MERRY XMAS FROM CAFFEINE AND CHAPTERS SOCIAL BOOK CLUB!!!

High Tea Xmas Break Up


HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Sorry I couldn't be there,
but there's always next year!!

Maxine

Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London, and New York ~ Anjelica Huston

"Living with her glamorous and artistic mother, educated by tutors and nuns, intrepid on a horse, Huston was raised on an Irish estate to which, between movies, her father brought his array of extraordinary friends, from Carson McCullers and John Steinbeck to Peter OToole and Marlon Brando. Every morning, Anjelica and her brother visited their father while he took his breakfast in bed.

In London, where she lives with her mother and brother in the early sixties when her parents separate, Huston encounters the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac. She understudies Marianne Faithfull in Hamlet. Seventeen, striking, precocious, but still young and vulnerable, she is devastated when her mother dies in a car crash.

At just 18  she moves to New York, falls in love with the much older, brilliant but disturbed photographer Bob Richardson, and becomes a model. Living in the Chelsea Hotel, working with Richard Avedon and other photographers, she navigates a volatile relationship and the dynamic cultural epicenter of New York in the seventies.

A Story Lately Told ends as Huston launches her Hollywood life. The second part of her storyWatch Me opens in Los Angeles in 1973 and will be published in Fall 2014. Beguiling and beautifully written, Hustons memoir is a an eye opener, covering EVERY aspect of her young life."

Read by Robyn S.

The Light Years: Cazalet 1 (Cazalet Chronicles) ~ Elizabeth Jane Howard

"For two unforgettable summers they gathered together, safe from the advancing storm clouds of war. In the heart of the Sussex countryside these were still sunlit days of childish games, lavish family meals and picnics on the beach."

This is the first of series of 5 set during the Second World War.  It was interesting but I don't think I could struggle through the entire 5 books.

Read by Robyn S.

Love All ~ Elizabeth Jane Howard

"A  slow moving, melancholic and elegiac novel set in the late 1960s in Melton, a small town in the West Country. The story revolves around a disparate group of people who come together there to establish an arts festival. There is Jack Curtis a self-made millionaire who has bought and refurbished the local stately home, Florence Plover, a garden designer in her sixties whom he has employed and her Anglo-Greek niece, Persephone. There are the Musgrove siblings, Thomas and Mary, whose family originally owned Melton Hall, who run a failing garden nursery nearby and there is Francis Brock, whose sister Celia, Thomas's wife, was tragically killed in a car crash some years previously."

This is the story of their intertwining relationships and how they come to love, and not to love each other in different ways and why - Slow, rambling and full of extraneous characters, this book only held my attention because of the homely setting and the promise that surely something would change in the lives of the people involved. I found the action unsatisfactory because the arts festival at the centre of the story wasn't covered at all, and because the challenges posed for the various key characters weren't really fully explored. Like other reviewers, I found Thomas annoying and Mary the martyr irritating, even if their responses to their life situations were realistic for the late sixties. Disappointingly, the most interesting and central character, Percy, simply faded away at the end of the novel, never to be seen again, The whole story was a bit disjointed cutting between all the characters nothing was ever really resolved by any of the characters.

Read by Robyn S.

Cat's Cradle ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr

I came across this title in my search for a book in the Science Fiction genre – a genre pretty much unknown to me so I had no reference point of familiarity.

Having read it, I’m not sure whether the purists regard this as fair dinkum sci-fi; I think it would fit into the genre of political satire, maybe even religious satire. It appears to revolve around the thesis that ‘pure’ scientists developed products for the purpose of solving a particular problem, without regard for the dangers of unintended consequences.  Hence, the narrator, John (Jonah) goes in search of ‘the average American’ account of what people were doing on the day Hiroshima was devastated. His particular targets are the offspring of Felix Hoenikker, the character drawn from the physicist who played a part in developing the Atom Bomb to enable the war-weary USA to end the war against Japan.

Initially, Jonah interviews Hoenikker’s scientific supervisor ‘only on paper’ who describes Hoenikker’s obsession with a military officer’s ironic statement that the most valuable invention for the military would be a way to ‘keep them out of the mud’; apparently most soldiers considered the constant slogging through mud with heavy loads their biggest complaint about army life. Hoenniker’s response was to develop a substance called ‘ ice-nine’ which, while remaining solid at room temperature, would immediately turn liquid water into solid form: just one crystal of ice-nine would solidify a swamp or river. This substance remained in the inventor’s possession, ultimately to be in the possession of his three dysfunctional offspring.

Their characters appear to draw on stereotypical society misfits of the time: Frank, the antisocial kid who tortured insects, hated school and spent his early life building and designing miniature buildings and planning miniature towns with an exquisite talent. This talent combined with his antipathy to regulation, led him to a job as Chief Architect on the remote island of San Lorenzo. Sister Angela, described as 6-feet-tall and horse-faced (double-whammy misfit qualifications for a girl!), has had to stay at home to care for her father after the death of her mother, and had no prospects of personal happiness until the day of her father’s funeral, when a former acquaintance knocked on the door, and she married him 3 weeks later! Baby brother Newton, a dwarf, suffered all the negative social implications of that condition, and thought he had found happiness in an affair with a Russian dwarf dancer who, having taken asylum in USA, promptly applied to go back to Russia rather than live with the media frenzy created by the affair: he was heartbroken and targeted by the tabloid media because of the novel situation, but years later, as a well-adjusted human being, takes pleasure in the fact that he ‘…may not have a marriage, but at least I had a honeymoon’.

The mythical Caribbean island of San Lorenzo becomes the gathering place for all the main characters of the book, as the narrator, Jonah, is sent there on another story, and is hoping to find the beautiful woman with whose picture he has fallen in love. In the meantime, he has discovered a cult-like religion called Bokononism; named for its founder, an African-American whose name, Johnson, translates as Bokonon in the dialect native to San Lorenzo. He had arrived there after being shipwrecked on one of his lifelong adventures in search of higher learning. The miracle of this survival gave him an epiphany:

  “A fish pitched up

By the angry sea,

I gasped on land

And I became me.”

He felt reborn, and determined to surrender to whatever fate brought him after emerging naked from salt water. Features of this fatalistic belief system fascinate Jonah, and events in the book seem made to fit his conversion to its beliefs.

Thus, for various reasons, Jonah, the 3 Hoenikker children, and two other couples (the Mintons, stereotypical Darby and Joan; and the Crosbys, quintessential insensitive Ugly Americans) meet on a flight to San Lorenzo. During the flight, character elements are drawn out of each of the people and analysed by Jonah as the narrator: this section of the book, with all its irony about Christian beliefs, the American way of life, and the cruel condescension shown to minorities, was the highlight for me.

On San Lorenzo, it becomes obvious that the dictatorial ruler is terminally ill, and further, that he has in his possession a quantity of ‘ice-9’ – the use he makes of it, and the consequences for the island and its inhabitants, including the passengers on the recently-arrived flight, are indeed the stuff of science fiction. By the end I found it a bit tiresome, but there is no doubting the power of Vonnegut’s satirical prose, particularly in the context of that era, when America and the whole world began seriously to wonder and worry about where untamed scientific advance might lead us. The ‘cat’s cradle’ of the title is explained in a typically unexpected sequence, but I won’t disclose it!

Helen

C & C Author Event ~ Stephany Steggall

Biography's by Stephany Steggall

Our club meeting this month had a 'biographical' flavour to it thanks to a very interesting talk by Stephany Steggall.

Stephany is the author of several published biographies including one based on a member of her own family titled 'Hanbury' One of the Evans Bushmen, and is a recipient of the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship Award.

Based in Toowoomba, Stephany's research has recently taken her and her sister Helen (proud C&C club member) all the way to beautiful Ireland where the story behind well known Australian author Thomas Kenneally is waiting to be told. 

What impressed us most about the art of writing a biography is the pain staking process of meticulous research.  Stephany presented us with a working draft of the opening chapter to her book on Kenneally and, once we had read it, she explained what research had been involved paragraph by paragraph.  It was a very interesting overview.  I should think that we have all read and enjoyed something by Kenneally, and given his success this is certainly a book that is well overdue and I for one am looking forward to the finished product.

It was a lovely evening over all spent out on Helen's deck under her beautiful Poinciana tree, talking about books and writing, and enjoying the various dishes for which we are fast becoming well known for at these home-based meetings.... I am seriously considering changing our name to Caffeine and Chapters Social & Culinary Book Club?!

Until next time.........

Maxine

Trainspotting ~ Irvine Welsh

Never before have I resented being immersed in the world of a novel! I did not look forward to one minute spent with the characters in Trainspotting – yet I could not put it down.

Written in the Scottish vernacular I initially found it very difficult to read, yet I soon realised that this was the only way this book could have been written.  I soon got into the swing of it though, and when I wasn't reading it I could still hear the characters in my head, and even found myself thinking in the dialect! 

Narrated by way of various short stories by the various characters, I wasn't always sure who I was reading about.  The foul language is very in your face, and the ‘Junkie Dilemma’s’ at times were excruciatingly disgusting.  The most confronting story for me was ‘Bad Blood’.  It is a revenge story, where one of the characters takes revenge on another character who is responsible for his HIV diagnosis. I found it deeply disturbing and even when the twist was revealed at the end, it had gone too far to redeem itself for me.

I can quite honestly say that I did not like this novel at all, but it is the quality of the writing itself that keeps you reading.  It’s all so very real, and it takes a talented writer to make it so. 

If you saw the movie version and liked it, it won’t guarantee that you will like the novel.  The movie shows some humanity and humour in the characters, and although there is plenty of black humour in this novel, I could barely find a hint of humanity in it.  A junkie is a junkie, nothing else matters to them except for the next hit

What a wasted life.

Maxine

Breath ~ Tim Winton

In the beginning I was wondering if it was for me but I got pretty involved with the characters

"On the wild, lonely coast of Western Australia, two thrill-seeking and barely adolescent boys fall into the enigmatic thrall of veteran big-wave surfer Sando. Together they form an odd but elite trio. The grown man initiates the boys into a kind of Spartan ethos, a regimen of risk and challenge, where they test themselves in storm swells on remote and shark-infested reefs, pushing each other to the edges of endurance, courage, and sanity. But where is all this heading? Why is their mentor’s past such forbidden territory? And what can explain his American wife’s peculiar behavior? Venturing beyond all limits—in relationships, in physical challenge, and in sexual behavior—there is a point where oblivion is the only outcome. Full of Winton’s lyrical genius for conveying physical sensation, Breath is a rich and atmospheric coming-of-age tale from one of world literature’s finest storytellers."

Review from the Net

Read by Robyn S.

Divided Loyalties ~ Patricia Scanlan

Shauna and Greg's marriage is under pressure. She wants another baby. He doesn't. She also has to endure her obnoxious in-laws, 'The Freeloaders', Della, Eddie and their spoilt kids. They arrive at her home at the drop of a hat, stay as long as they like, and eat and drink all around them without lifting a finger to help. 

Shauna's glad to be moving abroad - she'll be free of them at long last. But three thousand miles won't stop the determined Della, free holidays in an exotic location. Perfect! Carrie, Shauna's sister, can't help feeling put upon. The burden of looking after their elderly, hypochondriac father rests on her and she's fed up of it. Is it too much to ask that the burden be shared? 

Resentment builds, even though she loves her siblings, Can Carrie put her foot down and stand up for herself? Bobby, the youngest, has a poisoned relationship with his father who blames him for the premature death of his wife. A bitter confrontation leaves them estranged. Can they ever settle their differences? Or are some rifts just to painful to resolve? The last Christmas the family got together was a disaster, but circumstances change. Can the family turn things around and finally put the past behind them as they prepare for another family gathering?

Robyn S.

I had to break the passion with 'the lost generation' - have I done it probably not.  But I have moved on for the moment.

Spirit of Progress ~ Steven Carroll

This was an audio book and even though it was written in a strange format I really enjoyed it.  The story started in 1977 then went back to 1946 covering several different people who seemingly had no relationship with each other.  As the story developed it turns out that they were all involved in the one story which touched them all along the way.

“A sleek high-speed train glides silently through the French countryside, bearing Michael, an Australian writer, and his travelling world of memory and speculation. Melbourne, 1946, calls to him: the pressure cooker of the city during World War II has produced a small creative miracle, and at this pivotal moment the lives of his newly married parents, a group of restless artists, a proud old woman with a tent for a home, a journalist, a gallery owner, a farmer and a factory developer irrevocably intersect. And all the while the Spirit of Progress, the locomotive of the new age, roars through their lives like time′s arrow, pointing to the future and the post-war world only some of them will enter."

Robyn S.

Heart of the Matter ~ Emily Griffin

Tessa Russo is the mother of two young children and the wife of a renowned pediatric surgeon. Despite her own mother's warnings, Tessa has recently given up her career to focus on her family and the pursuit of domestic happiness. From the outside, she seems destined to live a charmed life.

Valerie Anderson is an attorney and single mother to six-year-old Charlie-a boy who has never known his father. After too many disappointments, she has given up on romance-and even to some degree, friendships--believing that it is always safer not to expect too much.

Although both women live in the same Boston suburb, the two have relatively little in common aside from a fierce love for their children. But one night, a tragic accident causes their lives to converge in ways no one could have imagined.

In alternating, pitch-perfect points of view, Emily Giffin creates a moving, luminous story of good people caught in untenable circumstances. Each being tested in ways they never thought possible. 

Review from the Net.

Read by Robyn S.

Questions of Travel ~ Michelle de Kretser

This is a mesmerising literary novel. Questions of Travel charts two very different lives. Laura travels the world before returning to Sydney, where she works for a publisher of travel guides. Ravi dreams of being a tourist until he is driven from Sri Lanka by devastating events.

Around these two superbly drawn characters, a double narrative assembles an enthralling array of people, places and stories - from Theo, whose life plays out in the long shadow of the past, to Hana, an Ethiopian woman determined to reinvent herself in Australia.

Award-winning author Michelle de Kretser illuminates travel, work and modern dreams in this brilliant evocation of the way we live now. Wonderfully written, Questions of Travel is an extraordinary work of imagination - a trans-formative  very funny and intensely moving novel very difficult to put down every chapter brings new people.

Review from the Net

Read by Robyn S.

American Pastoral ~ Philip Roth

THIS IS an amazing novel! The emotional impact of it hit me really hard.

Seymour ‘Swede’ Levov is a non practicising Jew who seemed to have it all.  He was the all American boy with blonde good looks, athletic, kind and heir to the successful family glove manufacturing business.  He was also the childhood hero of reporter Nathan Zuckerman who was friends with the ‘Swede’s’ younger brother Jerry at school.  The promise of a good life was all apparent during their school days, and when Zuckerman meets up with him after many years, he can’t believe how good the ‘Swede’ still looks; he has an attractive wife, three smart sons and his calm exterior suggests a life with no worries.  So, when Zuckerman bumps into Jerry at their school re-union soon after, he is stunned to learn that the ‘Swede’ has died from metastasised prostate cancer and that he had had a first wife (the former Miss New Jersey no less) and a daughter whom he had never mentioned at their meeting.  Jerry is not surprised that he didn’t talk about them, and Zuckerman is compelled to delve into the history of this man; piecing together what he can from Jerry, his own knowledge of him from their school days and newspaper clippings.  What he finds is that beneath the perfect exterior was a man who had been emotionally ripped apart.

The backdrop of the novel is set during the Newark riots, the Vietnam War and Watergate.  It was a very tumultuous period that had a profound impact on the Levov family.  the ‘Swede’s’ teenage daughter Meredith, swept up in the anti Vietnam war campaign, brings her protests back to her home town of Old Rimrock by blowing up the local post office, killing one man.  Merry goes on the run and when the ‘Swede’ meets his daughter again she is living in squalor under an assumed name and is virtually unrecognisable.  She had been raped many times whilst in hiding, and the plump stuttering girl is replaced by a skeletal abomination who now follows an obscure religion which denounces washing and eating – for fear of killing living things.  Despite this, she admits that whilst on the run she made (and planted) more bombs resulting in the deaths of a further three people.

The ‘Swede’s’ life is deconstructed in this novel in an attempt to find that point in time in which he began to lose his daughter.  To try and pinpoint that moment when something he did caused her to take a wrong turn in life.  The need to know who influenced this upper middle class girl, because it is inconceivable that she could have made those decisions on her own when she had been given everything in life.

This novel is so powerful, yet beautifully written.  The scenes with the ‘Swede’ and his father discussing gloves, and the manufacture of gloves, were wonderful and the scenes where the ‘Swede’ thinks about key moments with Meredith are disturbing but identifiable.   Here is a man who has it all, and when something threatens to rock his perfect boat he is unable to deal with it.  He is unable to make the right decisions and take a stand, and when he decides to tell all to Nathan Zuckerman at their last meeting, he finds that he is unable to let go of that perfect exterior because he is the ‘Swede’.  Here is a man in turmoil, wracked with cancer, and yet all he can tell Zuckerman is how great his life is and how smart his boys are.

Philip Roth is a recent discovery for me.  I love the ‘Jewishness’ of his writing, and at the right moments he is exceedingly funny.  Recently he has shocked me with Sabbath’s Theatre, The Breast and The Humbling, tickled my funny bone with Portnoy’s Complaint and The Great American Novel and I truly felt the anxiety of the protagonist in Nemesis during a polio epidemic.  But, American Pastoral will stand out for me as being a novel with so much raw emotion that I felt completely drained by the time I finished it.

Maxine

What Maisie Knew ~ Henry James

What Maisie Knew represents one of James's finest reflections on the rites of passage from wonder to knowledge, and the question of their finality. 

The child of violently divorced parents, Maisie Farange opens her eyes on a distinctly modern world.  Somewhat based on James own life of being left by his parents as they moved around the globe.

Robyn S.

Everybody Was so Young ~ Amanda Vaill

Story of the lost generation.Gerald and Sara Murphy.. the toast of pre-war Europe. 

This is just an amazing story about the people who were rich enough to live in Antibes at the beginning of the Riviera's emergence.  So rich they could help many of\ their friends including Cole Porter, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald with money and support.  They then continued these relationships to the demise of them all.  

They did, however, have a tragic life losing two of their children to tuberculosis and meningitis.  I was completely fascinated by their story and how their lives connected them all.

Robyn S.

A Moveable Feast ~ Ernest Hemmingway

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway’s most beloved works. Since Hemingway’s personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined and debated the changes made to the text before publication. Now, this special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author intended it to be published.

Featuring a personal Foreword by Patrick Hemingway, Ernest’s sole surviving son, and an Introduction by the editor and grandson of the author, Sean Hemingway, this new edition also includes a number of unfinished, never-before-published Paris sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son, Jack, and his first wife Hadley. Also included are irreverent portraits of other literary luminaries, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ford Maddox Ford, and insightful recollections of Hemingway’s own early experiments with his craft.

Sure to excite critics and readers alike, the restored edition of A Moveable Feast brilliantly evokes the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the unbridled creativity and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.

Review from the Net.

Read by Robyn S.

The Captain, The Avaeste and the King ~ J M Bardsley

I wasn't going to read another indie novel this year, but how could I resist the offer from one of my book club members to read this novel by a local author, especially when she said it was in the same vein as The Chronicles of Narnia.

Ashton, the 8th son of the King of Aeloran, Mathis St Almeric, is searching the islands of the Aethermarinus for the Silvertip Sedge - a plant whose unique properties can save the life of his dying father.  Ashton's ship the Aeveste can travel beyond the ether but it is on a different plane that he kidnaps a crew that will prove their worth and loyalty during their many adventures.

The Avaeste's First Mate Morris - a swamp monster - is one of Ashton's most loyal friends, along with the ship's Engineer (a goblin called Dew) and Santee (a tiny magical sprite).  These four friends learn much about each other and the crew, during their dangerous voyage, and learn that nothing is always what it seems.

All heroes have a nemesis lurking is the background and this comes in the guise of the evil Calegra Camba Descada.  Descada and his crew will stop at nothing to get hold of the rare Silvertip Sedge destroying everything and anyone in their path.....

I thought that this was a very imaginative story and I loved the imagery of a sailing ship traveling through the heavens. It didn't take me long to like the characters and the narrative style, and I thought that there were some great chapter headings such as the opening 'The surprising use of blackcurrant juice' and 'The taming of the crew'.  There's nothing overtly nasty in the telling of the story, even with regards to the bad guys, which gives a very pleasant feeling to the whole novel.

At over 350 pages it is fairly long for the target audience, but the story develops really well and I think that it will be enjoyed by young and old alike.

Maxine

On first reading Sabbath's Theatre I was shocked at how licentious and explicit it was. Mickey Sabbath is definitely someone you would not want in your life, but the writing is excellent and despite the subject matter I really enjoyed it. 

Mickey Sabbath is a sad old lecher who defines himself by the women he sleeps with and when his long time lover dies he is lost.  Sabbath tries to make sense of death and dying and the fact that he has left nothing of value to show for his sixty odd years on earth. 

There are several significant events with affect Mickey's life, the main one being the death of his older and much loved brother during the war, and the disappearance of his first wife.  When his brother dies it is like his immediate family dies along with him, and life as he knows it will never be the same again.  

As a young man Mickey was a successful, if not indecent, puppeteer and it is his deviant sexual exploits that dominate the theme of the novel but, for me, the most poignant and beautiful written scene in the book is when Sabbath visits an elderly uncle.  Sabbath seems caring and considerate of the man's well being, but he considers killing the man when he recognises some family items in the house, which include a box of his dead brother's belongings.  Sabbath must have this box at all costs.

I think the older you are the more you will appreciate this novel, and whilst I read a few other Roth novels for this month's author theme, Sabbath's Theatre is the one I think about the most.

Maxine

American Pastoral ~ Philip Roth

This intriguing novel, in which the life of Jewish American Seymour Levov and his affluent middle-class family is painstakingly traced against the background of the American Dream and its unraveling during the social upheaval of the Vietnam War, takes the form of a story posthumously told to (and by) Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s alter-ego, during a class reunion dominated by aging men plagued by the dread and the reality of prostate cancer. Levov’s unloving brother tells Zuckerman that ‘golden boy’ Seymour’s seemingly ideal life as sporting and military hero disintegrated into grief and horror and that, after re-marrying and having two sons, died of prostate cancer.

Seymour Levov, universally known as ‘Swede’ because of his blond and powerful body, was the son of a renowned glove manufacturer who duly passed the thriving and profitable business on to Swede; the Newark factory was a hallmark of quality American craftsmanship and ethical practice, and Swede and his family lived the Dream with a country estate, powerful social life etc.  His wife, former state beauty queen Dawn, was a devout Catholic who strove constantly to prove she was not just a pretty face, successfully breeding and showing cattle and being the perfect wife. Their only child, Merry, apparently lived the ideal childhood and wanted for nothing  - except that she had a bad stutter, which defied all parental efforts at curing. A therapist infuriated the parents by claiming that Merry’s stutter was the result of being stifled by her family environment.  Stifled, perhaps; but in her increasingly rebellious adolescence Merry became intensely involved in the anti-Vietnam war campaign. Her horrified parents eventually forbade her visits to New York City where they felt she was being badly influenced – so 16-year-old Merry stayed home in the rural idyll, and set off a bomb that wrecked the local Post Office and killed a well-known and loved local citizen. Afterwards she disappeared without trace and never could the police or her parents track her down.

These events and the resulting disintegration of the Levov family are powerfully told by Roth, in some of the most amazing prose I have read. It is a personalised account of the political and social civil war that rocked America in the 60’s as LBJ’s administration tried to bomb Vietnam and its neighbours into submission –families broken up as their children protested against the violence, and refused the authoritarianism of their parents, businesses destroyed by racial riots, and a bewildered older generation who could not cope –as Swede’s father despairs “I remember when kids went home and did homework, not out rioting and killing”.

Incredibly, the whole disintegration and alienation is reflected in a dinner party at the Levov’s home, where about 100 pages of the story takes place and old beliefs and friendships are shattered. It is searing stuff, if a bit wordy at times, and the ending is a despairing wonder at how such a good man could have suffered such traumas.

The format gets wearying at times (get to the point, please! I found myself thinking at times), and Roth as always paints a confronting and graphic view of sexual events, but altogether it is a powerful and memorable book. Not surprisingly, it won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize and featured in “Time” magazines ‘All-time greatest novels’. It is not for the faint-hearted.

Helen

Nemesis ~ Philip Roth

In the "stifling heat of equatorial Newark," a terrifying epidemic is raging, threatening the children of the New Jersey city with maiming, paralysis, lifelong disability, and even death.  

At the centre of Nemesis is a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect it has on a closely knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children. Bucky Cantor is a vigorous, dutiful 23 year-old playground director, a javelin thrower and weightlifter, who is devoted to his charges and disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. Focusing on Cantor’s dilemmas as polio begins to ravage his playground - and on the everyday realities he faces – the story leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: the fear, the panic, the anger, the bewilderment, the suffering, and the pain. Roth does an utterly convincing job of evoking the terror that polio creates over the frightened and bewildered Newark community. (The vaccine was licensed in 1962.) The powerlessness of parents, the desperate lack of information, the speed and severity of the disease are all conveyed with affecting veracity as – seemingly at random – polio sentences child after child to crippling or to death.

"How," thinks Cantor at the funeral of one of the boys from the playground, "could there be forgiveness – let alone hallelujahs – in the face of such lunatic cruelty?" Moving between the smouldering, malodorous streets of besieged Newark and Indian Hill, a pristine children’s summer camp high in the Poconos - whose "mountain air was purified of all contaminants", Roth depicts a decent, energetic man with the best intentions struggling in his own private war against the epidemic. Nemesis is not really about Cantor's war with polio but his war with himself: the war between a man's idea of duty and decency and the shirking of this for the facilitation of his more immediate happiness.

When Cantor abandons his post at the polio-riddled playground for the mountain summer camp where his fiancee Marcia is working, his conscience is savagely infected by the idea that he has not done the honourable thing. In the end, things get so bad physically and spiritually for Cantor that "the only way to save a remnant of his honour was in denying himself everything he had ever wanted for himself." This is the true emotional core of the novel. And this is the subject, above all others, that most galvanises Roth's genius: a man divided against himself.

Nemesis is Roth's 32nd book.

(From the web)

Di 

Caffeine and Chapters wish Robyn C a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Caffeine and Chapters Social Book Club

The Cake!

Yum!

We never go hungry at Caffeine and Chapters!

Life Begins ~ Amanda Brookfield

Charlotte is approaching her 40th birthday, and not finding life particularly easy. Her divorce from Martin has just been finalised, but she finds it difficult to see him with his new partner. And their 13-year-old son Sam is having a tough time at school, no doubt related to the breakup of his parents' marriage.

Charlotte would really like to make a new start so she puts her house on the market, and finds the house of her dreams... she also meets the estate agent Tim who seems to think that Charlotte may be the woman of his dreams. Her rather lost demeanor also attracts the attentions of her best friend's husband. Then her mother - whom she has always found difficult - has an accident...

While the plot revolves around Charlotte and her gradual acceptance of her circumstances, especially all the misconceptions she expected which were often not really there.  There are a lot of subplots in this book, and such a big cast of people that I often found myself forgetting who was whom. Nice easy read though I read it over a week,  the twists and turns got a bit long winded but on the whole enough suspense and mistakes made it interesting.

Still, I gradually warmed to the book and found it quite difficult to put down as I neared the end. Some of it was predictable, but there were a few surprises along the way; each chapter begins with a brief, first person account from Charlotte's past, in italics to distinguish it from the main text. I quite liked this device and felt it helped me to get to know her better. Once she had come to grips with the truth these little adjuncts to the story disappeared.  The one person I never liked was the estate agent.

Robyn S.

This Side of Paradise ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

This romantic and witty first novel, was written when the author was only twenty-three years old. This semi-autobiographical story of the handsome, indulged, and idealistic Princeton student Amory Blaine received critical raves and catapulted Fitzgerald to instant fame. 

Now, readers can enjoy the newly edited, authorized version of this early classic of the Jazz Age, based on Fitzgerald's original manuscript. In this definitive text, This Side of Paradise captures the rhythms and romance of Fitzgerald's youth and offers a poignant portrait of the "Lost Generation."

Robyn S.

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald ~ Therese Anne Fowler

When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the “ungettable” Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner’s, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.

What comes, here at the dawn of the Jazz Age, is un-imagined attention and success and celebrity that will make Scott and Zelda legends in their own time. Everyone wants to meet the dashing young author of the scandalous novel—and his witty, perhaps even more scandalous wife. Zelda bobs her hair, adopts daring new fashions, and revels in this wild new world. Each place they go becomes a playground: New York City, Long Island, Hollywood, Paris, and the French Riviera—where they join the endless party of the glamorous, sometimes doomed Lost Generation that includes Ernest Hemingway, Sara and Gerald Murphy, and Gertrude Stein.

Everything seems new and possible. Troubles, at first, seem to fade like morning mist. But not even Jay Gatsby’s parties go on forever. Who is Zelda, other than the wife of a famous—sometimes infamous—husband? How can she forge her own identity while fighting her demons and Scott’s, too? With brilliant insight and imagination, Therese Anne Fowler brings us Zelda’s irresistible story as she herself might have told it. 

Robyn S.

The Stolen Crown ~ Susan Higgenbotham

This  is told from the alternating POV of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham and his wife Katherine Woodville. Henry (Harry) was married as a young child to Katherine, younger sister of Elizabeth Woodville - Queen of England and wife to Edward IV (no small feat for those *grasping* Woodvilles). When they grow older Harry and Katherine are able to establish a strong marriage, but Harry wants more power and position at court than Edward is willing to give him and he chafes at the bit, which only exacerbates his dilemma  Harry is on firmer ground with Edward's younger brother Richard and when Edward dies and Richard thinks he can take it all....... I had always wondered what had made Buckingham turn from Richard and this book does give an answer however it is not able to provide any more proof than other historical writers.

This period and it's history is much too complicated to try to spell out in a review - either you know the basics going in and don't need a rehash or if you don't I'd just have your eyes glazing over trying to explain it all. What I enjoyed most about this one was the *fresh* look at the period from the POV of Harry and Kate and how his rebellion against Richard III might have come about. I just loved Kate's voice and her dry sense of humor, as well as seeing them both as children and then adults caught up in a political storm beyond their control. 

I loved the way the author brought some humor into the York/Lancaster differences, as well as busting some of those commonly held myths - Katherine being much older than Harry as well as the Woodville women being practicing witches. 

Impeccably researched, the author mentions in her notes what is fact, what is surmised from the known facts as well as those mysteries that will probably never be solved like the Princes in the Tower.

 

I really enjoyed it.

Robyn  S.

The Making of the Tudor Dynasty ~ Ralph A Griffiths

Tudor monarchs have consistently attracted more popular and scholarly attention than any other royal dynasty in British history. The peculiar origins of the Tudor family and the improbable saga of their rise and fall and rise again in the centuries before the Battle of Bosworth have, however, received far less attention. 

Based on both published and manuscript sources from Britain and France, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty tries to set the record straight by providing the only coherent and authoritative account of the ancestors of the Tudor royal family from their beginnings in North Wales at the start of the 13th century, through royal English and French connections in the 15th century, to Henry Tudor's victory at Bosworth Field in 1485.  

This book is quoted many times in most of what I have been reading.  I guess I am becoming entrenched in Tudor History.  I have read so much recently but it all comes down to reading another one just to make sure.  Most of the authors begin with saying that nothing was recorded about this period so it is based on their investigations from the same historical evidence (minimal) as many others have used.  Then it is recorded from their own perceptions of where the participants were at any given occasion, often with the women they don't really even know that.  So getting to the actual truth about anything, (shown even by finding the remains of Richard III which was  based on centuries of knowing nothing until someone spent decades on finding the exact, spot) is probably minimal.

I thoroughly enjoyed it anyway.

Roybn S.

The Torrent ~ Amanda Gearing

For the May theme of Disasters, I read "The Torrent, Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley, January 2011" by Amanda Gearing. 

This is a non fictional account of the terrible flooding disaster, based upon many interviews with survivors of the ordeal. It covers flooding from Spring Bluff right through to Grantham and then the rebuilding efforts.

I was so moved by how each individual did everything they could to help one another. Strangers, neighbours, everyone. It is sad, it is moving and it is gripping. I recommend it to others as a way to learn more about this ordeal. 

Bianca

Dr. Zhivago - by Boris Pasternak

Given a theme of romance for February, the month of Valentine’s Day, my mind immediately raced to this story. I saw the movie in the 1960s when it was first released, and was completely enthralled by the scope of the story, the wonderful chemistry between Omar Sharif, Julie Christie and Geraldine Chaplin: not only their physical beauty but their powerful acting through the ranges of intense love and joy to utter tragedy against the background of WWI and the early days of the Russian Revolution in all the blind, misguided cruelty that demanded loyalty or death of a long-repressed people.

The author, Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), poet, translator, and philosopher, suffered all of the repression that the Lenin/Stalin regimes used on non-conformist academics. ‘Dr. Zhivago’ was one of only two novels he wrote, but he had a large body of poetry, translation of classics and general academic literature, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, much to the fury of the Soviet government. The book, smuggled out and published first in Italy in 1958, was banned in Russia until the late 1980s.

I was warned that the movie is a lot better than the book; I would argue that the movie is a lot easier to digest! It seems that in this book as in other Russian writing I’ve read, the story is so multi-layered, so detailed and with so many political and social issues explored, that there is no such thing as a simple Russian story. I spent some time backtracking to trace characters and events that resurface throughout, so it is a challenging read.

That said, I loved its scope and incredibly rich descriptive language. Zhivago, a middle-class academic and medical doctor by profession, is a kind, thoughtful, distractable man, happily married to his childhood sweetheart Tonya, a teacher of similar background, sweet, devoted and politically naïve. Lara, a nurse, from a working-class background but well-educated and as pragmatic as she is beautiful. As a schoolgirl she was seduced by a middle-aged, amoral wealthy lawyer, Komarovsky, who is obsessed with her and re-enters her life throughout the book. Interestingly, while the movie depicted Lara as the victim of this affair, the book makes it clear that she was quite ambivalent about him; hating his superior power but at the same time, albeit reluctantly: “Kamarovsky’s philandering in a carriage …or in an opera box in full view of the audience pleased and challenged her by its mixture of secrecy and daring.”

Even when Lara in desperation tried to murder him, it was Komarovsky’s intervention that spared her from arrest. Pasternak shows real insight into the nature of an exploitive sexual relationship not often discussed in the 1960s. Years later, she blurts out to Zhivago:   “…I discovered life much too early, I was made to discover it…from the very worst side – a cheap, distorted version of it – through the eyes of …one of those useless, self-satisfied egoists who took advantage of everything and allowed themselves whatever they fancied.”

Lara married Pasha Antipov, a shy and intense fellow graduate who worshipped her, and they moved to the provincial Urals to teach; she loved their idyllic life and adored their baby daughter, but he felt constrained by her devotion and domesticity despite his love for her, and joined the army in the face of her frantic pleas.

All of the main characters in their own way are initially captivated and excited by the early signs of revolutionary thought and bold, hitherto unheard-of protest actions against the repression of Tsarist Russia and the futile destruction of WWI:  “…Mother Russia is on the move…The revolution broke out willy-nilly, like a breath that’s been held too long…socialism is the sea, and all these separate streams, these private, individual revolutions are flowing into it - the sea of life, of life in its own right.”

However, as they go about their lives, each of them comes to the tragic realisation that the ‘temporary discomforts and hardships’ inherent in radical change, have become cemented into an unrelenting and often fatal struggle for mere survival; that they have exchanged the pitiless repression of tsarism for the ruthless, paranoid machine of communism. Pasternak’s bleak, unsparing writing brings stark focus to the human misery and degradation of a population as countless thousands suffer and die by deliberate murder, hopeless mismanagement, starvation and exposure. Family members just disappear without any hope of tracing their fate.

Against this background, the love story of Zhivago and Lara survives as they are thrown together first in a wartime hospital, after which he returns by means of a tortuous train journey to his adoring wife and son in Moscow. Zhivago has longed for “…this coming home to your family, to yourself, this renewal of life” but becomes depressed with the relentless grind of scrounging to survive Moscow’s bitter winter, the endless arguing between tsarists and pro-revolutionaries who have seen nothing beyond their own relatively untouched city, and his attempts to be an effective doctor while disease becomes rampant. After almost dying of typhus, he takes his family to live hundreds of miles away in an old family home in Yuryatin in the Ural mountains. The description of their journey in a freight truck, and Zhivago’s unwitting confrontation with Lara’s husband (now named Strelnikov, a high-ranking revolutionary soldier) is like an extreme story of your worst journey. When they finally disembark, to “…the silence, emptiness and tidiness of the station…not to be surrounded by a milling, cursing throng “, the long-suffering Tonya sees the greenery and flowers of a birch forest, cries out ‘How lovely’ and breaks down in tears.

The family settles happily in to their home with all the hard work and help from neighbours and old acquaintances recorded in Zhivago’s diary; he has renounced medicine and is writing to his heart’s content, Tonya falls pregnant. Then, on a trip to Yuryatin’s library he meets Lara again and finds she is living in the town. This is where they both recognise their mutual love. Zhivago, torn with guilt at his adultery and resolving to end the affair forever, rides to see her – he is kidnapped on the road by a band of revolutionary soldiers and taken away to ‘serve the proletariat’ by treating their endless casualties. His family never sees him again.

Years later Zhivago and Lara are reunited and spend some time together just being lovers, happy together in the middle of the unending danger and privation of Soviet rule as the civil war against the so-called counter-revolutionary ‘White Russians’ grinds on. I think their love story is moving, both in its intensity and their honest insight into their relationship and their continuing emotional ties to their marriage partners.

Ultimately there is no happy romantic ending to the story, and all the main characters are separated into their separate tragedies – a sad but realistic result in the context of the historical context. To me though, it is still a powerful love story. Overall, I love this book as a gripping work of history with a very human, very moving interpretation that probably could only have been written by a contemporary Russian academic.  He was there.

Helen

Thursbitch ~ Alan Garner

I have been meaning to read Thursbitch for quite some time, but as I had read somewhere that it was difficult to read it made its way to the back of my list. When I finally got it from the library I was astonished to see that it was only 158 pages long.

I will ignore references to ‘difficult reads’ in future as I may never have bothered with this fantastic little novella.  It was wonderful, I couldn't put it down, and I wished so much that I was there in the valley of Thursbitch, which was brought to life so vividly by Garner.

There are two intersecting narratives, one set in the 18th century and another set in the present day.  At first the reader is tantalised by a mystery – in 1755 a packman by the name of John Turner is found dead in a snow storm with the print of a woman’s shoe by his side. Then we are introduced to Ian and Sal, who we believe are married, or are lovers, as they trek through Thursbitch discussing the geological formations.  We are tantalised by the names of the standing stones, the eerie atmosphere, and unexplained sights and sounds.  As the story progresses, you find yourself turning back to the first few pages to read them again and it all starts to make sense; though Ian and Sal are not what you thought they were, and the reason why they return to the valley leaves an emotional charge which is very affecting.

I loved the way this was written, the dialogue for the scenes set in the 18th Century are written in the local Cheshire dialect of the time, and the dialogue between Ian and Sal feels so natural and real it’s not like you are reading a novel at all.

Outstanding, I loved it!

Maxine

The Bell ~ Iris Murdoch

This is my third Iris Murdoch read.  I thoroughly enjoyed the satirical A Severed Head and the hilarious The Sea, The Sea, so when I picked up The Bell and read the blurb I was expecting a comedy of sorts set in a religious community.  What I got, however, was a totally different kind of read with The Bell being more about dysfunctional people, flawed relationships and torn emotions. 

The novel is set in Gloucestershire at Imber Abbey, where a small lay Anglican community live and work simply.  The story opens with Dora Greenfield, a wayward mischievous woman who is returning to her marriage after an affair.  Dora’s husband Paul, an older man, loves her but no longer respects her and though she is frightened of him and his bullying ways she is more afraid of him when they are apart.  Paul is conducting research at Imber Abbey and when Dora arrives she feels like a fish out of water as whatever she does seems to contradict with what the community is about.

The novel then switches focus to the head of the community, and owner of the Imber Community house, Michael Meade.  Originally a teacher, he once had dreams of becoming a priest but these were destroyed by his affection for a boy called Nick Fawley a student at the school where he taught, and who told all to the head of the school to Michael’s shame.

The boy becomes a troubled man; a raging alcoholic who constantly threatens suicide, and who comes to stay at the lodge located across the lake from the Imber Community house.  Nick’s twin sister Catherine is a revered member of the community as she is preparing to enter the Abby as a nun (though this appears to be against her will) and it is only for this reason that Nick and his dog Murphy are tolerated – at a distance.  A situation that is torturous for Michael.

Another main character in the novel is a student called Toby Gashe who has come for a stay at Imber before going to Oxford. Michael, during a lapse of self control, kisses Toby briefly on the lips.  The story then follows Michael’s mental torment as he questions whether he has damaged Toby in the same way that he believes he has damaged Nick.  Toby is confused and upset at first but he holds no animosity towards Michael as he genuinely likes him, but to prove to himself that he is not ‘that way inclined’ he pursues Dora.

All of this takes place during an important time at Imber – the community is awaiting the delivery of a new bell.  The old bell had a legend associated with it, and the telling of it captivates Dora’s imagination so when Toby informs Dora that whilst diving in the lake he believes he has found a large bell Dora hatches a plan.  She and Toby will raise the old bell from the lake and exchange it for the new bell thereby creating a ‘miracle’ at the unveiling.  This is a major task, but with Toby’s engineering knowledge and the help of a tractor they almost succeed……..

Dora’s character was at first charming and fun, but as the novel reaches its climax you realise that yes, one of the characters was correct when they called her a ‘bitch’.  She is very self centred, using her charms only to her own advantage, and has no regard whatsoever on how the ‘miracle’ may effect those of the community.

My favourite characterisation was that of Michael Meade and the sensitive way that Murdoch dealt with his homosexuality. Consider, this novel was written in 1958 when homosexuals were whispered about, and called ‘pansies’ or ‘queers’.  Murdoch does not write of Michaels feelings towards Nick or Toby as dirty or twisted but just as a different kind of love.  It was beautifully handled.

There is something mystical about the whole novel; it has a certain haunting atmosphere about it, the dysfunctional community members, Michael’s recurring nightmare, and the legend of that ominous bell lurking in the background.  A great read indeed.

Maxine

“Kenneth Branagh” by Mark White

Mark White says that he wrote the book about Kenneth Branagh ‘ to look at the way in which his work had been received, particularly the phenomenon of 'Branagh-bashing' in England. There is so much trash in our popular culture now - so many people famous for essentially doing nothing, for being good at nothing. And it seemed to me that here was someone, because he had achieved so much at an early age and had carried out an important public service in enlarging the audience interested in Shakespeare, who was in fact worth celebrating but had instead become a target for an array of rather vicious attacks. I could not understand how this state of affairs had come to exist. I wrote this book in an attempt to find out why."  

From humble beginnings in the Belfast docks, Kenneth Branagh has driven himself to dizzy heights of accomplishment. By 21 he had starred in a West End hit. At 23 he was playing Henry V for the Royal Shakespeare Company. By 26 he had established his own theatre company. Shortly after that he directed and starred in a movie version of Henry V, the start of a series of Shakespeare films that resulted in him being viewed by many as the leading interpreter of Shakespeare in the world. No actor of his generation achieved so much so rapidly.  
 

This book is a great read for Branagh fans and gives a fascinating insight into the man and his personality. It’s not paean to his greatness but a solid look at what drives him and the flaws in his character that have driven, and sometimes impeded, his career and relationships. My only criticism is its style – first he did this, then he did that - the book goes into great depth about the making of each (and every one) of Branagh’s plays and films, which can be a bit tedious.

 

Di

Don’t Look Now by Daphne Du Maurier

Am I the only person alive who didn’t know that Daphne Du Maurier wrote ‘ Don’t Look Now’ (the basis of the superlatively brilliant movie with Donald Sutherland) and ‘The Birds’ (which was turned into the great Alfred Hitchcock movie)??  

‘Don’t Look Now’ is a collection of Du Maurier’s short stories and is absolutely entrancing. It contains some of the most compelling and creepy short stories you are likely to come across. One review comments, ‘That whooshing sound you hear is your mind being sucked into the brilliant black depths of Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic imagination, the instant you begin reading the eponymous first story in Don’t Look Now….’  

The book plays on our worst nightmares – an encounter with psychic sisters and a small, dead child appearing in the streets of Venice; a strange and sinister change in the weather and the behaviour of the birds that you’ve been watching all your life; a woman emerging from eye surgery to discover that her new eyes allow her to see people as they really are – or do they?; a dalliance with a beautiful stranger offers something more sinister than the prospect of a broken heart.  

These stories show Du Maurier as an astute student of human behaviour and physchology, with a keen eye for what sends that small chill up your spine and a brilliant purveyor of the stories that keep lurking at the back of your mind long after you have put the book down.

 

Di