All the Light We Cannot See

I don't know how it works, but it seems like we always have twelve people at a meeting.  Kareen is wandering in the wilderness so I knew she wouldn't be there today and I got emails from three of the usual suspects, notifying me that they would be absent, and thus we were an even dozen.  For a book that was enthusiastically embraced by all, I was surprised that we still spent an hour and half in discussion - before moving onto measles and other childhood illnesses for another half hour.  I can't remember how we segued into that discussion.

Connie, Jenny and I agreed that the chapters moving back and forth in time was difficult until we got the hang of it and that's perhaps the only criticism we had.  Kathy commented in an email that she loved the short chapters and Doerr's style of writing. That's the first thing Joann said today and we immediately agreed.  Patricia quipped that you can tell Doerr isn't a historian because they write dense prose, making a sentence last for a whole paragraph. The thing we came back to again and again was how this was a story of the children, victims of the regime, and as Patricia was quick to point out, this is a universal story, not limited to WW II.

We talked about how the Nazi youth, the Jungmanner, were measured to be worthy by their Teutonicness, i.e., blond hair, blue eyes and no glasses. And how cruelty was honed amongst a camp of 400 boys as in the Lord of the Flies.  And we talked about Frederick and what the war did to dreamers.  We talked about the model villages Marie-Lauren's devoted father made so she would be able to competently navigate on her own, knowing that Nazis hated flawed people.

We all wanted so much more for Werner.  Claudia said, he had so much potential!  We romantics had hoped for a liaison in the future, but Joann noted that he was dying of dysentery and was clearly doomed.  In that case Patricia said she preferred the landmine to a slow decline.  We compared Volkheimer's haunted life to what Werner's might have been, had he lived.  Would he escape the ghosts of the murdered woman and her daughter?  Would he have been capable of a liaison??

We loved the group of ladies at the bakery, especially Madame Manac, and their decision to take a stand against the Nazis.  Doerr wanted to write about occupied France and their subversive use of radios which he wrote convincingly through this group of ladies, including the blind Marie-Laure. Madame Manac justified her rebellion to Etienne when she asked, "Don't you want to be alive before you die?"

And the whole tie-in between Werner and Jutta and the radio broadcasts they covertly listened to as children that changed the course of their lives - that it should be Etienne's house they were broadcast from, and now the no-long-terrified Etienne used that same radio to broadcast information to the Allies.  Brilliant!

Joanne asked if we thought the curse myth around the Sea of Flames had merit.  She said she thought it was hinted at but wasn't dealt with conclusively, though everything around Etienne's house was bombed, yet it stood.  She said that's how von Rumpel knew it was there.  Darlene said that in the museum it was guarded by 14 locks. And then there was the loaded meeting of Werner and Marie-Laure, the house, the jewel and the key.  Werner knew nothing of the stone's history but why did Marie-Laure give him the key and why did he take the house, leave the jewel and replace it with the key??  If the jewel is cursed, though covered in algae and barnacles, Joann wondered if the curse was just percolating, waiting for an unwitting discoverer.

We didn't have any conclusions to that scenario, but fast-forward to 2014.  We felt the book would have successfully closed with Frederick and his mother - "Oh Freddie.  We're just sitting. We're just sitting and looking out at the night."  Why did Doerr introduce just four pages in the future?  We thought it might have been an editorial note.  Her grandson talked about getting "killed" in his video game.  And Marie-Laure - "Every hour, she thinks, someone for whom the war was a memory falls out of the world."  He leaves you to decide.

Twenty Miles from a Match

There wasn't a whole lot to talk about with a memoir. Some thought book was more appropriate to a 9th grade reading level and expressed surprise that she never complained, feeling that was just unrealistic.  Maureen said that a friend who read it for her book group asked the question - who would live like this?  To which Diana quietly said, I would.  She shared with us stories of her experience living 25 miles from Fairbanks with no water and an outhouse.  Joann said that is read like a journal to her, and perhaps it was.  She started working on this book in 1931 and we decided that her attitude was just a matter of the time and place.  We laughed about some of her humorous escapades and some of her non-so-humorous escapades.  We were aided with a large map a friend had printed for today with the locations labeled - most helpful in trying to get a sense of place and distance.

And as promised, here are some pictures of Constantia I took a few years ago.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Fantasy is not the sort of book we typically read so we probably weren't the best informed audience for this book.  Most of us liked it but were glad it was short, though some just didn't care to finish it, which is fine.  Peggy said she thought the author was more interesting than the book.  The authors Gaiman read as a young men were Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, G.K Chesterton and Ursula LeGuin, all theologians and fantasy authors.  Their influence stirred in with his Jewish Scientology roots seem to the basis for the writing genre he is developing.

We talked the most about Ursula, trying to figure out what she was.  Gaiman wrote that "She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all it's power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty."  According to Lettie, she was only acting on her nature, which was to give people what they thought they wanted, which was always money.  Mary said she got that and it was the only part of the book she liked.  She had read it months ago and then reread it again for today, hoping to find what the point was.  She concluded it had no point to which Patricia responded that was the point - to read and enjoy and no more.  We unsuccessfully tried to figure out the Hempstocks and their relationship to the "ocean."

Kareen reminded us that no matter what we thought, it was not difficult to read compared to Midnight's Children that was long, tedious, mystical, and nearly incomprehensible. This is true.  And a wonderful potluck was had by all.

Merry Christmas from the Tuesday Book Group!

The Good Earth

Before our discussion began, I read some biographical information about Pearl Buck, partly because she is such an amazing woman and partly before I thought it shed some light on some of the scenes in the book.

Several of us had read this in school.  Kathy said that she didn't have the same response when she read it this time, partly because since then other authors like Amy Tan and Lisa See have written about China.  She had remembered it as being O'lan's story but said it clearly is Wang Lung's story.  Kareen saw it as the cycle of life, the humble farmer becomes the landlord, buying girl children as slaves and whose sons become the young lords.

Mary read in for a book report early in high school and said this is the work of fiction that made her realize that there's a whole world out there that she knew nothing about and it opened her eyes. Jenny noted the absence of love between the characters; they were only motivated by the obsession for respect.  We noted that is how his son manipulated him "Now the young man spoke cleverly for he knew that his father cared mightily what people said of him."  We did think Buck's missionary self might have written the remorse Wang Lung felt at the end of O'lan's life because everything else he did indicated otherwise.

Joann thought it was a timeless book and wondered  how many other classics hold a reader's attention after 80 years.  Certainly not Dickens she laughed.  Carolyn had read The House of Seven Gables in a Las Vegas book club and said it isn't one.

The discussion was brief because we had Christmas to talk about before voting on next years books.  We decided this year we wouldn't try to organize the food in advance but would do what Kareen calls Pot Lucky.  We bring what we bring, though we all remembered the wonderful lemon squares from last year and hinted strongly that we would love to have them again.

We had a strong list of nominated books for next year and surprised ourselves by moving through the voting process quite quickly.  I've updated the blog and you can see the list of books in the column on the left.

These are the books we will read in 2015.

January

Twenty miles from a match - Sarah E. Olds

February

All the light we cannot see - Anthony Doerr

March

Orchardist - Amanda Coplin

April

Burial Rites - Hannah Kent

May

Me before you - Jojo Moyes

June

Orphan Train - Christina Kline

July

Point of direction - Rachel Weaver

August

Some luck - Jane Smiley

September

State of wonder - Ann Patchett

October

A man called Ove - Fredrik Beckman

November

Still life with crumbs - Anna Quindlan

December

The storied life of A.J. Fikrey - Gabrielle Zevin

The Woman Upstairs

This was a fun discussion because we had a divergence of opinions, though I think we agreed that Massud wrote a masterful book.  The rub was our disgust for Nora who gave up on her life, on realizing her dreams and the opportunity to be an artist - then she blamed her mother for her own perceived failure and sacrifice.   Kareen wanted to kick her in the rear end.  As we were breaking up, Angela remarked that we never did ask if everyone enjoyed the book.  I asked her if she did and she did not.  Connie overheard us and added that she hadn't like it until she finished and then she thought - that was a good book!

Nora begins by establishing that she is furiously angry and the rest of the book is her telling in detail why.  She moved to New York City because she wanted to be an artist, but she got tired of scrimping and got herself a high paying job with interesting travel.  JoAnn asked why Nora left it for a degree in education and we couldn't remember the reason.  But she did move home to Cambridge to accept a position as a 3rd grade teacher and while outwardly she was quite successful at it, inwardly she viewed herself as the unseen woman on the third floor who was all but invisible to the world, outside of her job.

Enter the Shadids and their role in her life.  As readers we could see her being manipulated and used but she through their eyes she saw herself as valuable, no longer invisible and possibly even an artist.  The unresolved question among us was what happens after the end of the book..  JoAnn didn't think she'd do anything to change her life, that she was just venting steam, and of course, we can never know what the author intended past the final period.  When Nora realizes, "I've frittered the gold of my affection on worthless baubles; I've been treated like dirt.  You don't want to know how angry I am.  Nobody wants to know about that.  I am furious at both of them--at the life of their friendship, their false promises of the world and of art and of love--but just as mad at myself, at my stupid dreams, my misplaced trust, my worthless longing.  But to be furious murderously furious is to be alive....I'm angry enough to set fire to a house just by looking at it.  It can't be contained, stored away with the recycling.  I'm done staying quietly upstairs."

When I finished the book, I thought Nora was moving into a positive future, having enrolled in classes and taken her trip, but after her declaration, "My motivation, even in anticipated shame, lay always in others.  You can take the woman out of upstairs, but you can't take the upstairs out of her," I can hear what JoAnn was saying.  Angela said she had read another of Massud's books and it wasn't upbeat.  Now I wonder.

I think we can conclude that Nora is not going to end her life when she says in the final paragraph, "I'm angry enough to see why you walk into the water with rocks in your pockets, even though that's not the kind of angry I am."  I think that's a veiled reference to Kate Chopin's novella, The Awakening, where Edna loads up her pockets and walks into the Gulf of Mexico.  I suspect will be assigned reading in academia, given the number of references like the Black Monk, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Wolfe and Lucy Jordan, and good on us for taking on ambitious books.  I agree with Angela - I didn't like this book.  I agree with Connie - I finished saying, this was a good book!

The Silver Star

Before we began talking about this book, I passed around a couple copies of Twenty Acres from a Match, which Library Administration would like us to read in January as part of their Nevada Reads program.  After browsing through, we agreed that we would make that our January book so now we only need eleven more titles to make up next years list.

Almost everyone of us has read The Glass Castle, Walls' first book and autobiography and thought this was Glass Castle light, a sanitized version of her own tortured youth.  Kathy said that she thinks sometimes publishers and agents nudge writers in their stable to write something if they haven't published in a while.  She wondered if that had happened with this book.

Mary liked that and said she thought it explained what happened to Pat Conroy when he wrote South of Broad which she felt was below par for him.  Joanne responded that while she couldn't remember the characters clearly, she fell in love the Charleston because of the book and took a life-changing trip there with a friend of hers.  A lively discussion ensued with Mary rescinding her sharp criticism of the book, saying that she has always felt that any book that changed lives is a valuable book.

Patricia thought Silver Star was a nice three-hour book and I called it a beach read.  Mary however thought it read like a young adult novel, and we all tended to agree with her.  Aside from Bean, the characters were a little thin, and Joanne said she thought Liz was inconsistent from the beginning through the progression of the book.  Claudia reminded us that the girls had no money.  When an opportunity to earn comes along, it can cloud ones judgement and in this case, it set the girls up for what came next.  I reread the blog post for last months book, and thought Mary's comment would serve well here:  "Mary said she was taken by how a single lie (Jim's) could disrupt so many lives for so many years."  Keeping their employment secret from Uncle Tinsley was a lie and they did it because they knew he would protest and they wanted the money.  If they had told him the truth this would have been a different story. 

We thought Charlotte was mentally ill and wondered if signs of it were also showing in Liz.  And speaking of mental illness, Angela said that Jerry Maddox was clearly a sociopath and because he had the power to hire and fire, had honed his bully skills.  Did everyone believe Clarence thought he shot a bear?  We decided they were so glad to be done with him that were willing to buy the story.  When they went out the backdoor with Dog and the shotgun however, several of us assumed that Dog was a goner. After all, Maddox had made Clarence give Joe a whipping.  So Maddox is gone, and even though it's a questionable ending, you have to be glad that for once the bad guy gets it.. Maureen said that if this is a young adult novel, it would be a good one for adolescent girls to read to know why they should never do what Liz did.

The time of 1970 and the small town setting were critical for the story to work.  We batted that around for a while and thought today forensics would shoot holes in the bear story and the girls would probably fall into the foster system.  We all enjoyed the book but agreed with the Publishers Weekly reviewer who wrote, "Readers of Walls's bestselling memoir, The Glass Castle, my find this new novel too familiar to be entirely satisfying."

I found the Kelly Corrigan quote which was in the March post.  The term is Reader Response:  "I remember a lecture from one of my lit classes about a theory called “Reader Response,” which basically says: More often than not, it’s the readers—not the writers—who determine what a book means.  The idea is that readers don’t come blank to books.  Consciously and not, we bring all the biases that come with our nationality, gender, race, class, age.  Then you layer onto that the status of our health, employment, relationships, not to mention our particular relationship to each book—who gave it to us, were we read it, what books we’ve already read—and, as my professor put it, “That massive array of spices has as much to do with the flavor of the soup as whatever the cook intended.”

The Burgess Boys

We were not united in our feelings about this book which always makes for an interesting discussion.  Kathy didn't care for any of the siblings and was especially disgusted by Jim, who always called the twins mean names and acted like he was a demigod.  She said she would have preferred that Strout have been selective in what she included in the book; she seemed to have tossed in issues that were on her mind.

Mary said she was taken by how a single lie (Jim's) could disrupt so many lives for so many years.  Peggy said she wasn't sure what we knew who was responsible for the accident.  Susan always thought it had been her since their mother had been so mean to her.

No one liked Helen or had much sympathy for her.  As despicable as Jim was, we liked his wife even less.  And in the final discussion, wondering if she would allow him back into her life, we were less interested in that than we were wondering how suicidal he was.

We loved Bob.  Who didn't love Bob!  It was nice to see Bob love Bob too, and when he started to love himself, he left the "graduate dorm" for a upscale apartment where he found himself picking up his own socks, the thing that so annoyed his wife Pam.  Ah Pam, we were so glad to see him stop being available to her needy moments and kindly step away.  The end of the book doesn't make Bob's future clear, but on the second page of the prologue Strout had written, "Bob's second wife, and we hoped his last, was a Unitarian minister."  It was only though that slip that we realized he married Margaret - after the book concluded.  It kind of makes you want a sequel.

Maureen read that Strout based this book on a true story, but in reality the young man had committed suicide.  Zach was such a lonely and haunted boy, deeply dependent on his mom and without friends. We were all on pins and needles, thinking that was the end that Zach was headed for.  Kareen questioned how he was able to spontaneously make Visa and international flight arrangements.

Susan's recognition that she had become her mother and turned her children and husband Steve into herself seemed like a miracle of self awareness, not something many adults are capable of.  Mary reminded us of the agonizing hours that Susan spent alone, terrified that Zach was dead.  She had plenty of time for introspection.

Kareen thought Strout tied up things a little too quickly in the conclusion, Zachary was home looking good and talkative.  Thanks to Jim's revelation, Bob was no longer his old doormat self, his "Bobness" and Susan was talking opening to Mrs Drinkwater and blossoming.  Which left the question - who were the mother and daughter from the prologue?  Was it one of Mrs Drinkwater's daughters who wrote it?