Jackie's review of 'The Gathering'

This book is completely different from anything I have read before. Not much happens, but it is strangely gripping. In the past I have tried to read a couple of books which were not plot driven, and have found myself giving up on them a few chapters in. This book is different. The quality of the writing is amazing - such simple things were made really interesting, and I found myself drawn totally into Veronica’s world. There were parts where I laughed out loud, and parts that were quite disturbing.

I was slightly disappointed by the ending, as many questions were left unanswered. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but I am glad I read it.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

'You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames.'


After the trouble starts and the soldiers arrive on Matilda's tropical island, only one white person stays behind. Mr Watts wears a red nose and pulls his wife around on a trolley. The kids call him Pop Eye. But there is no one else to teach them their lessons. Mr Watts begins to read aloud to the class from his battered copy of Great Expectations, a book by his friend Mr Dickens.

Soon Dickens' hero Pip starts to come alive for Matilda. She writes his name in the sand and decorates it with shells. Pip becomes as real to her as her own mother, and the greatest friendship of her life has begun.

But Matilda is not the only one who believes in Pip. And, on an island at war, the power of the imagination can be a dangerously provocative thing.

Matilda is a young girl who lives on a tropical island with her mother. Her father has gone to Australia for work. Whilst the intention was that he would be sending for them in due course, they have not heard from him for a long time, and any hope of leaving is quickly doused when life on the island is interrupted by a guerrilla war between the native islanders and the 'redskins'. The year is 1991, and the island is Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, and I can remember when war broke out on that island. Unfortunately, what I remember is very much tainted by the news as we heard it here in Australia, so it is more about the evacuation of the many Australian workers who were employed in the lucrative mines and not so much about the effect of the warfare on the native population. This lack of coverage or assistance for the native population is covered in the novel as the characters talk about waiting for the outside world to assist them, not realising that there was an embargo placed on the island. When I was writing this post, I looked up some information on Bougainville and was surprised to find that the conflict is still ongoing into the early parts of this decade, although on a much reduced scale. There was still enough instability that the mines on the island were still closed, thus depriving many of the islanders of their main source of income.

With the outbreak of war, many of the things that are taken for granted like electricity and refrigeration are lost, and the islanders have to revert to a more simpler way of life, one much more like the way their ancestors would have lived. Another thing that changes for the village children is that their teacher leaves the island on the last boat (a phrase that for Matilda shows how helpless the islanders really are now).

Into the gap left by the departed teacher steps Mr Watts. He is a white man who has remained on the island despite the war. He is called Pop Eye by the children on the island, and before becoming the children's teacher was treated with derision because he often used to wear a clown's red nose and pull his wife around on a trolley. But when he comes to the classroom he opens up a whole new world to many of the children, most especially to Matilda.

Because he is not a qualified teacher, he doesn't know what to teach the children so he starts by introducing them to his friend Mr Dickens, by reading them the book Great Expectations, and so a group of children on a tropical island find themselves transported to Victorian England. He also invites the villagers to come in and share important facts with the children often with very humourous results.

This book is incredibly layered. It is about the power of reading, the destruction that is wrought on individuals and groups of people during war, the sacrifices that people make to save those that they love. It also shows how the discovery of a single story can change the direction of an individuals life, and how passion for a particular subject can lead you places you could never have imagined as a young child.

This book was shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize, and won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize in the same year. At 220 pages, this book isn't long, but it is a moving and powerful novel.

Coincidentally this is the second book that I have read in a month that features Dicken's Great Expectations. The first was Jack Maggs by Peter Carey, which I never realised was a retelling of the Dicken's classic because I have never actually read the original story. Maybe the fact that I have read two books in such a short period that reference it is a message to tell me to read the original story!


Cross posted on my blog.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

 

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (2007) - Shortlisted for Man Booker prize 2007

I acknowledge that I am a McEwan fan, Atonement is one of my favorite novels, I have read First Love, Last Rites, Enduring Love, Amsterdam and Saturday and enjoyed them all.

 I am not sure that I can entirely explain what it is about McEwans writing that speaks to me. I think some of it has to do with his very Englishness. I love a novel that transports me so clearly to an English landscape. His prose is very beautiful and precise. He has a scientific bent, I appreciated all the neurobiology details inSaturday and there is a lot of well researched scientific detail in Enduring Love. All this only partially explains my attraction to McEwans writing..

On Chesil Beach does not disappoint.  I think it is a perfectly crafted miniature artwork. There was a lot of discussion around the length of this book - but to me that is irrelevant, it is the ideal length for the story it contains. McEwan uses his words wisely and I appreciate that.

This story is a very sad love story, about Edward and Florence and their inability to consummate their marriage. It is frustrating to see these characters struggle to communicate their feelings. They are a product of their 1940s upbringing and to a certain extent their English sense of reserve and propriety.

" ...Edward had been mesmerized by the prospect that on the evening of a given date in July the most sensitive portion of himself would reside, however briefly, within a naturally formed cavity inside this cheerful, pretty, formidably intelligent woman. How this was to be achieved without absurdity, or disappointment, troubled him...."

As indeed the mechanical details will trouble the reader for several uncomfortable but beautifully written pages.

Once again the sense of place and time is central to understanding this novel, 

" The Pill was a rumour in the newspapers, a ridiculous promise, another of those tall tales about America. The Blues he heard at the Hundred club suggested that all around him just out of sight, men of his age were leading explosive, untiring sex lives, rich with gratifications of every kind. Pop music was bland, still coy on the matter, films were a little more explicit, but in Edwards circle the men had to be content with telling dirty jokes, uneasy sexual boasting and boisterous camaraderie driven by furious drinking, which reduced further their chances of meeting a girl." 

Beautiful and heartbreaking. A well deserved Booker shortlisted novel.. 

4.5 stars

I am always about a year behind in my reviews of prize winning novels, so there are probably heaps of blog reviews of this book - here are a couple I admire, ( well the writing at least if not the opinion....)

Guardian book blog

Asylum review

Booklit

First Tuesday Bookclub Transcript To quote host Jennifer Byrne – the book is about "The missed moment, the one thing that destroys everything.." which I think is very true. The scene on the beach at the end is the defining moment of the novel.

MIdnight's Children voted Best Booker winner

Though I hesitate to label myself as someone who makes correct predictions (if only I could do that where sports events, stock market prices and presidential campaigns were concerned!), I do want to "pat myself on the back" for having said earlier in posts here that Salman Rushie's Midnight Children probably would win the Best of the Booker Award ... it just did.

Today (July 10), it was announced that Rushdie's 1981 Booker Winner had been voted Best of the Booker Winners by the nearly 8,000 readers who voted. They had a choice of six former Booker winners, the other five in the shortlist in addition to Midnight's Children being: Oscar and Lucinda, The Ghost Road, The Conservationist, Disgrace, and The Siege of Krishnapur.


MEL VOGEL

The Gathering by Anne Enright (Jill)

The Gathering
By Anne Enright
Completed July 7, 2008

In The Gathering, Anne Enright took a disturbing look at family dysfunction. Told from the perspective of Veronica, a 39-year-old homemaker, the readers learned the ups and downs of being part of her large Irish family, made more complicated as the family dealt with the suicide of Veronica’s brother, Liam.

Veronica’s ghosts were a large part of this novel. Veronica was the keeper of Liam’s childhood secret, and as she grieved for her brother, she had to come to terms with the tragedies that plagued him. She also had to deal with her life decisions: hiding Liam’s secret, marrying her husband, mothering her daughters, and coping with her own mother, who Veronica loved and despised simultaneously.

Enright’s writing style was seductively descriptive. I envisioned the deeply depressed Veronica spiraling out of control, frantically typing her family’s life story as she drank and escaped from her obligations. She was not an easy character to like, but Enright’s writing evoked sympathy and sadness for this character.

In addition to the manic narrative, the reader must muddle through the many phallic references and sexual metaphors that sprung up (no pun intended) in each chapter. I can’t say these themes added to the novel, but they did not appall me either. Perhaps I was too wrapped up in Veronica’s train wreck to care.

All in all, The Gathering was a decent story about being a family member and how one woman dealt with her depression in the face of a family tragedy. If you like stories set in Ireland or are a fan of Booker winners, then I would recommend The Gathering to you. ( )

Laura's 2008 Goals and Progress

I’ve followed the Booker Prize for several years now, and started The Complete Booker to encourage others to join me in reading works by these great authors. I read 4 Booker winners in 2007, so I’ll begin 2008 having read 11 of the 41 winners. Not that I need any motivation, but I’m also going to participate in Dewey’s Man Booker Challenge!


Before the year is out, I’d like to read at least 6 Booker winners, including:

• 2007 - The Gathering (Enright) (completed 4/2/2008)
• 2004 - The Line of Beauty (Hollinghurst)
• 1996 - Last Orders (Swift)
• 1990 - Possession: A Romance (Byatt) (completed 7/6/2008)
• 1988 - Oscar and Lucinda (Carey) (completed 5/6/2008)
• 1985 - The Bone People (Hulme) (completed 3/30/2008)
• 1981 - Midnight's Children (Rushdie)
• 1978 - The Sea, the Sea (Murdoch) (completed 2/21/2008)
• 1974 - The Conservationist (Gordimer)
• 1971 - In a Free State (Naipaul) (completed 4/23/2008)

Complete List of Booker Winners Read (with links to reviews where available):

2007 - The Gathering (Enright)

2006 - The Inheritance of Loss (Desai)
2005 - The Sea (Banville)
2002 - Life of Pi (Martel)
2001 - True History of the Kelly Gang (Carey)
2000 - The Blind Assassin (Atwood)
1998 - Amsterdam: A Novel (McEwan)
1997 - The God of Small Things (Roy)
1992 - The English Patient (Ondaatje)

1990 - Possession: A Romance (Byatt)

1988 - Oscar and Lucinda (Carey)

1985 - The Bone People (Hulme)
1984 - Hotel du Lac (Brookner)

1978 - The Sea, the Sea (Murdoch)

1977 - Staying on (Scott)

1975 - Heat and Dust (Jhabvala)

1971 - In a Free State (Naipaul)

Laura's Review - Possession

Possession: A Romance
A. S. Byatt
555 pages

Possession is a rich, layered novel featuring both a romance between two Victorian-era poets, and present-day relationships between academics who have made their careers as experts on the poets' lives. Roland Michell is a kind of perpetual student, researching the life of Randolph Henry Ash. Maud Bailey is established in her career with a university's women's studies center; her specialty is the poet Christabel LaMotte. When the book opens, Roland has made an interesting discovery indicating Ash may have had a relationship with a woman other than his wife. His inquiry leads him to Maud. Together they assemble a picture of a romance between Ash and LaMotte, which turns prevailng academic opinion upside-down. Others begin to pursue the prize and the associated professional glory.

Byatt employs several creative devices to develop the characters and tell the story. Ash and LaMotte's relationship is reconstructed primarily through artifacts (letters, journals) obtained by Roland and Maud. Byatt "reproduces" them in their entirety so the reader feels like part of the research team. The romantic storyline also unfolds from several points of view, with each person having only a partial picture. The reader can see it all. And as the Victorian mystery is solved, the lives of present-day characters become increasingly interconnected. Byatt concludes the novel by tying up several threads and adding a quite satisfying postscript. ( )

My original review can be found here.

Trevor's Review of Atwood's Alias Grace

Moving away from the winners for a bit, I took on Atwood's Alias Grace. I have had my eyes on this book for a while, basically waiting to read it as a reward for when I finished the Best of the Booker shortlist. This might have ruined if for me.

It's not that the story wasn't interesting. It's not that the issues it took on weren't important or compelling. I think I'm just getting tired of Atwood's style. Her quick punches in her wry codas really started to get to me in this one.

At the start Grace Marks has already been in jail for fifteen years for the murder of Thomas Kinnear, her employer, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper. Interestingly, Grace can't remember what happened. Doctor Simon Jordon, who doesn't necessarily care about exonerating Grace as much as making his name in science, comes to try to help her remember. Grace tells her story from the beginning, and Atwood escorts us smoothly to a finale.

If you're interested in more of my feelings on this book, please check out my new blog: http://mookse.wordpress.com. My blog is set up so people looking for general feelings about a book before they read it can get a general review. But I also leave space at the end to discuss issues that might spoil the book for those who haven't read it. I'm hoping to get into some conversations about some of these books on that level. I'd love for my Complete Booker friends to visit to discuss some of these issues.

3 stars out of 5.

Sticky Post - Administrative Item

I hope everyone is having a great summer reading Booker winners and whatever else is on your TBR pile. This is just a short post to advise current and prospective participants that the Complete Booker e-mail account will be "unattended" until July 3. Anyone wishing to join the challenge is free to submit their request by e-mail, but please be patient. I promise to respond on July 3.

Happy reading!
Laura

Review of "The Elected Member" by Bernice Rubens

“The Elected Member” is the story of one man’s battle with drugs, and how his family cope with having a drug addict as part of the family. Norman is a bright, young Jewish boy living in a tight knit family in London’s East end. He has a promising law career ahead of him, but when a tragic event occurs Norman’s life begins to fall apart. His family struggle to deal with the series of events that follow. The story is told from each member of the family’s point of view. It is very moving, and although I have no personal experience of drug abuse it all seems very vivid and realistic. The drug taking is not glorified, as it can be in some books, and although Norman comes across as a deeply troubled man, you feel great sympathy for his situation.

I was totally gripped by this book. My only criticism is that there is no joy to be found anywhere. It leaves you feeling quite deflated and depressed. The writing is very accomplished, and even though you don’t necessarily want to be there, you are transported into the world completely. The descriptions of Norman’s hallucinations were particularly realistic.

Highly recommended – but have a box of tissues handy!!
4 out of 5 (point removed because it was so depressing!)