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

Monday Morning Book Club - Favourite Reads of 2012

1. Crossing To Safety by Wallace Stegner

Our Shearer's second Monday of the month book club opted to read Wallace Stegner's Crossing To Safety following an extraordinarily positive endorsement by all on the panel of ABC TV July's First Tuesday Book Club.

Our group was unanimously equally smitten, and, by a long shot, voted it as our favourite book this year.

The novel recounts a long adult friendship between two couples who meet in 1937, and, over the following four decades, by a quiet, but totally engaging narrative alchemy of flashback and reflection, we learn of the highs and lows of their marriages, their aspirations, and the complex bonds and strains of their friendship.

Stegner's characterisation is gifted, with his characters drawn with such psychological accuracy, depth and insight, they resonate as if they are real people.

Truly, a masterpiece.

- Carol

2. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

I was fortunate that our Book Club group chose this story to celebrate the 200^th Anniversary of Dickens’ birth.   It’s amazing how I recognized many contemporary characters as Dickens perceptively described every nuance and foible of each of the many characters.   Every element of a great novel is  there – travel, adventure, romance, tragedy, hatred, evil, goodness, parsimony, poverty, snobbery and much more.  The language is so rich and stretches the reader’s vocabulary but he also introduces his own words which don’t need his dictionary as they are so bizarre and descriptive that the reader perfectly understand the author’s intent and meaning.  I urge everyone to read at least one Dickens every year as it reminds us why we love books and storytelling.

- Caz

3. The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman 

‘The Street Sweeper’ is an absorbing work of fiction within the context of well- researched historical facts. It spans half a century and encompasses the civil rights movement in USA, the Holocaust, Chicago unions and life in twenty-first century New York. Some fictional characters are based partly on real people (see Author’s note).

Lamont Williams is an African American on probation and working as a janitor in a hospital. Adam Zignelik, an Australian historian, is an untenured professor at the University of Columbia. Both men are struggling with aspects of their lives. Their stories are linked through connections with friends, family, acquaintances, strangers and others whose lives ebb and flow through the story.

At risk to his own future Lamont befriends a patient, Henryk Mandelbrot, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, dying of cancer. As the friendship develops through empathy and acts of kindness Henryk entrusts Lamont with his story of life in the ghetto and concentration/death camps, especially his time in the Sonderkommando unit, Jewish prisoners who were forced to bury the bodies from the gas chambers.

 In a library storeroom Adam discovers the original tapes of the first interviews with Holocaust survivors after the evacuation of the camps. These tapes tell the story of the Sonderkommandos uprising at Auchwitz-Birkenau and the courageous women who smuggled quantities of gunpowder to the men in the camp.

Although the Holocaust is a powerful component of the book with the depiction of terrible events and injustices, its scope is much wider. It is a story of hope, resilience, love, courage, healing, happiness, heroism, kindness, survival and the way stories and lives can connect and intersect in unexpected ways within community and varying social strata.

There are many interesting and intriguing characters, which the author develops with understanding and sensitivity enabling the reader to feel deeply for them. The Street Sweeper portrays the complexities of life across a broad range of experiences, emotions and time. It is a long book but interest does not wane as the author moves the story with great skill from one situation to another and back again.

This is a powerful story, which revives our recollections of history, engages, enlightens, informs, and challenges us to reflect on the human spirit. It is a remarkable, well-crafted book - one of the best this year (if not the best).

- Mavis

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