Schedule suggestions 2009

Here are some of the suggestions tossed around at our meeting last night (together with those previous suggestions in the blog's sidebar):

• Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (this year's Booker Prize winner. It's long so perhaps our summer read
• Steven Conte's The zookeeper's war (last year's Prime Minister's Literary Award winner)
• Rodney Hall (a book by him)
• Alex Miller (a book by him - perhaps the new Lovesong??)
• Patrick White's Voss (had been tentatively set for January but maybe Wolf Hall would be better for the summer read)
• Kazuo Isiguro's Nocturnes (short stories)
• David Malouf's Ransom
• Jayne Anne Phillips' Lark and termite

Have I forgotten any that we discusssed?

What do you all think of these - and do you have other ideas? Marie, Susan and other farflung members - even if you can't come we would be happy to hear about any books you've read that you think we'd like to read.

(Free image from www.clker.com - for fun)

Valley of grace by Marion Halligan

On Tuesday 29 September, 10 of us including the author Marion Halligan sat comfortably in Kate's house mulling over French lives, loves and babies. We started our discussion with comments about the amazing cake -- how does it stay together, had Marion eaten it -- yes but it was in a little bag (!) and she had never made it.

Marion was very generous with her memories of Paris in 1989 living near the Church whose creation is so central to a main theme of women and fertility. Her tale of writing the novel was fascinating -- it started life as a short story which had possibilities. We enjoyed hearing that her act of writing is pen and paper although she writes essays on the computer. She talked a little about writing erotica -- plenty of love in Fanny's life when Gerard appears. We heard about some of the characters including the Philosopher who is based on a Canberra academic and his wife who is so happy with her abandonment of him in preference to the god child. It was good to hear that all the answers are not known even for the author. The wild child was the Professor's offspring possibly and was so sad -- that lead to discussion about such children and Marion revealed that she had researched these children.

We talked of types of families in contemporary life and the growing trend of gay couples having children. Marion admitted that she considered a sad end for Claude and Agnes' baby but decided against it -- I am so pleased. She also talked of endings and the suddenness of this one.
The cover we decided is beautiful and its yellow rays appropriate for the story.

What also came out was Marion's love of Paris and the French and their cultured lives filled with books and good food, wine, chocolates and friends.

Next challenge is Pages -- Marion doesn't want to read it !

(Cover image courtesy Allen & Unwin)

Dreams from my father, by Barack Obama

Somehow our report of our August meeting slipped through the net, so in the interests of comprehensiveness I'm going to do a brief one now. Eight of us (I think!) met at Celeste's to talk about the book everyone's been talking about - Barack Obama's Dreams from my father - though I think we must have been about the last group to get around to doing it!

Not surprisingly, we all enjoyed it, though some admitted to finding the Chicago section slower going than the rest of the book. We liked the nuanced way he explores the issue of racism and racial experience. By this we meant the way he comprehends racism from a number of perspectives, due perhaps to his own unusual background:

• he was brought up middle-class and by his white mother and grandparents;
• he spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, and so experienced another set of cultural differences and expectations; and
• his father, with whom he had some (but not much) contact, was African born (rather than an African American).

These things, together with his personal experiences and, well, his personality, give him a fairly unique basis from which to look at the issue.

Our assessment of Obama was that he is both visionary and compassionate. He is very open on some aspects of his life - such as drinking, smoking and drug-taking in his youth - but pretty reticent about his relationships with women (though clearly he had some - relationships, that is). While we would like to have known more, perhaps it's to his credit that he's discreet!

Finally, we talked a little about the title and the idea that it contains an element of irony. Whose dreams are they? Did his father's dreams carry the seeds of his own destruction? With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that whatever and whosever they are, they have stood him in good stead to date!

(Cover image: Courtesy Text Publishing)

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

On Tuesday 28 July, 7 Minervans met to discuss Christos Tsiolkas controverial book The Slap. Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, we all agreed it was a can't put down read, that had engaged us all. There was a lot of discussion of the Greek Australian culture that formed the background for a number of characters, and the role of males within this culture. There was some discussion about the representation of a certain middle-class Australia: the aspirational Australians. There was a very strong representation of consumerism, and the material ascendancy of this second generation of characters.

We all admitted to finding a lot of the characters rather unpleasant, but nonetheless very empathic. It was the younger characters we felt were drawn the most successfully, but who also found themselves reacting to events around them, and caught up in the manipulations of others.

Tsiolkas managed to give all the characters a convincing voice, and to get inside their heads.There was a sense that all characters were portrayed as vulnerable, with the contradiction between their thoughts and deeds highlighted by the author. Different group members had favourite characters, from the tragic Rosie to the attractive and flawed Hugo, and the wicked Hector.

It was a fascinating structure to present the narrative from different perspectives, and to move the story along in a dynamic way, that retained suspense, and continuity.

The regular drug-taking and 'male-oriented' sex was also commented on. The representation of the abuse of power was very realistic and quite chilling in places.

The group discussed the slap or child punishment very little, seeing the book as much more about the relationships, power struggles and family stresses that were revealed as a reult of the incidence. There was also a comment that the book was not 'documentary realism', but more a series of incidences told in a sort of heightened realism to emphasise the drama, and implications of the actions of the characters. There were comments that some of the writing was somewhat melodramatic, and slightly 'TV soap script' in style, but most did not find this off-putting.

A book rich in discussion topics, and somewhat confronting in its depiction of aspects of Australian society. Well worth reading.

Snow, by Orhan Pamuk

"It's good to read a book exploring 'big themes' instead of yet another Australian book about marriage breakups" was one member's comment about our June book, Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. This is the second Orhan Pamuk book that we Minervans have discussed, the first being his memoir-cum-history, Istanbul. Nine members turned up at our June meeting and almost all had attempted the book but only about half of us had finished, partly because, as most of us agreed, it is not one of those books you can read in long stretches. None of us, in fact, found it an easy book to read but we managed to tease out quite a few of the big themes it covers.

Some of the themes we looked at were: the relationship between art and politics, the role of women in Turkish society and particularly the issue of women wearing headscarves, east-west tensions (particularly between Turkey and Europe/Germany), and the tensions within Turkey between secularists, Islamic fundamentalists, and Kurdish nationalists. We didn't really resolve where Pamuk was taking us with most of these but we had fun trying.

We wondered what impact the translator had on our enjoyment of the novel. One member in particular felt it was cliched, contradictory at times, repetitive and weighed down by too much detail. Others of us, though, found it dense but overall an engaging read. Its structure is interesting: it is basically a third person story told by a first person narrator who has researched his friend's story after the events of the book, and much of the plot is foreshadowed before we get to it. There are quite a few pairs of characters who could be "compared and contrasted" to better understand them, including Ka the protagonist and his friend Orhan the narrator; Ipek and Kadife, the sisters; Fazil and Necip, the religious high school boys; and Ka (again) and Blue, the sisters' lovers.

Although the plot is based on a coup and there are some 29 deaths, the novel also has some very funny scenes - such as the scene where competing "rebels" get together to prepare a joint statement for the Western press. It is deeply ironic in places, and in fact we wondered whether the whole book has an ironic edge to it particularly in the way it plays with the art-politics nexus. Not surprisingly, snow - literally and figuratively - underpins the book and is presented somewhat paradoxically, that is, very early in the book it is described as pure but not innocent! The chapter headings are amusing and reminiscent a little of nineteenth century novel style. And the chapters are short - there are 44 chapters in under 440 pages. We do like a book with short chapters!

There were several attempts to sum up the book. One member suggested that it's a bit like a Turkish Wake in Fright, while another suggested that its complexity is rather reminiscent of a Turkish carpet. These are two quite diverse ways of looking at it. It would be great now to hear what others think, so please, comment away...

BREAKING NEWS! I have just learnt that "kar" is snow in Turkish - which rather explains the wordplay on Ka/Kars. The things you miss in translation, eh?

The limits of Google

Had to share this. You have to feel sorry for the "punters" out there, including ourselves, trying to hone in on the information they/we seek. Recently, our blog was the second result in the hitlist produced on a search for "heroic quotes from Minerva". Well, of course our title is Minerva. And the report of our meeting on The white tiger does mention "hero" and the review of People of the book does include the word "quotes". Google very carefully put two and two together and came up with, well, not four in this case.

The trouble is that Google does not appear to use much in the way of proximity searching. After all, "hero" appeared in one post and "quotes" in another. The poor searcher arriving at our site must have been severely disappointed. You have to hope that if there are sites in which these words are closer together, they would have been listed ahead of us in the hitlist!

All this is to say that as wonderful as Google is (and I would hate to be without it), there is much to be said for good indexing and, more importantly perhaps, sophisticated search tools. Without them, searching the 'net is indeed a heroic activity requiring stamina, patience and perhaps, even, a little bravery...

(Photo:dannysullivan @ flickr)

Steve Toltz, A fraction of the whole

What to say about a book that only a fraction of the six Minervans who attended this week's meeting had finished, except that despite this fact we had a fine discussion? Steve Toltz's A fraction of the whole is somewhat of a "loose baggy monster" that defeats some while engaging others. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize last year, and longlisted (but didn't make the cut) for the Miles Franklin this year. It did, however, win the inaugural People's Choice Award at this year's New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. This is not a bad track record for debut novel by a writer in his early 30s.

What then is it about? It's hard to say except that the plot concerns the life of a father - a weird and wonderful one - as told by his son. It spans Australia, France and Thailand, not to mention several weeks at sea in a people-smuggler's boat. It is told in first person, mainly by the son, Jasper, but with sections told in, Martin's, the father's voice. These sections include the father's bedtime story of his life to the age of 22, his unfinished autobiography covering another section of his life, and parts of his journal. This is not really what it is ABOUT though and we spent some time discussing that - without coming to any major conclusions. We did, however, talk a little about the things he mocks, such as education and middle class Australian goals, and a little about his criticism of Western societies' lack of compassion. One member wondered whether there was a bit of the yin-yang to Martin and his brother Terry, and there could be some mileage in taking that discussion a little further.

We also talked about its style - and had a bit of fun picking out funny bits. You can find a "funny bit" on almost every page. It has some crisp dialogue and great descriptions, though some felt it could have done with a bit of an edit! Several felt it was a "young" book and thought its youthful breathless tone was a little reminiscent of D.B.C. Pierre's award-winning first novel, Vernon God Little. Unlike this book though, we found it harder at times to know exactly where Toltz stands on some of the issues he covers (though at other times it was pretty clear). We also thought that it was perhaps the most male book we'd read for a while - the last being Tim Winton's Breath.

There is a lot to think about and talk about in this book. Perhaps other members will add here some of the issues that particularly interested them.

(Book cover: Courtesy Allen & Unwin Website)