Elma Turner book chat - December
Bookchat is a place where we get together to talk about books we have recently read. Come along and tell us about what you have been reading, or just come to hear what titles other people have enjoyed. We meet on the second Tuesday of the month from 10:30am in Rūma Mānuka.
Here's a roundup of what we discussed in December.
Lisa Wingate Before we were yours
Based on a real story . Georgia Tann ran the Tennessee Children’s Home Society between 1920s to 1950. Tann stole children of poor parents and sold the children to rich movie stars who couldn’t conceive. Many children who weren’t adopted out were abused and/or murdered. This is a fictionalised account with the main character Avery trying to find her family’s roots which leads her to uncover the truth. A scary book
Michael Gill Himalayan hospitals: Sir Edmund Hillary’s Everest legacy
This is the story of the hospitals Hillary built – Khunde in 1966 and Phaplu in 1975. They were staffed by volunteer Doctors and their partners from NZ and Canada until they were eventually handed over to Sherpa doctors. Each chapter is written by the doctors. Reading this felt very personal as I had trekked there and stayed in Khunde hospital with my husband and met the doctors and sherpas mentioned in the book. A lovely book.
Really enjoyed this novel set in 1970s Wellington . about a woman who as wife and mother, dreamed of having solitude and ‘a room of one’s own’ like Virginia Woolf’s famous essay.
Sara Hussein has just landed at LA airport after a conference when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA's algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. She’s put in a retention centre initially told it’ll be for 21 days, but it becomes months. She meets many other women in there all being retained for on the surface hard to explain reasons. Although this is set in the future it feels very real, timely, intense, and scary.
This is a stand-alone thriller. Charming surgeon Marcus Valentine has a family and top job in the hospital, but he’s not satisfied. One morning while driving to work he nearly hits a jogger who bears a close resemblance to someone who when a teenager, had rejected him. He becomes obsessed and by chance meets her at a colleague’s party. He begins to stalk her. His infatuation becomes dangerous and there are some terrifying psychological scenes, especially in the hospital. Wonderful psychological thriller writing.
I listened to the audiobook with Anh Do reading it which made it a very immediate experience. Anh Do is a comedian, author of dozens of children’s books and painter ( finalist in the Archibald Prize several times) . He and his family were Vietnamese refugees and his telling of their experience in a Malaysian camp and voyage by leaking boat & being attacked by pirates is incredible. His optimism is wonderful. He now lives in Sydney
Trent Dalton Gravity let me go
Australian author brought up by feral hippy parents so knows that culture very well. He works as a journalist especially for unresolved crimes.
The chief protagonist, Noah is being fed an unresolved story through his letterbox. Set in the Suburbs of Brisbane. Dalton’s stylistic ability to capture the zeitgeist and understand his characters and why they behave as they do is remarkable.
‘A joy to read on a relaxing afternoon’.( Jacqueline Wilson ) Gail is 61, divorced and teacher at a girl’s school. It is the day before her daughter’s wedding and three events occur
Gail hears she will be passed over for a promotion; her ex-husband Max arrives with a rescue cat and wants to stay in her spare room for the next few days. He’s outgoing, messy and very different from Gail; Debbie the fiancée arrives in tears as she has learnt of some infidelity by soon to be married fiancé . A great Summer read
The author is London born to Bengali parents and now lives in the US. She has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. This novel draws on her own experience of the conflict between Bengali heritage and growing up in the US. Ashima and Ashoke have a baby - they agree the grandmother in India should name but she has a stroke so unable to so they register him under the pet name Gogol as the father likes Russian literature. Once Gogol is older the parents reregister his name Nikhil and Gogol won’t respond to it until he’s at university when he calls himself Nikhil Gogol. We follow his life through two romances and his father’s death to when he marries a Bengali woman to after it ends and he starts reading Gogol short stories.
