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

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