Monday, 10 December 2012

Joey's Book Club - Favourite Reads of 2012

This novel was loved by all members of the book club so it was not surprising to see that it was voted our number one read for the year. This was a most gripping and engrossing novel full of well-crafted complexities and many unexpected twists and turns. The reader rapidly finds themselves hooked in and becomes emotionally invested in the characters. Gillian Flynn is a brilliant writer and the group felt that this novel represents the epitome of a literary crime/thriller novel. It is also one of Jennifer Byrnes top picks from the First Tuesday Book Club.

This novel was also universally loved by all members of our book club. It is a debut novel by author M.L. Stedman, and is a very well-crafted piece of literature, which explores what happens to good people who make bad decisions.  It is a very complex and morally riveting story, which provides a great insight into the psyche of a childless woman and the great desperation which she feels. It is a heartbreaking story which will tear you apart as you grapple with the notions of right and wrong and love and loyalty.

Our book club thought this was an exceptional novel and is an epic in both scope and content. It has several stories running concurrently, with one set in the twenty-first century and the other in WWII, however, both are intertwined. We all appreciated the extraordinary amount of research Perlman undertook into WWII history and we felt that we had learned a great deal, such as details about the Sonderkommando uprising at Auschwitz, which none of us had ever heard of before reading this novel. It wasn’t an easy read, with many complexities requiring a great deal of concentration, however, it was well worth the effort.

- Linda

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