Elma Turner book chat August
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.
Set in a fictionalProvençal village, an old man Eduard Tartuffe and his young niece live very quietly in a rundown house in the country. Eduard had been a contemporary and friend of Cézanne when they both painted in Paris but had fallen out with him. We discover why near the end of the novel. Joseph is a failed artist in Paris who has moved onto writing for an Art journal and is curious to write a story about Tartuffe & writes to him asking to visit. After some months he receives a reply saying ‘Viens’ ( come) only. The story begins when he arrives at the recluse’s home. A slow burn, we learn more about Ettie the niece who does everything for the painter. The descriptions of Provence in summer – the heat, the sound of cicadas, the food are certainly intoxicating but the story evolves into something more compelling as we move through the novel.
John le Carré The pigeon tunnel: stories of my life
It has been a while since I’d read a Le Carré novel. This is a memoir reflecting on his time in British intelligence during the Cold War and research he did for his many spy novels thereafter. His relationship ( fraught) with his father is so well described. I found this an absorbing, sometimes funny and fascinating glimpse of the man and experience in many countries and the material for the novels. Enjoyed it so much I’ve read two more of his novels ( equally enjoyable).
Claire Keegan So late in the day
It’s Friday night and Cathal faces a long weekend as he sits and thinks about Sabine on the bus ride home from Dublin. The significance of the date is revealed. My introduction to Keegan and couldn’t wait to read more.
Claire Keegan Small things like these
It’s 1985 in a small Irish town in the lead up to Christmas. Bill, a coal and timber merchant, is doing his rounds and encountering silences of people controlled by the Church and convent on the hill. Felt I knew him.
Elly Griffiths The post-script Murders
Set in a seaside town this novel concerns a series of murders that are investigated by, DS Harbinder Kaur, of the West Sussex police ( 2nd in the series) and the deceased’s friends and carer. Good characterisation. This is a most enjoyable and fast-paced murder mystery, complete with interesting and quirky characters, red herrings, a road trip, and romance.
Prequel to Chocolat, this is the story of Vianne Rocher 6 years before she opens her chocolaterie in a small French village. We learn she had an itinerant life with her mother who was afraid of ‘ the man in black’. Once her mother dies, Vianne becomes a waitress in Marseille and learns how to make chocolate and becomes the centre of a growing conspiracy..
Doctor Matti Lovelock and her triplets live in an old amusement park ‘Wonderland’ owned by her father(This was a real place in Wellington in 1907).Grieving woman ( Marie Curie) arrives to stay. Loved the rhythm of the writing.
Historical fiction. Set in the present. The narrator is an Indian book dealer in his 50sin NYC. He pays an annual visit to Kolkata and learns about the legend of the snake goddess who wanted a gun merchant to build a shrine for her and when he didn’t, he lost his money and pirates took his boat. The narrator, Dean, goes to visit the now built shrine on the border of Bangladesh and India and becomes curious about the symbols. Other strands in the novel include natural and man-made disasters and a romance. Felt there was too much research stuffed into the novel and too many coincidences.
A story told from 4 viewpoints with Miles the narrator who locks himself in a bedroom during a dinner party and won’t come out. Satirises wealthy home renovators, the media, schools, and hospitals. Enjoyed it but felt I missed a lot and need to read again.
I am shocked this won the Booker prize for fiction in 2007.Nine surviving children of the Hegarty family gather in Dublin for the wake of their brother Liam who has suicided. When Liam was a small boy, he and his sister Kitty went to stay in a Dublin neighbourhood called Broadstone, and both suffer at the hands of their grandmother's landlord. The novel explores the relationship between memory and truth .
A girl turns up at a family gathering and announces that she is a daughter of their late father, hence a half-sister. The mother is devastated, develops into a crime thriller. Good story.
Agatha Christie Death on the Nile
One of Christie’s better mysteries written in 1937.The dozen characters are all suspected in the first murder of Lynette Doyle, an heiress. Too many coincidences. Cosy read.
A writer for the Guardian, Solnit’s writing is beautiful. Author of several books. Here she writes of Orwell’s passion for the natural world. He planted many roses in his Hertfordshire garden and later tended a 17 acres productive farm on the Scottish island of Jura despite having TB which eventually killed him.
Julian Borger I seek a kind person
When the author was 14, his father committed suicide., He was one of the Jewish children who escaped Vienna in 1938 when adverts were being put in the Manchester Guardian in the UK seeking homes for children. At 13 his father was shipped off to a foster family, but the trauma stayed with him. A family memoir of grief, courage, and hope.. Very well-written true story.
A challenging mystery/satire. Set in Money, Mississippi. Two white men and a horribly mutilated black boy are found murdered then other similar murders start occurring all over the county. The police are perplexed. Very black comedy but funny. The language is challenging but it’s as good as the novel James. Very original. Brings in the history of lynching.
Albert Black, known as the 'jukebox killer', was only 20 when he was convicted of murdering another young man in a fight at a milk bar in Auckland on 26 July 1955. His crime fuelled growing moral panic about teenagers, and he was to hang less than five months later, the second-to-last person to be executed in New Zealand. One of the 10lb Irish immigrants.
Fiona Kidman All the way to Summer
Short stories of love and longing. A feminist icon in the 1980s, this volume brings her stories together plus new and previously uncollected. The final stories are about her own love and moving especially the Jack and Jill story about her own husband’s death.
Australian noir, set in the 1970s in small town Queensland in a village where the men rule the roost, drink a lot and the women stay at home. 16-year-old Janet goes missing. Her grieving mother is desperate to find the body . Normally it’s the time for the sugar cane fields would be burnt off . An unpleasant read.
Elif Shafak There are rivers in the sky
The novel traces the lives of three people in different time periods with their link, the River Tigris and Thames. Ancient times in Mesopotamia, Victorian London, 2014, the ISIS invasion of Syria in 2014 and then 2018 a hydrologist living in a houseboat on the Thames. A gifted storyteller but felt the links to each character a bit forced. The quality of writing was excellent, however.
