For the first time we also took a stab at some of the ‘discussion questions’ Margie had found on the web but found them too dry, academic and structured to fit with our haphazard but personal way of talking about the book and we were convinced by the end of the evening that though we may not be doing this in any official fashion we are most definitely enlarging our perspectives when we talk about the books we read, and enriching our understanding both of the books and each other.(T)

A FORTUNE TELLER TOLD ME - Tiziano Terzani

Hold on to your hats, everyone, this is a first. Yesterday, April 5, we met at Froujke’s house missing only our wayward traveler, Jill, and had a lively and stimulating evening discussing “Un indovino mi disse.” We had a tasty dinner and caught up with each other but were soon involved with our book because it lent itself so well to many different areas of debate. 

Froujke picked the book because she liked the author, who is a well-known journalist though not all of us had heard of him, and she was most interested in his passionate defense of the Asian culture and way of life as it disintegrates before his eyes under the onslaught of Western modernization. Froujke’s main point was that she agreed with Terzani that because of the West’s complete and forceful embrace of money as the key to life, our governments, industry and commerce are hell-bent on bringing the West to the East, ostensibly to provide the poor with everything the rich have but mainly to exploit their markets and political situations in order to enrich their own. She wondered whether our way is really the best way, whether our ideals and goals are in any way better than those that have always been part of other cultures but are now being lost as they happily dispose of them in order to have televisions, cars and all the other elements of the “good life.” 

Read in this light, Terzani’s book is mostly a desperate call for others to see how damaging and dangerous the East’s mindless acceptance of everything we’re selling is—for them and even, in a sense, for us, as we lose centuries of exquisite culture that could enable us to see the world in a different way. Though there was general agreement in our group that the ways of the West are definitely not the best and only way to live, most of us did not share Froujke’s sense that something could be done about it. In the name of progress drastic changes have always taken place (and not all progress is bad) so to attempt to stop it somehow veers close to fighting Don Quixote’s windmills. RoseMarie recalled other points in time when progress and modernization caused upheaval and desperation and noted that it goes on inexorably no matter what and always has, and the consensus in the end was mostly that only in our own small circle of influence could be live according to our ideals and try not to contribute to the money-is-king mentality.

Another interesting aspect of the book is his investigation of fortune-tellers and astrologists. Most of us admitted to being afraid to go get our fortune’s read, mostly, as Gillian put it, because once something is said you can’t erase it anymore but also, as Margie insisted, we couldn’t understand why anyone would want to know about something they couldn’t change. Francoise noted that there is a boom in the fortune-telling industry right now that is unprecedented and we wondered whether our fractured and hurried lives aren’t giving us the feeling that there is no meaning to them, thus goading us to find someone who can tell us what our life is about. There was also the insight into Buddism, the concept of karma and reincarnation and this, too, was the subject of much debate and dissension between those who thought reincarnation a possibility and those who flatly refused to believe it.    

 Not least was the mass of physical description in the book about places some of our group knew personally—Burma, Laos, VietNam, Thailand and China—descriptions that gave even those of us who have never been a sense of the places and the various ethnicities that people them. For some, the book was far too long. Margie felt he could have made his whole point in 20 pages or less, and RoseMarie and Francoise felt it could have been less repetitive but for others, like Eva and Froujke, it was one of the books they most connected to on a deep and intimate level. It was, without doubt, a very successful choice for our club because the subjects it introduces are varied and interesting and there are more, even, than we could tackle in one evening. For Gillian, it was a book to be read again, slowly and carefully, with an eye for everything missed the first time. For me it was an effective window into a world I knew nothing about and I think we are all glad we read it. (T)

MICHELANGELO AND THE POPE'S CEILING - by Ross King

 On February 20 our little group (Helle, Margie, Froujke, Eva and me) met at Eva’s house and had a picnic in her living room – the kind you have with your kids when you planned to go out and it rained instead – to talk about Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, a book we all enjoyed. As we have discovered over time, when we all like a book we don’t have all that much to discuss.  We enjoyed the writing and the interesting insights into the huge work Michelangelo undertook on the Sistine Chapel, and found ourselves in agreement over the most interesting anecdotes and informative sections. It whetted all our appetites to see the Ceiling again with our newly acquired knowledge, and contributed to our existing appreciation of Michelangelo’s genius, adding the enriching perspectives of his basic garrulous personality and nearly paranoid character.

It was extremely interesting to compare the rendition of the Ceiling in art books published before and after the restoration, and the idea of a personal guide to the Sistine Chapel was unanimously agreed upon as a must-do sometime in the future. Where our discussions led, considering our total agreement concerning the book itself, concerned the historic period during which Michelangelo worked on the Sistine Chapel. Not all of us were entirely conversant with the various wars, battles and skirmishes being fought by various contenders to what is now a united Italy—or with the famous characters, religious and otherwise, who undertook these exploits—and thanks to Thomas for giving us a short history lesson and Froujke for the time lines that helped put Michelangelo’s life and times in perspective.

Since our group was small and there were no debates or dissensions concerning the book the evening took on the lovely mood of a night out with friends, talking about this and that—guided, in our case, by the overall themes of art and its pivotal role in Italian history—and simply enjoying the good food and company. Since Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling is neither pedantic nor solely for art historians we found the detailed rendition of how Michelangelo painted the Ceiling to be a good catalyst when considering other artists and other works—a topic of conversation which, considering that Italy is filled to the brim with famous art, could have kept us going for hours—and easily led us to new topics such as how artists survive today and whether our commercially oriented society is even conducive to the production of good art. It was a good book and a wonderful evening. (T)

LOVELY BONES - Alice Sebold

I can’t believe it was more than a month ago that we met at Jill’s lovely house on the lake and I am sorry it has taken me so long to get to our meeting but I’ve been working hard and when I’ve come up for air there’s always been something else on the back burner. You might think that having all this time pass would make our evening less remembered but it was such a wonderful meeting that I can recall the mood it generated just by thinking back on Eva’s and my arrival, past dark, the moon hanging big and heavy over the water and a mist rising up on all sides, giving the place a magical, eerie quality that was, in a way, to characterize our discussions even though Jill’s house was warm and cozy and well lit, and there was good food and good wine—all of which usually make a person more in touch with the real rather than the imagined.

Jill had chosen “The Lovely Bones” by mistake, thinking it was another book with ‘bones’ in the title and this is partly why she was rather disappointed with it. She was expecting rich prose and new cultures while what she’d actually gotten was a rather pithy book narrated by a dead girl. Add to this the fact that the otherworldly premise of the story fell on Jill’s rather deaf ear to the afterlife and you don’t end up with a very favorable impression. This basic premise, in fact, was the key that made the story a lovely melody for some and a flat exercise for others. Nobody thought the author’s prose was anything to write home about; nobody waxed poetic about her imagery but some of us were completely caught up in Sebold’s rendition of a spirit that continues to exist and to remain sentient after death—the spirit of a murdered girl watching and hoping that her killer will be caught, above all else to save what happened to her from happening to somebody else.

Perhaps the two most touched by the story were Rosemarie and myself. Something about the girl’s essence living on in a dimension of her perception—different from the perception of other spirits—felt real and spiritual in a way we could both relate to. This may partly have to do with our personal experiences with the felt presence of those who are gone but may just be another reminder of something that we already believe—that the spirit never does die. Jill and Margie could not feel it at all, since their lives have simply not given voice to the possibility of life after death. It was fascinating to talk about our different perceptions of this, trying to find the whys behind certain convictions in upbringing or experience or faiths and I am sure that were we all less constrained by family and work needs we could have stayed long into that night talking about it. While Margie simply does not believe in the possibility, Jill seemed actually to regret that she’d never had the experience that could help her believe it. Where Gillian thought it was possible but didn’t feel very transported by this author’s rendition, Eva categorically rejected what she felt was a blithe take on such a horrible event, a feeling Francoise shared.

So while “The Lovely Bones” is not a tour de force neither is it a superficial read, for as we talked we touched on deeper layers of possible meaning, exploring not just the dead girl’s character but that of her parents, the detective and the killer himself, and how a catastrophic event could forever alter a family yet leave virtually no trace. But one thing I feel strongly is that however much the book touched me it would never have had as much of an impact as it did had I not talked about it with the others. Their perceptions, the way it touched them (or didn’t) and the detours it took them on all added to my own experience of the story and made me appreciate it all the more. While I would recommend it to all I know that unless others have a group like ours they’re not going to get the most out of it.

Let that be my thanks to you, my friends, and I’ll also take this opportunity to wish you all a wonderful holiday season—a Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.(T)

THE SHADOW OF THE WIND - Carlos Ruiz Zafòn

On October 12, 2005 we met at Rosemarie’s house and risked degenerating into another wonderful evening among friends thanks to Rosemarie’s fabulous goulash, the presence of all the members of the club including Jill, back in the fold now that she’s back in Rome, and Christina, who was visiting. It took discipline on Rosemarie’s part to get the group talking about the book in an orderly fashion but this she did admirably and our discussion was interesting and varied.

Rosemarie chose this book because she’d been encouraged to read it by a friend whose literary taste Rosemarie trusted, and this explains perhaps why her disappointment was greater than if she’d chosen it randomly. Add to that a few good reviews and Rosemarie found herself wondering if there was something wrong with her!  In her opinion The Shadow of the Wind was nothing more than a beach book—a mildly entertaining way to spend an afternoon. Lucky for her, she wasn’t the only one who felt this way. Margie and I found little of merit in the book and much to criticize, most especially the dialogues and, glaringly, that of the young Daniel—an opinion that was shared by everybody, even those who enjoyed the story. All of us found the author totally tone deaf when writing for Daniel and this contributed to making the character hard for us to relate to at any level.

Curiously, the one character Rosemarie felt drawn to – Fermin – was the one least liked by the others who actually enjoyed the book more generally. Where Rosemarie liked his idiosyncratic speech patterns others found him wholly unbelievable. It seemed to me that the only things everybody could agree were worth reading were the descriptive passages about the city of Barcelona and its different neighborhoods—so beautifully drawn they were nearly characters in their own right. Froujke and Helle said reading these sections made them want to go to Barcelona and find these places, to see if seeing them would have the same effect as reading about them, and Eva felt that Zafon was even able to infuse the places with the mood of that dangerous and difficult time, as if the city itself were a living, feeling entity.  

Many, however, did like the book and found in it more than just a mystery story, though Gillian wondered whether this kind of mixing of genres really works all that well normally.  Jill felt the writing was enticing all the way through the book and enjoyed the parallels between Carax’s life and Daniel’s, as did Helle, who felt that the voice of Daniel aside, his reactions and slow maturation were interesting and believable. And most of the club found the character of Inspector Fumero a well-drawn portrait of a crazy but cunning man adept at adopting and adhering to the winning side of any situation, always able to find himself a niche in which his psychopathic personality could flourish. Gillian felt that if you took the characters at face value, questioning neither their motivations nor their actions, the story could draw you in and make you want to know how it ends—not such a dud after all because we did read it through to find out what happens. In other words, nobody was so untouched as to not finish the book.

One positive outcome of having read The Shadow of the Wind was, for most of us, a bit more knowledge about the post-war years in Spain – a place and time few of us know much about. Though Zafon did not detail all the events that took place during this period he did give us a feel for what the people living then experienced and how it affected their lives and characters. For some it was frosting on the cake; for others it is not enough to recommend the book to anybody but it did engender an interesting book club evening and that already makes the read worthwhile. (T)                                 

THE MASTER - Colm Toibin

On September 14, 2005 we met at Gillian’s house and over a delicious dinner caught each other up with our lives and this past summer’s events before beginning our discussion about “The Master,” by Colm Toibin. The discussion was rather unruly in terms of book club etiquette but considering it had been three months since we’d been together it is not surprising that we all seemed to be talking at once.  We were also all present, which added to the free wheeling nature of the conversation—and explains how it is that I don’t know why Gillian chose this book.

Gillian did mention that she liked the book very much, mostly because of the understated way it was written, as if to mirror the writing of Henry James himself.  She likened it in style to “The Remains of the Day,” by Kazuo Ishiguro, and on this point we all agreed. The divergence in views, in fact, centered precisely on the muted style of both the writing and the life being described.  Where Gillian, Helle, Rosemary, Francoise and Froujke found themselves deeply drawn into the book, Margie, Eva and I did not—and the reason behind this was the same in both cases.  The majority found that the subdued tone acted upon them like a stone in water, pulling them down into the time, the character and the literary milieu of his day to the point that they were submerged in the writing and James’s life. On the contrary, Margie and I found the understatement coy and the style lukewarm and evasive.  We were frustrated by the innuendo, and by the character’s lack of character, as it were—fed up with the endless will I/won’t I, dare I/do I care.   It was as if Henry James never allowed himself to fully feel anything.

For Eva, the major drawback to the book was the innuendo.  Since Henry James was a real person who left a great deal of writing behind, she was unsettled by the fact that the author was insinuating that James was a closet homosexual.  Obviously nothing that James wrote would confirm this—if he had left proof there would be no speculation—and Eva objected to an author taking a real person’s life and fictionalizing it by recounting feelings nobody knows for certain that James actually had.  For the three of us, the overriding fault of the book was simply that in mimicking Henry James’s style the author did not succeed in overcoming our skepticism about what Henry James actually believed; nor was he able to immerge us in the mood of the book.

Part of our reaction could be that neither likes James’s work anyway but for the majority that was a non-issue.  For them, Toibin managed to make real a time, place and social category that was interesting and affecting, and they enjoyed the leisurely pace of the novel and the chance to get to know the various characters that peopled James’s life. Were I interested in James’s historical milieu and the mores of his time I would probably like his books but I am not, and find it all rather tedious, both in his hand and as recounted by Toibin.  Perhaps I cannot help but refer to the literary Russian community that flourished at the same time in Italy and France, where the lives were colorful, flamboyant and intense, making James’s environment and life bloodless in comparison.  In any case, this was one evening where the views of the majority did not succeed in assuaging the doubts of the few and as always I look forward to our next book and our next discussion. (T)

I’d chosen the book without any real research about it, based solely on the fact that I like Allison’s work generally, and a novel, “Bastard Out of Carolina” in particular. Already when the order arrived I was startled that such a small box contained all 7 copies. The book was very slight, with big type, and was originally a performance piece. Perhaps this last fact was the most pertinent when dealing with the reasons we didn’t like the book—it wasn’t meant to be read like a novel—but several of us wondered whether this paltry material could have been much of anything even staged.

I imagine that hearing the author deliver the work orally could make-up, at least in part, for what we all believed to be extremely flimsy stuff. It seemed to us that the Allison skirted around some fundamental issues concerning the “white trash” environment in which she grew up and whose clutches on her psyche she can never truly escape without delving deeply enough or personally enough to make us care. Although she writes frankly about being raped as a child and confronts the ever-so-taboo (today, anyway) idea about sex and violence being linked she doesn’t give enough in terms of emotional commitment through her words for us to be able to become involved in the stories that make up this book. 

It did give us some interesting points of discussion that I enjoyed, particularly the genesis of homosexuality and whether it is a choice or a biological state. I’d read about an experiment in which scientists were able to monitor the kicking into action of the most primal part of the brain when a subject was sexually aroused and the mechanism was the same for heterosexual and homosexual people. This made me feel that homosexuality is innate while Rosemarie saw it as conditioning – a homosexual likes the same sex and the brain is conditioned to respond appropriately. We talked about the significance of rape and how social conditioning can make men who are incapable of feeling. While I enjoyed the family photographs interspersed throughout the book Eva found them distracting and even annoying, like being forced to watch somebody’s family vacation video; Rosemarie noted that they did help, though, orient the reader because the author uses every pejorative in the book to describe her social milieu and it helped to realize these were, in the end, normal people and not monsters—another relevant and interesting aspect of our discussion. 

So in the end, perhaps my choice was not a total failure. It was wonderful to be together and we did talk about many interesting things. Granted we could have discussed them all without ever having read the book but read it we did and I will most definitely find out more about my next book before I choose. (T)

  THE KITE RUNNER - Khaled Hosseini

Unfortunately Tatiana "our scribe" wasn't present at the last meeting but as it was kind of special I thought it deserved a few words. Special because we had two "out-of- towners" visiting and so it was a mini-reunion...Diane from the States and Jill B (B1) from Wales. It was very nice and added a lot to our meeting and also to our discussion. Unfortunately the holes in my head prevent me from doing as good a job as Tatiana always does on reporting the meeting. Suffice it to say that everyone thought that the story was very good and most of us thoroughly enjoyed the book. Jill and Froujke however thought that though the story had great potential it was in the wrong hands and that the author was terrible....I think Jill will be writing to Bloomsbury, the publisher, about the editing! Though it may have been in the wrong hands, of course the author had the experience to portray both Afghanistan and the Afghan ex-patriot community in the U.S. which certainly counts for something. I think we all agreed that perhaps too many wigglings at the end to include all the characters (the ex bully turned Taliban, the mother of Hassan etc) were kind of artificial as well as the setting up of predictable situations ( for example, the half brother...well many of us, including me, didn't in fact predict it...., Soraya's inability to have children). Gillian felt the whole point was father-son relationships and certainly this merited more discussion than it was given as did  discussion about the various characters which we  really didn't touch upon. Diane felt that it gave Americans an inside glimpse at Afghanistan particularly important as  we (they) are very much involved in Afghanistan at the moment. Many of us thought it gave a lovely and unknown portrait of the country. Even Jill admitted that so many aspects that she hadn't considered and differing opinions of all the members is what makes the book club really special. And that's about all I can remember so it will have to suffice.

BLINDNESS - José Saramago

On April 27 we met at Margie’s (new) house and spent the first part of the evening happily catching each other up on things since this was the first time in a while that we were all together and meeting in Margie’s newly done apartment, too.  Hooray for strawberry season and the fact that Margie’s night always falls in this period because I, for one, only have strawberry shortcake once a year, and it’s Margie’s.  When we finally settled down to talking about “Blindness” Margie said she’d picked the book because a friend had recommended it highly and since Saramago has won a Nobel prize for literature she figured it would be worth reading—a consideration she felt was fully justified by book’s end. Out of all of us, she and Rosemarie seemed to like the book the best, enjoying everything from its quirky literary style to the complete realism with which the author dealt with his imaginary situation.

Eva, Helle, Francoise and Gillian generally liked the book, though they found parts of it so disturbingly graphic (‘grotty’ as Helle put it) they were hard pressed to read them and Eva, in fact, ended up skipping the worst of it in order to be able to find out how it ends.   Eva and Gillian thought that there was truly no need to be so appallingly brutal and unrelentingly grim, that the story could have been told to equal effect without delving so zealously into the minutia of what it would mean were the whole world to go blind. To this, Margie and Rosemarie strenuously objected. They felt that a nakedly realistic look into this concept was what made the novel so powerful. Rosemarie found herself asking what she would have done thrown into a situation such as the one the main protagonist finds herself in and felt that Saramago had created an extremely strong heroine, made completely believable precisely because he depicted her circumstances so honestly. Though they did not challenge the position that some scenes were extremely difficult to read they felt that this rendered the reading an experience involving both rationale and sentiment, getting them deeply into the characters and their world gone mad.

 Out in left field were Froujke and me. Neither one of us enjoyed the literary style, feeling that the lack of punctuation and other writing standards did nothing to enhance the reading experience; neither found the characters particularly well drawn or convincing; neither felt in any way touched by novel’s end, either emotionally or intellectually. It seems that we are both expecting the books we read to touch some chord, either stimulating thoughtful consideration or involving some kind of visceral empathy and Saramago succeeded in neither. I found his creative premise juvenile, a little along the lines of my old creative writing classes—What If…..—and his graphic realism simply an exercise taking his conceit to its logical end. I didn’t care what happened to his characters because none seemed real to me and if there were some allegorical intent on the author’s part I totally missed it. If it’s about the banality of evil or the fact that mankind is just a sliver above animal status, civilization falling away meaninglessly when its trappings are gone, then it’s already been said before and, to my mind, better. Froujke lamented the lack of anything truly unique, both in terms of the author’s turns of phrases and the way the story unwinds. And when it ended with everybody getting their eyesight back with an equal lack of explanation as to why they lost it in the first place she felt she’d wasted her time.

By evening’s end our feelings remained pretty much the way they were when we had started. While Froujke had reams of notes pinpointing exactly why she felt the way she did and I had only my personal instinctual dislike neither would recommend “Blindness” though I would be interested in reading something else because I can’t believe somebody awarded the Nobel hasn’t written something better. Eva, Gillian, Francoise and Helle did feel it was a book worth reading, though with caveats should they ever suggest it to someone else and Margie and Rosemarie felt that it had been a successful choice. (T)                                                     

THE DARK HEART OF ITALY - Tobias Jones

On March 23 we met at Eva’s house – a rather cozy group considering we were missing Gillian, Rosemarie and Froujke. Eva’s hearty minestrone gave our meeting an even more hearth and home sort of atmosphere and since we all liked the book the evening was carried on in high spirits. Eva had chosen the book mostly out of curiosity regarding another outsider’s view of an adopted home – and not without some trepidation because she had found in the past that some foreigners write about Italy without any honest knowledge of life here. If we were ever all in agreement on one thing it is that Mr. Jones most definitely knows what it’s like to live here, and not as an outsider looking in but as someone fully enmeshed in the fabric of both academic and social life.

What made the evening so fun was that many of the author’s experiences and observations are exactly the circumstances and things we ourselves have experienced—how waiting in a post office line ends up being a social event, a chance to learn new recipes, catch up on the latest soccer standings and commiserate about various shortcomings in the Italian service system; how the general patience of Italians with the foibles of others renders life here less stressful; how the simple humanity expressed by people around us ends up being little pleasures making up our various days. In fact, it is those little pleasures, counted up and put together, which often compensate for the drawbacks to living here, like the mind boggling bureaucracy or plain inefficiency characterizing the public sector. Interesting to many of us was also a fuller explanation of some things we did not know or completely understand, from the deep and powerfully felt political divisions to the confusing way current events develop and are reported on – to the point that it seems nobody ever really finds out who was responsible for certain crimes or what anybody means when making certain political statements.

Certainly for all the positive things the author and we find concerning Italians and life here, there was the down side, the dark side the author mentions in his title. Eva found the passionate political divisions sad – the fact that the right and the left can burn with fury over events that happened years and years ago and have never, in fact, been fully attributed to specific people. It is a division that she believes contributes greatly to rendering political discourse merely rhetoric rather than any real attempt to find efficient ways to run the country. Francoise considered how the tolerance Italians generally have for others can morph into apathy concerning everything from illegal building to shoddy service. And if there were any of us less won over by life in Italy it was Margie, who not only considered the accumulation of frustrations a black mark on life here but felt things have deteriorated significantly since she first arrived. It was only when we compared life here to what we have known in other countries, both native and foreign, that she relented and allowed the positive aspects to at least equal the negative.

  By evening’s end we had basically come to the exact same conclusion as Mr. Jones – there are most certainly negative things here but there are negative things everywhere and for the most part we would not consider living any place else and would, should we ever have to leave, suffer a nostalgia as strong and poignant as any Italian’s.  (T)

LIVING TO TELL THE TALE - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

On February 15 we met at Froujke’s house and the long time lag between our last meeting and this one was more than made up for by the fact that we were all present. Since there was a very real possibility that I was going to have to skip this meeting I was all the happier by the fact that I could, in the end, make it, especially since it turns out that Froujke was thinking of me in no small way when she chose the book.   Primarily she was looking to have us see what it was that made a great writer – not in terms of others’ perceptions but in terms of his own confrontation with his life and how it affected his work. As a start, she had divided the book into her own chapters, based not on what Marquez himself decided to use to compartamentalize his life but what she saw as a progressive maturity and influence on his writing.

There was no doubt that this is not an easy read.  In order to glean the literary gems that are scattered throughout the book one has to plow through pages of nearly diaristic entries concerning the young Marquez’s friends, acquaintances and mentors.  Major life forming events such as the rebellion in Colombia occupy equal standing as drunken all nighters with eminent names from the Latin American literary scene.  And here was the dividing point. Whereas most of the book club found the detailed excursions into Marquez’s unproductive college days or his penniless life as a struggling journalist interesting, informative and gratifyingly detailed I, and to a lesser extent Margie, found it all a bit over the top.  There was simply too much information and since we had very little knowledge about the major writers and thinkers of Latin America, the name dropping had no effect. Personally I also found the memoir curiously devoid of emotion.  The first rule of writing – show us don’t tell us – did not characterize this book.  I was told how awful the fighting in the streets was, how difficult the confrontations with his mother, but I felt none of it, which gave the account the cold feel of a journalist’s notes.

I seem to have been the only one to have been untouched by Marquez’s account.   Eva and Francoise felt they had a new window onto a part of the world that interests them both; Gillian and Helle and Rosemarie greatly enjoyed the accounts of Marquez’s ever-failing father and seemingly endless extended family. Margie and Froujke were impressed by the way single factors blended together to form a visionary whole that made Marquez the writer he is.  Margie conceded that the book was hard going simply because it was an accumulation of information that, like all such compilations, tend to get heavy after a while but agreed with Froujke that if one were to take the book in small doses, reading it slow and careful just a little at a time, there was much to learn both about the writer and about his country.  It made me wonder if I am not perhaps a product of our sound-bite age, unable or unwilling to give more attention to something that doesn’t affect me within the first few pages but the fact remains that I found his writing colorless and his myriad social relationships boring.

Perhaps the true test will be how many of us read the next installment. Rosemarie informed us that this was the first of three books and most of us said that they would happily read the next books.  Only Margie was a little hesitant while I know for sure that I will not. Call it what you will but since time to read is so precious, stolen as it is out of extremely busy days, I want what I read to touch some chord in my soul or psyche. Better his novels, which I truly enjoyed, than his memoirs. In fact, since the book generated a great deal of discussion about that time period in Colombia, the universality of his issues with his family and the overall impact of his writing, I think I got a whole lot more from my dear club members than from the book itself, including the wise bits of the author’s ruminations that Froujke had been able to lift right out of the busy comings and goings of his recounted days.  But for those of you unable to benefit from the meetings themselves, reading the book for yourselves is the only way to know. (T)

WORLD ON FIRE - Amy Chua

On November 16 we met at Rosemarie’s house, and after debating the mundane—kitchen cabinets and cleaning fluids—and enjoying the sublime—a delicious goulash, got down to discussing “World on Fire.” Rosemarie had chosen this book based on positive word of mouth, though few of us had heard of it (I caught passing mention of it during a U.N. workshop on a new World Bank policy concerning impact assessment), and thought it might be a propos seeing as never before have our current affairs seemed as characterized by out of control hot spots spreading to and influencing all corners of the earth.

The basic premise of the book definitely struck a chord, though not with the same impact for all of us.   Some, like Eva and Froujke, found it heavily biased in terms of western ideals and aspirations. Based on personal experience from time spent living in third world countries, they felt that the book applied an entirely western view concerning values attributed to the possession of things to peoples and cultures with a completely different value system. They strongly believed that rather than wanting what the west had, these people aspire to having other things that we, as a culture, do not value as highly. For both, the overriding premise of the book—that the more poor people see what the rich have the more they want the same—was erroneous. In the opposite corner was Rosemarie who also from personal experience thanks to time spent living in a third world country saw precisely this phenomenon and even experienced a revolt centered on rage expressed at the haves by the have nots. Margie and I, based less on personal experience and more on following current affairs in different countries, found ourselves in agreement with the book’s main theme. We felt that most rampages and all of the seething discontent kept from boiling over through various means was based on the poor feeling angry, humiliated and desperate about their condition in life and seeing the rich as the cause.

Where there was more unanimous agreement was on the second main point of the book—that when you pushed rapid democratization onto countries that have had the majority of their population exploited by a few in the possession of wealth and power, the result leads to rabid, hate mongering politicians being elected by the angry masses. Most of us had some kind of instinctual perception of this happening but the evidence marshaled by Ms. Chua in page after page of carefully laid out histories from various parts of the world was too strong to debate.  Over and over this is happening and our discussions spilled naturally into the various elections and imbroglios going on in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, leading to our discussing the curious phenomenon of mass poverty and exploitation in the United States which does not, despite everything, lead to revolution and the real reasons behind the United States aid institutions pushing democratic elections so quickly and so forcefully in countries with highly unstable political situations.

Though we were not in agreement concerning the desire of everybody in the world to have what we in the rich countries take for granted, having the case histories laid out in such a detailed fashion (some even found the tone heavily pedantic—more a history lesson from a professor than a book) left little room for support to the idea of democracy overnight being a positive achievement. Since “World on Fire” deals both with what has happened in the past and what is happening currently, it was natural for us to find many avenues for our discussions. This was definitely a book we could have talked about far later into the night than we did since none of us are in the position (or state) to stay up till dawn talking politics, but it galvanized our evening and gave all of us a surer sense of what it is that goes wrong in the world. Had we persisted in talking about what the solutions might be none of us would have slept that night as it seems that there is a general sense of our society having taken a path of no return against which there are too few to fight. (T) 

THE DA VINCI CODE - Dan Brown

On December 15 we met at Francoise’s house, where we were wined and dined in her usual hospitable way.  So as not to waste any time we took our books to the table and Francoise told us she’d chosen this book because she was thunderstruck by the runaway success it has been having—not just in the States but all over Europe.  The airport book store in Paris was trumpeting this bestseller with pyramids of stacked books and banners; Italian bookshops were pushing it to clients vigorously, it is a success in England and in Germany…but more interesting to her was how many people were talking about it—the nearly total word of mouth promotion the book was receiving from all those who have read it.  Surely, she thought, this was a most interesting phenomenon, that a book would be generating this kind of interest in different countries; surely this was a phenomenon the Book Club should explore.

Curiously, the only person in our group that really liked the book, that would recommend it like others have, that considered it an entertaining and informative read was me. Perhaps because of the group’s overall extremely high literary experience or because nothing in the book was new to the others (having read Holy Blood, Holy Grail and other similar books) the overriding impression for the rest of the Club was nearly entirely negative.  Francoise and Eva felt they were reading a cartoon adventure story—breathlessly paced and thoroughly implausible. Rosemarie, Margie and Froujke thought the writing was sloppy, the pacing predictable and the plot thin enough to be see-through. All my enthusiasm was for naught.  So it was implausible—it was the kind of thing that got people reading and while they were being dragged along by the superman plot they were also learning some things I consider extremely important. Maybe it would get people thinking, asking questions, looking to learn more about the centuries of subterfuge in which the church has engaged to further its power and reach. No, they felt, people get caught up without anything really making an impact. Today it is the talk of the town but tomorrow it will all be past and nothing will have changed.  Surely the exciting insights into works of art by Leonardo Da Vinci and others, the curious architectural links to the sacred feminine, the most inspiring divine equation…?  Nope. Not only has this all been said before but it has been said better; the poor writing will only ensure its more rapid decline.

The most I managed to get was a begrudging agreement that the issues brought out in the book are interesting and important (but only for those who have never read anything on the subject—which, I keep insisting, is most people!).  And Rosemarie was willing to allow herself to get just a little swept up in my optimistic feeling that the book could start some people on a more thoughtful look at the Christian religion and its dogma. But mostly we fell to talking about other, unrelated things, as if the Book Club considered the book too bereft of worth to give it more than an a couple hours of discussion.  It was close to Christmas, many of us had trips to look forward to and mutual friends to catch each other up on.  There were some problems that needed friendly support to whittle down to size, households to move and grandchildren to follow but never before have we spent so little time talking about a book I liked as much.  I don’t know what to make of that except that maybe I am a trusty barometer of popular sentiment, still likely to let my gut override my intellect.  Despite everything I would recommend it; the rest of us would not.