Book Club Suggestions

Books we have read. We didn't all like them all! But every one provoked an interesting discussion!

The list below is alphabetical by author. The books themselves are "in no particular order", usually reflecting the approximate date they were read!

List of Contents

Hartley, L.P The Go-Between

Maugham, Somerset Of Human Bondage

Kingsolver, Barbara The Poisonwood Bible

Trollope, Anthony The Warden

Zusak, Markus The Book Thief

Grossmith, George & Weedon The Diary of a Nobody

Donoghue, Emma Room

Nichols, David One Day

Schlink, Bernhard The Reader

Shamsie, Kamila Burnt Shadows

The Reviews

The Go-Between by LP Hartley

Setting England, summertime

Date 1900

Theme Innocence, coming of age, heat

Story A British teenager, Leo Colston, spends a summer in the countryside and becomes the "go-between" for a secret romantic relationship between the beautiful young aristocrat Marian and a neighbouring farmer named Ted Burgess

Rating ★★★★

Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham

Setting England, Germany, Paris

Date 1880-1910

Theme Semi autobiographical

Story Orphaned, club-footed, Philip Carey is s sent to live with a cold uncle; he grows up in boarding schools and is routinely ridiculed by his peers. He inherits a small fortune but he drifts from one adventure to the next. He drops out of school and travels to Germany to study. then Paris trying to become a painter, but has no talent.

Finally he goes back to London and enters medical school. He is drawn into an abusive and hopeless love relationship with a waitress which torments him over a period of years, drains him of his funds and almost ruins him at the end.

Rating ★★★ (some found it depressing. It is very long)

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Setting Africa, The Congo

Date 1960-80

Theme Western colonialism and the imposition of Western beliefs on other cultures.

Story A rabid evangelical preacher and his family move to the Congo to spread their version of salvation by baptism. The story is told through the voices of the preacher's wife and four daughters, dealing with the daily horrors of life,(insects, animals, sanitation, food) and the threats of violence towards whites.

Rating ★★★★ The girls' voices are unique and fascinating. The political background was a little difficult for some to follow. Heavy on morality, but fabulous detail.

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

Setting Nagasaki, Delhi, Karachi, New York

Date 1945 onwards

Theme family loyalties, national allegiances, betrayals, big things!

Story In Nagasaki in 1945, Hiroko Tanaka, a 21-year-old teacher-turned-munitions worker is in love with the German Konrad Weiss. The Atomic bomb kills Konrad and indelibly sears the birds on Hiroko's kimono into the skin of her back. In search of new beginnings, She stays in Delhi. with Konrad's half-sister Elizabeth, and her husband. She learn Urdu as clerk, Sajjad Ashraf; the Burtons disapprove of their growing relationship.

The partition of India sees Hiroko moving to Pakistan. In Karachi, her and Sajjad's son Raza is born. Raza finds himself, naively, swept up into the jihadist movement in Afghanistan. When she loses Sajjad as well, Hiroko moves to be near Ilse, now divorced and in New York.

Raza gets out of his extremist associations, and is offered him a career in the private security/intelligence sector Finally, Hiroko becomes attached to Harry's daughter Kim, and meets an Afghani taxi driver who becomes a key player in the dramatic events that follow.

Rating ★★★★ Not easy, but very worthwhile!

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

Setting Barsetshire, England,

Date Victorian

Theme human motivation and social morality

Story The Rev. Septimus Harding is the conscientious warden of a charitable retirement home for men, who resigns after being accused of making too much profit from the sinecure. The novel is a study of conflicting loyalties and principles in a cathedral city where the gentle warden becomes an unwilling focus of national controversy.

An opener to the much more well-know and popular series, Barchester Towers.

Rating ★★

The book split our reading group! Some would have given it 4, some 0. It is of another era, language sometimes difficult, and pace slow. But it is a classic, and those of us who loved its depth will return again and again.

Personal note. I first read this book while in labour with my first son! And I still love it!

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Setting Munich, Germany

Date 1939

Theme The value of books

Story Death is the narrator in this book, and he tells what is going on in the world around the simple story of one girl and her love of reading. To begin the tale, he tells of several times he saw the Book Thief. These foretellings are shown in real action as the book goes on.

At nearly ten years old, Liesel Meminger has lost her family, her father is captured and her brother is dead.. She’s fostered by Hans and Rosa Hubermann who live on Himmell Street in the town of Molching. And while Rosa is often rough and unkind, but Hans is a much loved substitute father.

Liesel grows up in an increasingly hostile Nazi Germany. She becomes friends local boy Rudy, who teaches her to read, and develops a love of books, often stolen from books from the mayor’s wife’s library. The family hide Max, a Jew, who is later taken by the Nazis . Soldiers come to Rudy’s house, to recruit him for a school for future Nazi leaders. Rudy’s father, Alex, refuses to let his son go. The soldiers leave, but a few days later both Alex and Hans are drafted into the German army.

Rudy is killed when the house is bombed. Liesel eventually grows up and moves to Australia, where she has a family and lives to an old age.

Rating ★★★★★ It sounds complicated, but everyone loved it – just the right balance of innocence against the horrors of Nazism.

The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith

Setting Suburban London

Date late 19th century

Theme social aspiration

Story . Charles Pooter, a lower-middle-class clerk, and his family, including his wife Carrie and their son Lupin, have serious social aspirations. In his diary Charles records his mundane daily life. There is irony in every line from the small details of domestic trivialities of themselves and their narrow circle of friends, to Charles' aspirations for social recognition. Gradually his grand plans for making his mark on society come to nothing. And we laugh.

Rating ★★★★ Deliciously entertaining – and a good antidote to all the “big ideas” that often populate our reading.

Room by Emma Donoghue

Setting One room

Date now

Theme trauma, survival, love, and the power of the human spirit.

Story Five-year old Jack lives with his 26-year old Ma in "Room", a secured single-room outbuilding containing a small kitchen, a basic bathroom, a wardrobe, a bed, and a TV set. The only other person Jack has ever seen is "Old Nick," who visits Room at night while Jack sleeps hidden in a wardrobe. Old Nick brings them food and necessities. Jack is unaware that Old Nick kidnapped Ma when she was 19 years old and has kept her imprisoned for the past seven years.

Soon after Jack's fifth birthday, to get out, Ma pretends that Jack is deathly ill. Old Nick refuses to take Jack to a hospital, Ma then pretends that Jack has died. Old Nick removes Jack, wrapped in a rug, from Room. Jack escapes Old Nick and manages to contact the police and to describe the route to Room to an officer to free Ma.

Ma has a breakdown, but recovers, she and Jack begin making plans for the future. Ma's growing independence conflicts with Jack's desire to keep her for himself, just as they used to be. At the same time, Jack himself is growing and changing as his world expands. Finally, Jack asks to visit Room.

Rating ★★★★★ Wonderful read! Story told entirely from Jack’s point of view

One Day by David Nichols

Setting Various

Date 1988-2008

Theme love, loneliness, fate

Story Emma and James sleep together after their graduation, but realise their planned lives mean they must separate. They agree to meet every year on the anniversary of their meeting.

In the succeeding years their lives take many twists and turns, and they never seem to be at the same point to continue the relationship. Finally, when they do decide to live together, fate has a grim future in store for them – a battle to conceive, and a tragic accident that ends in Emma’s death.

Rating ★★★★★ The film is good too!

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

Story Fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover— their relations always including him reading aloud to her.

Then, after seeing him with youngsters of his own age, she disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for crimes as a Nazi guard, accused of selecting 60 people to send to their deaths every month and of locking hundreds of women and girls in a burning church.

She refuses to defend her innocence, because it would display her illiteracy. She is sentenced to life imprisonment. Throughout her sentence Michael records himself reading books aloud to her and sends her the cassette tapes. She does learn to read and write, but on the day she is due for release, she kills herself.

Rating ★★★ Thought provoking. Several found it a bit “heavy”