February Selection 2006
February Selection 2006
The Book Club meets once a month (usually the second Tuesday of the month) in Castlebar Library at 8.00pm. Check events page for next meeting.
Books for February Meeting, 2006
Bel Canto
Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, 2002
Transfixed by the hijack of the Japanese embassy in Lima five years ago, Ann Patchett decided that it lacked one thing - an opera singer. In this ensuing rendition of life under siege, she corrects the deficit, but although her version of real-life events is frequently fantastical and defiantly romantic, the playfulness of artistic licence doesn't lead to a novel as light-hearted as its setup suggests.
World-famous soprano Roxane Coss has been tempted to a small Latin American country against her better judgment, the lure of big bucks obscuring her characteristic fastidiousness. She herself is the bait for an even bigger fish: opera fanatic Katsumi Hosokawa, founder and president of a cash-rich electronics company, for whom the "host country" (as it is always described) is throwing a birthday party in the hope of attracting investment. As Roxane's final aria concludes, the lights in the vice-president's palatial home flicker and die, and terrorists swarm over the black-tie clad, turbot-eating dignitaries. As overtures to novels go, this one is pretty electrifying.
Like that of her heroine, Patchett's great talent in Bel Canto is one of range. With bravura confidence and inventiveness she varies her pace to encompass both lightning flashes of brutality and terror and long stretches of incarcerated ennui. The novel's sensibilities extend from the sly wit of observational humour to subtle, mournful insights into the nature of yearning and desire.
Like the blueprint of operatic performance that she has imported, Patchett slides from strutting camp to high tragedy, minute social comedy to sublime romanticism.
The Guardian Alex Clarke July, 2001
This fluid and assured narrative, inspired by a real incident, demonstrates her growing maturity and mastery of form as she artfully integrates a musical theme within a dramatic story.
Publishers Weekly
Combining an unerring instinct for telling detail with the broader brushstrokes you need to tackle issues of culture and politics, Patchett creates a remarkably compelling chronicle of a multinational group of the rich and powerful held hostage for months.... Even more compelling are the protective, almost familial affections that arise, the small acts of kindness in what is, inevitably, a tragedy. Brilliant.
Kirkus Reviews
Saturday
Ian McEwan's dazzling novel takes just a single day to explore society itself, but this is a Saturday like no other.
We have learned to expect the worst from Ian McEwan. Since his debut collection of stories, First Love, Last Rites, his fiction has always dwelt at the heart of places we hope never to find ourselves in: the vacancies left in lives by the kidnapped child or the lost lover; the mined no-man's-land that follows extreme violence or sexual obsession. His subject has always been damage and the way the darkest events in a life will drain the rest of love. For McEwan, happiness has rarely gone unpunished.
Thus, when Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon, wakes from his bed before dawn, feeling 'alert and empty-headed and inexplicably elated' and sees a plane coming down over the Post Office Tower, trailing a fireball from its wing, it seems a portent every bit as doom-laden as the sighting of comets in Shakespeare. Worse, Perowne's world is, on this Saturday morning, entirely sure on its axis. McEwan quickly establishes him as a man of profound competence and one who never stops counting the blessings of a loving marriage and a pair of beautiful and talented children. You can hardly bear to watch.
The Guardian, January 30, 2005 Tim Adams
By recording with such loving care the elements of one rich Englishman's life, Saturday explores the question of to what extent it is possible to insulate yourself against the world's concerns. The day on which we take account of Henry is Saturday 15 February 2003. As the neuro-surgeon tries to mind his own business, hundreds of thousands of marchers are gathering in London to protest against Tony Blair's support for the American attack on Iraq. As the background tramping and shouting begins to intrude on the quiet order of Henry's life, it becomes clear that, if Saturday were to have another eight-letter S-word as its title, it would be Security . Centrally heated, pension-planned, air-bag protected, permanently loved, ........ healthy and even able to give health to others, Henry lives within a protective sac of satisfaction and achievement. But, as Henry knows from his profession, such sacs are not always enough to protect against disastrous impact and, on this day of rest, he takes his hit.
Most of the fictions provoked by post-9/11 politics have taken up positions as clearly as a party spokesman. But Saturday , in common with Philip Roth's The Plot Against America , is subtle enough to be taken as a warning against either intervention or against isolationism. Is the foreign policy of Henry's government exposing him to danger, or is his moneyed, bouillabaisse-eating existence a self-delusion in a threatening world? As in the best political novels, the evidence and arguments are distributed with careful ambiguity.
Mark Lawson, The Guradian, Jan 2005
Some useful book club links (external link: open in new window)
- Reader's Area of this site
- Reader's Review site with active discussion board
- Book Group Links: A selection of sites compiled by the Salt Lake City Library.
- Great Books Foundation: The grandfather of them all
- Reading Group Choices Online: Over 550 guides from publishers. 150 can be printed from the site
- Reading Group Guides: A very useful selection of reading group guides from Random House Publishers
- Writer's Resource site for writers of all abilities