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Lock down book club - books from a different country

So we continued with the Zoom version of book club this month and it was lovely to see so many of us tackle it. The theme was books set in a different country (if you can't travel, let a book take you).  I read The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet, a detective story with an element of tricksy fiction set in France. I really enjoyed it and you can read my full review here. We travelled to America a couple of times most interestingly to see whether Hilary Clinton (or Bill for that fact) would have made President if they had not got married. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld is out in hardback now. Norway was a popular spot - Norwegian Nights by Derek B Miller about a retired american marine who moves to Norway and intervenes to save a young boys life sounded interesting. So much so that at least one member of the group has gone on to buy the first in the series, American By Day. We even made it as far as Japan and Botswana (and discovered a Scottish connection for Alexander McCa...
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Lock down book club - autobiographies

After what felt like 13 million weeks in lock down we attempted to conduct our first online meeting via Zoom. We chose a broad theme of 'autobiographies' to give as many of us as possible a chance at obtaining a book without too much difficulty. I actually didn't have an autobiography on my shelf and so borrowed The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert. The book was all about raccoon eating, teepee living, deer skin wearing Eustace Conway. He has lived a fascinating life and Gilbert had carried out interviews with a wide range of friends and family but I found the lack of pictures puzzling. You gotta have pictures in an autobiography. The group had chosen autobiographies from a real wide range of people. Partly due to availability, partly due to differing interests. We had Gok Wan and his troubled childhood as a non white gay person. Louis XIV (the Sun King) and his debauched court and two Michelle Obamas one of which was given up on. I think the broad topic made fo...
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The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

"In a remote hunting lodge, deep in the Scottish wilderness, old friends gather for New Year. The beautiful one The golden couple The volatile one The new parents The quiet one The city boy The outsider The victim. Not an accident – a murder among friends." We had all read the book and all agreed we hadn't really read a book where the victim was revealed at the same time as the murderer. We liked this and found it a definite page turner. The victim not being revealed so late however meant that everyone had to, theoretically, be capable of wanting to murder everyone else which made for a whole host of not nice characters. We all struggled with the characters in someway. We didn't like them. There were too many. They were too self-centered, too two dimensional. Not liking the characters often means we don't like the book and there is no denying it was definitely a hindrance. A few of the group also commented on a plot hole or two. When exactly did ...
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Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

"On a trip to the South of France, the shy heroine of Rebecca falls in love with Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower. Although his proposal comes as a surprise, she happily agrees to marry him. But as they arrive at her husband’s home, Manderley, a change comes over Maxim, and the young bride is filled with dread. Friendless in the isolated mansion, she realises that she barely knows him. In every corner of every room is the phantom of his beautiful first wife, Rebecca, and the new Mrs de Winter walks in her shadow." In what is now becoming a tradition for the book club we chose a classic for January and boy what a good one we had chosen. Quite a few of us had already read it before but this didn't stop us from all having (re)read it by the time the meeting came round. Rebecca is such a good book to talk about at book club. Why does the second Mrs De Winter not have a name? As someones wife is she not worthy enough to have one? Is she so overcast by Rebecca that nothi...
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Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford

Our festive book of the month for December was Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford. Set around a Christmas party at a posh house in the 1920s countryside, it was a mere 180 pages long, had a beautiful cover and couldn't have a more festive name if it tried. It looked like a cracker! "The formidable fox-hunter Lady Bobbin is holding a Christmas house party. Attendees include her rebellious daughter Philadelphia, a pompous suitor, a couple of children poring over newspaper death notices, and a dejected writer whose first serious novel has been declared the funniest book of the year. Add to the mix beautiful ex-courtesan Amabelle Fortescue and her guests staying in a neighbouring cottage and you have a ribald tale of true love and false fidelity, hijinks and low morals, not to mention the consumption of a considerable quantity of Christmas spirit." Where’s the pudding? We almost universally didn't like this book with our major complaint being the lack of anything re...
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A Gift For Dying by M J Arlidge

"Nothing surprises Adam Brandt anymore. As a forensic psychologist, he’s seen and heard everything. That is, until he meets Kassie. Because she claims to have a terrible gift – with one look into your eyes, she can see when and how you will die. Adam doesn’t believe her, obviously. But then a serial killer starts wreaking havoc across the city, and only Kassie seems to know where he’ll strike next. Against all his intuition, Adam starts to believe her. He just doesn’t realise how dangerous this trust might be . . ." I was excited to read to read the book having recently read Eeny Meeny also by Arlidge and having heard Arlidge talk about it at Newcastle Noir earlier this year. Was Adam really going to kill Kassie? If yes how on earth did Arlidge connect the dots to make it work? We had all read the book an all thought it was very heavily plotted. I liked this about the book however some thought it was almost too clever. He'd had a great ide...
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The Familiars by Stacey Halls

"Fleetwood Shuttleworth is 17 years old, married, and pregnant for the fourth time. But as the mistress at Gawthorpe Hall, she still has no living child, and her husband Richard is anxious for an heir. When Fleetwood finds a letter she isn’t supposed to read from the doctor who delivered her third stillbirth, she is dealt the crushing blow that she will not survive another pregnancy. Then she crosses paths by chance with Alice Gray, a young midwife. Alice promises to help her give birth to a healthy baby, and to prove the physician wrong. As Alice is drawn into the witchcraft accusations that are sweeping the north-west, Fleetwood risks everything by trying to help her. But is there more to Alice than meets the eye? Soon the two women’s lives will become inextricably bound together as the legendary trial at Lancaster approaches, and Fleetwood’s stomach continues to grow. Time is running out, and both their lives are at stake." We talked first about the cover of the bo...
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