FEBRUARY ~ Lloyd Jones

Lloyd Jones was born in 1955 in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, a place which has become a frequent setting and subject for his subsequent works of fiction. He studied at Victoria University, and has worked as a journalist and consultant as well as a writer. The novels we have chosen to read are Choo Woo (1998), Mr Pip (2007), A History of Silence. A Memoir (2013) and Hand Me Down World (2010)

Mr Pip won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker.

Choo Woo

BEV: Worst book she’s ever read. Felt ill reading it. It was about the sexual molestation of a teenage girl, the mother knows but does nothing.

JULIA: Only read up to pg 41, couldn’t finish it. Written from the perspective of the father of a 12 year old who has been abused by her de-facto stepfather.

CLARIS: There was no character development to support the storyline.

Choo woo is their ‘baby talk’ when the stepfather violates the 12 year old girl.

Felt unnerved by the book, being led into voyeurism by the author, the voyeur.

Mr Pip

On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind; the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations.

CLARIS:

Wishes she had read Great Expectations before picking up this book.

Although the ending is not woven that well into the book, thought the writing was an improvement on Cho Woo.

DENISE:

Moral of the story was ‘honesty’. You see all the lies that are told and the problems they create. People are being dishonest about what they want their lives to be.

Had some resistance to reading it, but once started, actually liked it.

PAMELA:

An excellent book and the ending is very good.

Themes include the power of the narrative and the resilience of the human spirit.

On the negative side, identification can be dangerous.

 

SHEILA:

Had a personal interest knowing one of the Bouganvillian rebels who negotiated with Australia. Thought the author took the basis of the book from newspapers etc. Didn’t think he had done much research.

Beautiful book. Mr Pip is a natural teacher, taught the children how to think. They were uneducated, only knowing village life.

JOAN:

Set in a village on the Papua New Guinea island of Bougainville during a brutal civil war there in the 1990s. Huge copper mine has been opened changing forever the idyllic life of the islanders.

Thought the simplicity of description of the atrocities needed further explanation.

DIANN:

Liked it and highly recommends it.

When the war began, the children needed a diversion. Mr Watts took them to the age of “Great Expectations”, a time of stability and different from island life.

WENDY 2:

Not enamored with it so didn’t finish it. No depth of characters.

JUDY 4:

Lyrical, beautifully written. There was brutality, simply written, but it hit you when it came. Made you want to find out more about the area and the conflict of that time.

WENDY 1:

Simple language contrasts with the turmoil of life. No much growth in the characters but fairly well explored.

Enjoyed it but can see how it strikes people differently.

A History of Silence

JOAN:

Laboured to get into his family history. Thought short story writing would be better for him.

PAT:

Hard to get into. Writing was boring, his background was boring. Only interested by one chapter, the story of his mother and grandmother.

JUDY 3:

Loved it, word pictures were beautiful. You could feel the emotions and see the scenes especially after the devastation of Christchurch. As the city rebuilds he sees the need to trace his own roots.

Story was scratchy in parts, but so was Christchurch.

 

JO:

Confusing, but a good read. Interesting reading about Christchurch earthquake.

CONNIE:

His description of the earthquake and how it affected him gave a great insight into what it was like then. So he looks for his own family.

Felt sorry for him – had no joy in his life or family. Felt he didn’t give enough detail about family members and seemed to give up too easily while researching.

DIANNE:

Author needed to chase up his own family, hence the title.

Depressing, he knows more about the history of their dogs than the people in the family.

Found it annoying that he flips around from one person to another.

 

Hand Me Down World

A woman washes ashore in Sicily. She has come from North Africa to find her son, taken from her when he was just days old by his father and stolen away to Berlin. With nothing but her maid's uniform and a knife stashed in a plastic bag, she relies on strangers to guide her passage north. These strangers tell of their encounters with a quiet, mysterious woman in a blue coat each account a different view of the truth. But her sacrifices won’t be fully understood until she retells her own story as the conclusion to the novel.

 

BEV:

Easy to read with an interesting approach to the story. Each of the narrators has their own chapter as they tell of their experience with Ines. The ending is told in an unusual way in the last chapter.

PAULINE:

Enjoyed it. Different people tell different parts of the story. Her chapters tell the complete story, connecting up these earlier ones. Some narratives were unreliable.

The writing was sparse and simple, but there was a lot of power to this story.

ROSEMARY:

Book of 2 halves, 2 versions of the same story.

Applicable today with the refugee situation around the world.

It’s a mother’s tale of determination. The ending was not necessarily a happy one.

TAM:

Having read it twice, gained so much more about each character. Same stories but told from different perspectives. The author uses his characters to express social issues.

 

LINDA:

Hard to get to know the main protagonist, Ines.

Shows the length a mother would go to find her child.

Interesting book, hard to say if enjoyed it or not.

JUDY 1:

Enjoyed the book. Like a collection of short stories featuring many different characters. Quote from a recommendation for the book- “….how the disenfranchised accept the world as it is handed to them, on the weakness of men, on the deeply moving kindness of strangers, and on the power of maternal love”

Paint Your Wife  (2004)

PRUE:

Seems different from his other books. Set in country NZ, the men have gone to war, and the paint factory has closed. One man who did not go to war, goes around sketching and painting the wives left behind. When the husbands return, there is trouble.

Not much depth of characters, no social issues, just a rollicking good yarn.

 VAL:

Recommended a new book tipped to be ‘best fiction book published this year’.

Adrian McKinty is an Irish author who now lives in Australia. His latest in the Sean Duffy series is called Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly. Looking forward to reading it!

 

Join us for upcoming Third Thursday Book Club discussions.

MARCH ~ Peter Goldsworthy

APRIL ~ Margaret Attwood

MAY ~ Mothers - your own selection

JUNE ~ Classic Australian books

JULY ~ Jane Austen (not Emma)