Joey's Book Club - Favourite Reads of 2012

1: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

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.

2: The Light Between the Oceans by M.L. Stedman

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.

3: The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman

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

Saturday Book Club - Favourite Reads of 2012

Choosing the three best books of  2012 was quite a challenge, while we readily agreed the top three it proved more difficult to rate them.

Ultimately we agreed with the Man-Booker panel and rated Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies number one. For those who have not yet read this book, it focuses on the period in English history, when Henry VIII is seducing Jane Seymour and relying on those around him to find a way for him to be rid of wife number two Anne Boleyn. His loyal supporter (or is he) Cromwell, plots and schemes to rid Henry of Anne and give him his hearts desire.

The Boleyn family scheme to keep Anne on the throne and pray for the birth of a son to secure their power, while the Seymour’s manipulate Jane into a relationship with Henry in an attempt  to increase their power and gain greater access to the king and his money.

Cromwell, the puppet master plays all sides while the only people he is really trying to benefit are his family and supporters.

It was more difficult to choose second and third, finally we settled upon Elliot Perlman’s The Street Sweeper for second, and Patrick Gale’s A Perfectly Good Man for third, while very different books, both authors are excellent at observing  interpersonal relationships and the small things that make all our lives richer.

Perlman's The Street Sweeper has as its centre three characters an academic, a street sweeper and an old dying patient at a hospital. The characters are tied together by Perlman in the narrative that reaches from modern day New York to the concentration camps of the second world war. Through their lives we experience the holocaust, loss of family  and the impact of history on people long after the event.

The story winds it way through the lives of the various characters, leading to an ultimate redemption for the central characters and a greater understanding of human nature for the reader.

In A Perfectly Good Man Gale returns to his two recurring themes of god and sex. Set in a small community in Cornwall, the first chapter asks the question of the reader: is Barnaby a good man? We are never given the answer to this question, but by traversing Barnaby’s life and the lives of those who matter most to him the reader reaches his or her own decision.

The book follows the lives of the characters through their life in no particular order, offering insights into why Barnaby does what he does and the forces that have shaped his lives and the lives of those he loves a lot and far less so.

We would also like to give a thumbs up, for a racy novel about the current day political and intelligence elite of Canberra; The Marmalade Files by Chris Uhlmann and Stephen Lewis. This is a book that makes you laugh and cringe in equal measure at the goings on in the nation’s capital. Good summer reading with a cold one. The top three  are both character driven and beautifully written, and thus the reason chosen by the Saturday Morning Book club as the top three for 2012, The Marmalade Files is just a fun read.

- Paddy

Monday Night Book Club - Favourite Reads of 2012

Third Monday Bookclub - Top 3 books for 2012

 

1. Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

The final book written by the Pulitzer Prize author Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety was a firm favourite for the group.  Beautifully written, layered characters and relationships between two couples, with exquisite depictions of country and nature in Vermont and Wisconsin.  The group had a very animated discussion when it came time to talk about this one as we all loved it for it's depth of relationships and natural beauty of landscape and writing.  It was clear to us as to why this is now considered a modern classic.  This will be stay with me for a lifetime, providing a very high benchmark for others to attempt to near. 

 

2. The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman

The latest offering by one of Australia's finest contemporary authors, The Street Sweeper provides a delicately and cleverly written intertwining book, dipping between eras such as the American Civil War, the Holocaust, equal rights movement in the 60's and contemporary America.  While some content was harrowing, it was clearly real and extensively and accurately researched, giving this book realism and depth to a story that could otherwise be nonsensical.  Broad in scope, some say epic, and yet quite a personal story with intimate character portrayals. This was the first book I read of Elliot Perlman's, but has since lead me his other novels and short tales.   

 

3. All That I Am by Anna Funder

Like Elliot Perlman, Anna Funder researched this book with great depth, threading together a tale of courage and defiance throughout Nazi Germany and leading us back to contemporary Sydney through the main character of Ruth.  While all the group enjoyed this cleverly written Miles Franklin award winning novel, we appreciated the complexity and marvel of The Street Sweeper more.

 

- Marita

Thursday Night Book Club – Favourite Reads of 2012

1. Our favourite book of the year was A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale, which was conceived as a companion piece to his earlier book Notes on an Exhibition. The central idea of that book was of the difficulty in growing up with a mother who was a mad genius, and in A Perfectly Good Man the madness is on the father’s side. We admired Gale’s skill in having the plot move in two directions at once spiralling backwards into the main character’s roots and troubled teens and childhood to find out what the answer to his need to be “good” might be and how each chapter felt as contained as a short story. Our group has been a fan of Gale’s since he first visited Shearer’s discussing his earlier work. To have him return to Shearer’s this year to discuss his latest novel and to revisit some of the characters we loved from the first novel makes him feel like one of the family! 

2. Elliot Perlman’s The Street Sweeper was chosen as a very close second. He is also one of our special visiting authors who feels like a family member to us. We admired Perlman’s skill at describing the worlds surrounding two men and their families and how they swirl in and out of history as the forces of the Holocaust, the American civil rights movement, Chicago unions, and New York City racial politics combine in a thrilling cross- generational literary symphony. Despite describing some of the worst horrors of the 20th century, it ends unapologetically happily as ''a young African-American oncologist and a white Jewish historian stood smiling and talking to a skinny black street sweeper.''

3. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was chosen as our third pick. Beautiful Amy and handsome Nick would seem a perfect match. Our interest in this unconventional crime novel was piqued when we learn that they are both consummate liars with dark secrets they are keeping from each other and the reader. This provided us with many discussion points about relationships, what is the truth and society’s propensity to always suspect the husband whenever a wife goes missing. Flynn has suggested that one of her inspirations was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - the play by Edward Albee about power games in a toxic marriage performed on film by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, who ripped into each other with such gusto it was hard to watch. This influence can be seen when we reach the astounding ending.

- Jane

Staff Picks - Best Books of 2012: Jane

The Street Sweeper – Elliot Perlman

Elliot Perlman’s third novel comes eight years after his last novel, Seven Types of Ambiguity, and is dedicated to the victims of racism, named individuals ''who died from manifestations of the same disease.'' The worlds surrounding two men and their families swirl in and out of history as the forces of the Holocaust, the American civil rights movement, Chicago unions, and New York City racial politics combine in a thrilling cross-generational literary symphony. Despite describing some of the worst horrors of the 20th century, it ends unapologetically happily as ''a young African-American oncologist and a white Jewish historian stood smiling and talking to a skinny black street sweeper''.

The Chemistry of Tears – Peter Carey

In Peter Carey’s 12th novel, much depends on two voices. The first belongs to Catherine Gehrig, an horologist working at the (fictional) Swinburne Museum in London, who has recently lost of her lover. The notebooks she receives introduce us to the novel’s second voice, that of a wealthy mid-19th-century Englishman, Henry Brandling. Henry pursues a beautiful invention, to heal his sick son; Catherine reassembles the mechanical swan as a means of balancing her grief. Carey manages these time-shifts with ease. The themes turn out not simply to concern the beauty of science, but the ways in which science and humans interact and overlap. Specifically, it is a vision of how to discover order in a random universe, the illusory versus the actual, the mechanical versus the organic. And it turns out that the most tremendous of all Mysterium Tremendums - overwhelming mysteries - is the body, which operates according to specific laws ("the chemistry of tears"). The gap between that which imitates life and that, which is living, is something that isn’t simply part of the works. A soul! 

A Perfectly Good Man- Patrick Gale

Gale’s latest novel was conceived as a companion piece to his earlier book Notes on an Exhibition. The central idea of that book was of the difficulty in growing up with a mother who was a mad genius, and in A Perfectly Good Man the madness is on the father’s side. Barnaby Johnson, the central character, is not just a priest; he is a man who has devoted his life to being as good as he possibly can and inevitably that flows over onto his wife and children.

It’s a kind of moral thriller. At the beginning of the novel when Barnaby prays for the dying Lenny’s soul instead of calling an ambulance, it leads to his having to justify his actions as well as the power of prayer at the inquest, which shows bravery in an age where priests are considered as mere social workers. But Barnaby stands up for what it’s really about.

On another level it’s also a thriller because of a frightening stalker, Modest Carlsson who seems to be excited by death and whose main aim in life is to destroy the “good” Barnaby. He is a character who doesn’t realise how his actions affect others. The plot moves in two directions at once spiralling backwards into Barnaby’s roots and troubled teens and childhood to find out what the answer to his need to be “good” might be and each chapter to feel as contained as a short story. In the end the novel is about much more than religion. It’s really about family as most of Gale’s books are, and about the dynamics of the family.

Event: Elliot Perlman Book Club Visit

Elliot Perlman, Australian barrister and author of three novels and one short story collection, affectionately calls Shearer’s Bookshop his second home, although he lives in Melbourne.

On this, his third visit since October 2011, he enthralled Shearer’s book club members for over an hour and a half with an intimate round-table discussion of his works - focusing mainly on his book of short stories, The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming, named for one of the stories within the collection.

Perlman admitted that it was short stories which launched his literary career. After winning The Age Short Story Award in 1994 for The Reasons I Won't Be Coming, another of the short stories he was writing kept growing to become his first novel, Three Dollars, which was published in 1998. This in turn, was produced as a film in 2005, directed by Robert Connolly, and starring David Wenham and Frances O'Connor.

His collection of short stories was published in 1999. Perlman refers to this volume as the “little brother or sister” often overshadowed by the three big novels (Three Dollars, Seven Types of Ambiguity and The Street Sweeper). In most countries the first story in the collection is “Your niece’s speech night”, but in the USA it opens with “Good morning, again”, a shorter, more concrete story which has proved very popular with the American readers.

Elliot admitted that much of his writing has a melancholy tone. He had toyed with the idea of naming his volume of short stories, Men Who Fail, but this would discount those male characters who do make a final heroic act of love, which the other characters in the stories are either oblivious to, or who, tragically, come to realise too late.

Perlman is most concerned with the Shakespearean idea of never giving a character a bad line. He aims to portray even the “baddies” in a rounded way, providing them with redeeming characteristics rather than presenting them as only black or white.  He is concerned with the themes of politics and culture and especially condemns the current love affair of governments to an economic rationalism that is destroying the humanity of ordinary people when they are confronted with “un(der)employment” and its consequent poverty.

This theme is beautifully portrayed in the first story of the collection, “Your niece’s speech night” where the male character is aware of the soul-destroying task that his girlfriend is undertaking in his workplace, and he wants to offer her a gift of love to sustain her when she, herself, becomes aware of what she has done.

Perlman also beautifully and powerfully portrays his interest in the theme of culture in “I was only in a childish way connected to the established order”.  Here, he juxtaposes a lover of poetry in Australia, where poetry is considered to be so lowly a profession that a man could die of starvation should he wish to write it, with the Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam, where in the totalitarian Stalinist regime, poetry was considered so powerful, a poet could be killed for writing it.  

These themes stem in part from his family background of Eastern European Jewish descent (Russia and Poland) but he is quick to discount any direct autobiographical link to the final story in the collection, “A tale in two cities”. It is the longest in the collection and is practically a novella.  This story describes the humiliations endured by Jews living in Communist Russia and then of those experienced in Australia once they have been relocated. It reads as a tantalizing precursor to The Street Sweeper - his highly acclaimed novel published in 2011.

Perlman admits that he is unable to write with the descriptive poetic style that is currently popular in literary fiction, so he turns to one of his favourite authors, Graham Greene, as inspiration.  He describes Greene as "a master of beautifully crisp, clean and spare prose". Perlman’s stories are all the more poignant because of his choice of understated spare prose.

Perlman explained that the best part of writing was speaking directly to people who had come to meet him and ask questions. Although, as a political writer he has endured the criticisms of those who oppose his views, he has avoided being the recipient of trolls as he does not participate in social media at all. He does not have a Twitter account, nor is he on Facebook, or have a Blog. He prefers to protect the mystery of the author.  He reflected on how today’s parents are the first generation to have to deal with their children using (and perhaps abusing) the internet.  And he is interested in what humanity will learn from this over time.

We thank Elliot Perlman for a most illuminating evening, for his candour and generosity and for his bravery in portraying the political issues which need to be aired and discussed by our community. We look forward to further hearing his views on Q&A tonight!

Q&A: Tonight ABC1 9.35pm http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda

- Jane