnapped child his own age and their ensuing friendship but as the story of a boy for whom the child in the hole is actually an alter ego; the boy is on the cusp of adolescence, beginning to see his mother’s sexuality and his father’s weaknesses, and the boy in the hole is the child he must bury for good.  Despite this harking back to “Spider”, it is Eva’s own idea as she was not present at our discussion then.  We found it curious and not entirely implausible but nobody else took it in this same way.

What was interesting, too, was how the story brought out various aspects of our own personalities.  Some of us saw the act of the parents kidnapping Filippo as proof of the banality of evil.  We felt it underlined the capacity any individual has of acting immorally, unethically or cruelly given a certain situation.  Others saw it as the act of desperate, simple people unable to follow the idea through to its likely but unanticipated conclusion.  The worse things get the more desperate they become until even the most ignoble act seems an undisputed necessity.  Some of us had no trouble accepting the open-ended ending—did Filippo escape, was he found, did the parents go to jail, did they forgive Michele for exposing them (who called the cops?) and so forth.  Others somehow felt sure about the ending and remembered (but couldn’t always verify) the answers to these questions.  And some, like Froukje, were so unable to accept certain actions, such as a father shooting his own boy, that they didn’t actually read the words on the page as they are written but somehow came up with a different idea.  Even when others would quote the pertinent sections line by line Froukje was hard pressed to see it.  We agreed that it was the sign of a book well written when what is actually on the page ends up being so thoroughly filtered by the reader’s perceptions that the resulting outcome is colored by whoever is reading the story.

While some of us read the book in its original language and others read it in English, there did not seem to be any drawback to having the story translated.  There were opposing opinions, however, when it came to the movie based on this book.  Some thought it was a very good and faithful rendition of the book while others thought it was terrible.   Not all of us have seen it and there is little doubt that we will when the opportunity arises if for no other reason than to find out which side we’re on.  Perhaps the more a book is able to suck you into its world the less you enjoy somebody else’s vision, since your own was so intense.  That is usually the case for me so I am most interested in finding out what I think of the movie.  It would be fun to compare notes again once we all have. (T)

STORIES OF ROME - Tatiana Strelkoff

On  Monday, October 13, 2003, we met and had a very different kind of discussion than the ones the group is used to.  I had submitted my short stories for critique—for me, it was the first chance to receive a thoroughly objective and concrete judgement of my work, what functions and what doesn’t and, more importantly, why; for the rest of the group it was perhaps one of the few times when particular attention had to be given during reading on why they liked or didn’t a certain story and how things could be improved. Under scrutiny were not only my writing skills (or lack thereof) but the resonance of the issues I tackled and the impact they had on the reader.  As the evening progressed it became clear that the issues and resonance were not going to be touched on because the problems inherent in the writing itself were too great.

The group took good care in trying to offer me a tangible critique of why my stories did not work for them.  Although it was hard for me to hear what they had to say it was certainly not because of a superficial effort on their part—they took a lot of notes, pointed to specific examples and went to great lengths to attempt to dissect the flaws in my work, what they consist of as well as what might be done to overcome them.  Rosemarie and Froukje were able to pinpoint where my work failed to convince in a basic inability for me to make my characters individuals in their own right.  The protagonists of my stories, they felt, spoke in one voice only—my voice—as though what I had written were not fiction but a thinly disguised personal essay.  Gillian actually felt that the stories were autobiographical, Eva found them superficial, Margie said the dialogue was unconvincing—all evidence that I had not succeeded in creating characters that spoke to the reader and made her believe in their stories.  Since this is an extremely basic problem it was impossible to get past it to the content of the stories themselves.  It is a problem so basic that Froukje actually considered it unadvisable for me to continue to write fiction. 

There were some bright spots.  A few of the stories had promise and after talking about the problem we decided that I can write eloquently.  What is needed, perhaps, is time for me to mature as a writer and acquire the patience and insight necessary to create unique individuals who tell their stories in their own words and through their own eyes.  Gillian suggested that throwing in some sex is always helpful and Helle was able to enjoy some of the ideas I had written about by focusing on them and sidestepping the lack of character of my protagonists.