Cramlington Book Club

They say you should never judge a book by its cover but let us do just that in this case. The cover is quite simple - a glass jar (not a box) holding a butterfly, a beautiful butterfly. But oh how that simple jar and butterfly speak volumes (queue the media studies A grade A level student going into hyper drive) Firstly the jar and how (as Moriarty was quick to inform us) it was a jar that Pandora opened not a box as so commonly quoted. And we all know that Pandora opened the box and let loose all manner of things. Cue Celia opening John Pauls letter Secondly the jar is a glass one, designed to keep things in, yet so easy to open. Like an envelope. Yet if the jar is smashed all we are left are its fragments that we have to try to piece back together, possibly injuring ourselves in the process only to find its not repairable. Like Celia discovering that really it’s impossible to recover intact from a secret like John Pauls Next there is the butterfly, so fragile, so easily...

I’m calling this book ‘the creeper’. It got under my skin without me noticing it and suddenly I put it down one day and thought, I love this book! It’s strange as nothing really happens as such – it’s certainly not a plot driven book – but I really thought this worked. The book lounged on like you would in the heat that the author so brilliantly described. Despite this, it is not a boring book and you do want to know how it all works out. So much so that one member of the group didn’t come to the meeting as she hadn’t finished reading the book and she didn’t want to find out the end! I give real credit to the author for not to make it another murder/thriller book which it so easily could have ended up being. Instead it was a brilliantly written book based around 5 main characters all of whom had a section in the book. I will start with Nick as I thought she (yes she not he) was central to the book. One member commented that she was like gravity, everyone pulled towards her even if it...