Elma Turner book chat February
There is no set book or need to register, just come along and chat to others about what you've been reading lately.
We meet at the Elma Turner Library on the second Tuesday of each month, 10.30am.
Tasmanian writer. His memoir growing up in wet NW Tasmania written in the style of talking to a friend, a bit like stream of consciousness with no structure but it becomes clear at the end. So good I will buy it
Mark Twain The adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Read as I wait for James as a long holds list. Interesting to get a feel for attitudes of the time especially towards’ coloured people’. Surprised I was given it to read as a child.
Kate Atkinson Case histories( available as audio and e-book and on CD at the library)
First book in the Jackson Brodie series. Opens in Cambridge in the 1950s. The husband is losing energy, and the wife is left to look after the children alone. One night she lets the two daughters sleep in a tent in the garden. One is missing the next morning and never found. Next the story moves to the 1970s where an anxious father gets his daughter to live in his law office rather than move away but a random person enters the office and stabs her and a fellow colleague. Jackson Brody the detective is given the case. Murder mystery. Atkinson seems to be influenced by Dickens and has theme of missing fathers.
Kate Atkinson When will there be good news?
Mother bringing up children without father’s input. They are killed by a stranger. Jackson Brodie is on the case. Train derailment, au pairs. A tour de force with rich writing.
Shaeden Berry Down the rabbit hole
Australian author. Alice goes missing in 2015. Seven years later her friends Hannah to look after Alice’s mother after a hip operation. Hannah is messed up from an unexplained trauma when 11. Alice’s mother has a drug/alcohol problem, Alice had a helpful teacher and a boyfriend whom the police suspect. Found it a bit weird but worth reading.
Roderick Fry A message for nasty
Marie and Vincent Broom enjoy a pleasant life on Hong Kong Island. Vincent is a New Zealander. Marie, born in Macau, is Portuguese Chinese. Married for ten years, the couple have four children. In 1941 the Japanese invade and occupy the island and their building is surrounded. Vincent is in Singapore which is also invaded but manages to get to HK to save his family with help from the British. Written by the grandson of this couple who move to NZ but later go back to HK. Interesting from historical point of view
Kate Atkinson Death at the sign of the rook
No. 6 in the Jackson Brodie series. A sleepy Yorkshire town where a painting is stolen. Brodie discovers a string of unsolved art thefts. Very clever and charming.
Tim Winton The boy behind the curtain
Non-fiction/memoir. Winton was brought up in a religious family and says the imagery and language of the Bible inspired him to become a writer.
Gareth and Louise Ward Bookshop detectives – Dead girl gone
"When a mystery parcel arrives at Sherlock Tomes bookshop in small-town Havelock North, New Zealand, husband-and-wife owners Garth and Eloise… are drawn into the baffling case of a decades-old missing schoolgirl.’ I found this difficult to separate fiction from the real thing as the authors do own a bookshop in the same town. As ex detectives they are drawn into the mystery. Puzzling but a light read with short chapters
Great magazine with good articles with a British content. Good for dipping into.
Christina Sanders Mrs Jewell and the wreck of the General Grant
A fictionalised treatment of a wreck off the Auckland Islands in 1866. There was gold, goldminers and a young couple on boards who survived, along with 12 other men. From Mrs Jewells perspective. She’s an unreliable narrator. Feuds among the men
Nothing new here about the last voyage of Cook based on journals and diaries. Author tries to be neutral. Well-written and readable.
Allison Montclair The unkept woman
Haven’t finished. Set in a London marriage bureau in 1946 run by two women haunted by the past.
NZ writer who’s good at describing life in NZ. Peter and Mary are retired and own a big house that needs work, so they sell up and move to a retirement village. We get flashbacks of their working life ( as a librarian and a police officer) and close family memories. Almost like short stories. Nominated for the Ockham prize this year
Trevor Noah Born a crime: stories from a South African childhood
Now a comedian on US television, Noah was born into an apartheid regime with a black mother and white Swiss father. Very engaging and enlightening. This is a compelling biography.
Gretchen Anthony The Book haters Book Club
A humorous tale about a bookshop called ‘Over the rainbow’ which caters for non-readers. After one of the founders dies the other tries to sell it to a developer for high rise condos. Much opposition. Felt annoyed by the end.
Writing good but there was cultural divide that was annoying at times. Lara the mother has her 3 daughters home at Covid time at the cherry orchard in Michigan. Peter Duke an actor is the focus throughout especially when it is revealed that the mother once acted with him in an amateur production of Our town, and he was her lover.
Set in Philadelphia. This is a debut novel. Long listed for the Booker. About a young black woman Emira Tucker working as a babysitter for a Alix a successful blogger and her husband and who, one evening when out shopping with the couple’s toddler, Emira is confronted and accused of kidnapping the child by the a store’s security guard, purely because the child is white. I didn’t relate to the story and couldn’t understand it.
1617 on the Norwegian island of Vardø the women must fend for themselves after a huge storm wipes out all the fishing fleet and men working on them. Three years later Absolom Cornet arrives from Scotland where he had been responsible for witch burnings. He does not like seeing women who are independent , fishing, and herding reindeer. Inspired by historical fact.
T C Boyle The tortilla curtain
Loved this book. Set in the Topanga Canyon in western Los Angeles County. The story focuses on two couples. One couple are a real estate agent and nature writer/house husband/dad; the other couple are Mexican American “illegals’ living in a makeshift camp deep in the ravine. Every day they struggle to find work to stave off starvation. When the nature writer accidentally knocks down one of the Mexican American with his vehicle the opposing worlds collide. Tortilla Curtain is a common phrase for the Mexican/US borde
Noam Shpancer The Good Psychologist
A good demonstration of the method of CBT-Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for anxious clients. The Psychologist is a combination of teacher in a community college and a practising psychologist. There is a detailed explanation of how to recognise and treat common anxieties, and a case history of treatment of a stripper who doesn't want to go back to work. In between we have a bitter-sweet relationship of the psychologist with a fellow married colleague. In the end is he really a good psychologist?
Vanda is a successful NZ crime fiction author with seven books featuring likeable protagonist Detective Sam Shepard who solves crime in the gothic city of Dunedin. This time she is struggling with a cold case of a dead priest, and a new baby. Many issues ensue of baby rearing and at-work breast feeding between placating the irascible head of detectives DI Johns. In the end Sam comes through despite several dead ends. A cannot put down read.
The Inions are a group of women who have come to a remote island off the coast of Ireland, for refuge and solace. All the islanders live alongside the strange murmurings that seem to emanate from within the depths of the island, a sound that is almost supernatural - a Summoning as the Inions call it. Nell is an artist on the island who is commissioned to produce an art piece to celebrate their long history. The descriptions of Nature are evocative and successful as is the description of the artistic process.
A light read, perfect for the beach. Retired maths teacher is 72 and living a small life alone and in grief over a recently lost husband and an older grief of a son killed while riding his bike. She receives a letter from a solicitor to say she has been left a house in Ibiza by a long-ago friend. All is not as it seems, as Grace spends some time searching for the reason her friend died. A bit of magic and stranger than fiction stuff which can sometimes be a bit grating as can the message about hope and letting go but a satisfying end.
