http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/en-UKhttp://backend.userland.com/rss092http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/http://data5.blog.de/design/preview/60/c59b9c0e1968e954cce1930cc04c46_160x200.jpg <p>Due to the October meeting being scheduled for during the half-term (I will figure these things out when A goes to school properly!) we decided to change the date, but to before not after the half-term, as it would give us too little time to read the next book. So the new deadline, ahem, meeting date is the 20th October at 11am. We're reading The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/09/29/different-date-for-october-meeting-7064847/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/09/29/different-date-for-october-meeting-7064847/Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:29:53 +0200 <p>Anne-Marie emailed to say she won't be coming to the next meeting with the camera after all, as she has another library-related engagement, so you can leave the designer baby clothes and the new 'do' till another meeting, if you like. Not that babe in arms isn't classy as a matter of course, of course... </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/09/15/don-t-go-getting-the-hair-done-yet-6972416/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/09/15/don-t-go-getting-the-hair-done-yet-6972416/Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:04:19 +0200 <p>Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 22nd September at 11am; sorry but in my previous entry I said the 24th which was nice and confusing!! Could people have their copies of Madame Bovary back by then please, as the library need to redistribute it to another reading group in October.</p> <p>Anne-Marie will be coming along to the meeting to take some publicity shots for the library website's bit about reading groups. (Don't worry if you don't want your photo taken, or that of your child, it's not obligatory!). She's also suggested that it might be nice to have reviews of books reading groups have borrowed from the library; if anyone wants to email her at <a href="mailto:amdossett@herefordshire.gov.uk">amdossett@herefordshire.gov.uk</a> I'm sure she'd be delighted to have a few to sift through.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/08/13/oops-6718714/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/08/13/oops-6718714/Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:30:56 +0200 <p>The busyness has now reached crisis levels, what with moving house and having a new baby. I've been without a phone or internet connection for a while, and it's not much better now as I'm typing with a toddler examining the moles on my right arm and discussing liquorice allsorts and aliens. If this makes no sense you'll understand why! I'll get around to talking about our discussion of We Need to Talk About Kevin soon, as it was a really interesting discussion, but more immediately I need to let you know that I've fiddled with the times and dates of our meetings, and they are now going to be on the Fourth Tuesday of the month from 11-12 in the Children's Centre. It's a later meeting time, which I think will suit those of us with toddlers more.</p> <p>This means that our next meeting will be on 24th September, which gives us all a bit more time to read Madame Bovary, which is now available to collect at Leominster Library. I've updated Kids Stuff and the Broad Sheep, if anyone can think of any other listings this could go in please let me know. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/08/10/new-days-and-times-6690948/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/08/10/new-days-and-times-6690948/Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:52:08 +0200 <p>As most of my typing is one-handed these days (thankfully reading is possible at least with a new baby) this will be a short blog and probably a bit scatty and not very informative. </p> <p>I had a busy month of May and so did not get to re-read The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, which I'd read not that long ago but even still have subsequently forgot most of! I had enjoyed it at the time, in fact I think it's a great read, but I was in the minority among the babe in arms readership this time round. The other readers found it dense and confusing, that the cast of characters was a bit big and that you didn't feel you knew what was going on with them even at the end and that in general it was an unsatisfying read. We were in agreement though that the most memorable storyline was that of the immigrant to America, I found it fascinating, and heartbreaking and infuriating all at once. </p> <p>The author's view of India as an Indian living abroad and returning home with a jaundiced eye was discussed, and everyone was in agreement that she has a very cynical take on her homeland. She certainly doesn't depict the colourful fascinating place that lucky backpackers get to experience, even with the shock of extreme poverty thrown in; in fact it seems boring at times, as any place can be I suppose, when you live there. It's interesting though that her first novel Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard seems to tick all the boxes of the colourful Indian story; it's funny with crazy characters and a plot that 'could only happen in India' as they say, but even in that story there are darker elements at work. </p> <p>The theme of people being trapped by their circumstances suggested by the slightly clever clever title means that there is a stifling nature to the story, an air of claustrophobia. Characters are trapped by caste, by social pretension, by failed hopes and poverty and it doesn't seem like there's much hope for them to be released from one generation to the next. Some of the themes pursued by the author in this novel were similar to those of The God of Small Things, which drew a much more positive response, despite not being at all a straightforward read. The quality of the prose in this novel was also praised, so it is hard to say why readers didn't like it...in the end they just didn't find that the characters were drawn deeply enough to click with and understand or even care about. I think I'm going to have to read it again...</p> <p>Our book for July is the joyful summertime read We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. </p> <p>By the way if anyone still has any Inheritance books still out can they drop them back to the library asap please. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/06/12/the-inheritance-of-loss-6288691/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/06/12/the-inheritance-of-loss-6288691/Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:19:20 +0200 <p>The following reading list has been chosen from what was available to book in the next few months from the Herefordshire Libraries readers' groups book sets. (You may notice the authors are in alphabetical order, I just put forward suggestions and booked what was available) Hope there's something in here for everyone, so to speak, or that the titles might challenge us to read outside our comfort zones, in a good way! Some titles like The Catcher in the Rye might seem a bit obvious, but if something is regarded as a classic it's always worth returning to and maybe re-evaluating. There are a couple that I've read and wouldn't mind reading again, one that I'm not sure I want to read again, but it got such rave reviews I might change my mind, and a couple I've never read at all, so it will be an interesting few reading months ahead I think. So from July we've got:</p> <p> July: Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin<br> Sept: Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary<br> Oct: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin<br> Nov: Peter Carey, The True History of the Kelly Gang<br> Dec: Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier<br> Jan: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea<br> Feb: Joseph O'Connor, Star of the Sea<br> March: J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/05/07/reading-list-till-march-6074885/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/05/07/reading-list-till-march-6074885/Thu, 07 May 2009 12:12:47 +0200 <p>Another short(ish) and sweet blog to follow…my backache has been joined by swollen ankles (what a cliché!) but enough about me…</p> <p>We met yesterday to talk about I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou; the first instalment in an autobiography that runs to several volumes. Angelou is a national treasure in the US, especially since she was the inaugural poet for Bill Clinton’s inauguration as president in 1992. Although she campaigned for Hillary initially this time round, I recall being aware of her emotional response to Barack Obama’s ultimate win over McCain. She said something along the lines of how amazing it was that such a thing could happen in her lifetime.</p> <p>Having finally read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings I can concur that I too am amazed that America would elect a black president in the same lifetime as that of the author. A series of almost disconnected memories from her childhood and adolescence, the primary story that comes across is of a disadvantaged population living in almost total segregation in the American South. </p> <p>Some readers had finished the book, some not and one had read it years ago, but even so the general round of opinion was about the same. We were all touched by the story, and fascinated by aspects of it, especially her ability to render a situation almost tangible (for example you felt the exhaustion of the cotton pickers as they came into her grandmother’s store after a day’s picking, and you also felt their hope as well the following morning) and to write believably in dialect. There were elements of the story that were truly shocking: even though we knew that in the deep south the black population got a raw deal, it’s still something to read of the casual way their situation was dealt with by the whites, a dentist refusing to treat her even though she was in awful pain, saying that he’d rather treat a dog than a black person. The ignorance of the woman for whom Angelou worked when she was about 12 who decided to rename her for her own convenience, as Angelou’s given name was too long; and the arrogance of people in general who always expected black people to give up their seats for whites, and the many other innumerable slights and insults that made up normal interaction between people of both colours. No wonder Angelou doubted when she was young that white people were human at all.</p> <p>The story of Angelou’s relationship with her mother and father is an interesting one. Intriguingly, she seems to hold little bitterness towards her parents, even though they effectively abandoned their responsibilities towards her and her brother, letting them be raised by a competent but not very outwardly loving grandmother; a large part of our discussion revolved around this strange fact. Maya and her brother idealised their parents, particularly their mother. Perhaps this was understandable when they were children, but there is little enough explanation offered either for why they were so lax, or how their offspring felt about it. Angelou was seriously affected by being raped by her mother’s lover when she was eight and living with her mother for a time, and when the sympathy from her mother’s family ran out she had to return to her grandmother’s store, a ball of guilt and misapprehensions, she couldn’t speak for several years to anyone other than her brother and she certainly could not bring herself to tell her grandmother what had happened. </p> <p>Her interaction with her father was bizarre, in that he really did not seem to care what happened to her or her brother; even after his fiancé attempted to stab her and she ran away, living rough for about a month before returning to her mother in San Francisco, neither parent seemed to have enquired of the other as to her circumstances or how she was, even though her father knew she had run away with a stab wound. Maybe we cosset our children too much!</p> <p>One reader asked the question as to whether we got from the memoir what was the core reason that Angelou managed not to be subsumed in poverty for her lifetime, how it was that she has risen from being the impoverished grandchild of a store owner in a tiny segregated town to being where she is today. The lift up isn’t obvious, and the memoir ends on a particularly bleak note; after a very unsatisfactory sexual encounter she becomes a mother at the age of sixteen. But we all agreed that she showed unusual stubbornness and inner strength from a young age, and this coupled with her intellectual strength must be what got her through. </p> <p>Readers were generally positive about this book; there was a lot of humour in there which made it easier to read and got us closer to the essence of Maya Angelou herself. We would like to find out more about what happened to her and her family, particularly her brother, but having said that, no-one showed any inclination to rush out and get the next volume! This is partly due to the perennial backlog of books to be read and the little time there is to read them in…</p> <p>Speaking of which, our next choice is The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. Happy reading!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/05/06/i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings-6071893/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/05/06/i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings-6071893/Wed, 06 May 2009 21:20:39 +0200 <p>Many apologies for the tardiness of this blog, it seems like every time I sit down to write it I either get backache or fall asleep!!! Such is the way when Number 2 (as he/she is affectionately known by Number 1) is due to make an appearance in just a couple of weeks.</p> <p>So I’m going to make this one short. We (a small group of 2 it being the Easter Holidays) loved Silas Marner and have vowed to read more George Eliot…from the odd conversation I’ve had with other members of the group the reaction ranged from the same as ours, to an inability to get to grips with it due to very small babies and very small print in the volume being read…I did find that I needed to concentrate more on the writing, especially on those long 19th Century sentences, and could only read it when there were no other distractions at all. But it’s a short novel, so that cancels out the extra work that I put in (and maybe should be putting into everything I read anyway?). Kathy found the digressions in the text where the author gives us the benefit so to speak of her own opinions a bit annoying…I forgot to ask her then if she had ever read Anthony Trollope….his novels would be half the size and a lot better for it too if he had cut out the moralising nonsense!!</p> <p>Anyway I have a lot more to say on Silas Marner and will in comments when I get the chance, but my back is protesting and I’ll have to go… Please make up for this unworthy contribution by adding your own comments, it would make up for my shortcomings!</p> <p>Our book for May is I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, available as usual from Leominster Library.</p> <p>Anne Marie has asked if anyone has any ideas or suggestions for new book sets to be ordered for the readers’ groups? If you have and leave them in a comment here, I’ll pass them on to her. I wouldn’t mind having a chat at the next meeting about booking selections for the 2nd half of the year; the choice is available as a PDF from the Herefordshire Libraries website. Here are some books they already have it in mind to order:</p> <p>The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak<br> One Good Turn - Kate Atkinson<br> Dreams of My Father - Barack Obama<br> The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry<br> Somewhere towards the End- Diane Athill<br> The End of the Affair - Graham Greene<br> Rebecca- Daphne Du Maurier </p> <p>There’s a couple in there I’d definitely love to read with the group.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/04/23/a-very-short-discussion-of-silas-marner-5993553/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/04/23/a-very-short-discussion-of-silas-marner-5993553/Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:18:36 +0200 <p>On March 3rd we discussed The Road Home by Rose Tremain, winner of last year’s Orange Prize for fiction. It received a general all round thumbs up from the babe in arms readership, though there are a couple of readers still getting through it. </p> <p>The novel is about Lev, who migrates to England some time in 2004 to 2005 from Eastern Europe, shortly after borders are opened to the new member states of the EU. The story charts his progress from arrival in the UK, exploring what made him leave his home in the first place, what his expectations of life in England were, and the sometimes tangential relationship those expectations had with reality.</p> <p>Some of us had read Tremain before; last year we read The Colour (see archive for discussion) which was for most of the readership an introduction to Rose Tremain. As we noted last year, she is an author who is very difficult to pigeon hole; going for example from the realm of historical novel to a very contemporary one without much obvious difficulty. She is known, however, for her meticulous research, and I find she does not shy away from making her characters or at least aspects of them, unlikeable.</p> <p>Any criticism of this novel that emerged from our discussion stemmed mainly from the fact that although the characterisation in most cases was thorough, there were a few glitches where a character’s actions just did not make sense. The most obvious example of this is the main character, Lev, himself. Even though as a reader we are given a privileged view into his life and his history, Lev still acts in a way that is hard to fathom from time to time. He barely reacts to a great deal of negativity that he encounters, for example having to sleep rough a couple of times as B&B’s were so much more expensive than he had expected. He encounters a certain patronising attitude from the police, and racism from several quarters, yet when it comes to his English girlfriend Sophie, he turns from being laid back and likeable to being volatile and downright dangerous. Even though he displays a certain lack of confidence as regards her own intentions towards him, his outbursts towards her, one where he practically assaults her in public and one in the aftermath of which he is guiltily unsure whether he has crossed a line into rape, seem to come out of the blue and aren’t the result of obsessing or simmering resentment. </p> <p>Sophie herself is another character that didn’t quite follow through for some of us. While there are some beautiful descriptions of Lev’s passion for her, she didn’t really make it out of the realm of ordinary, which made it hard to understand why a prep chef in admittedly a quality establishment should be so well connected: she’s friends with a lot of up and coming artists, designers and playwrights, and apart from the fact that she played the guitar as a hobby and had aspirations to be a chef in her own right it was hard to get a good picture of her. Her volunteering role in an old people’s home was very worthy but it didn’t take her long to drop that when she got a glamorous boyfriend. </p> <p>Most of the other characterisations were wonderful though and kept the story moving quite nicely. Rudi, Lev’s larger than life friend back home deservedly achieved near mythical status with Lev’s new friends through Lev’s recounting of their madcap often vodka-fuelled adventures. Lydia, Lev’s companion on the bus journey to London and his saviour several times once there was another great character; her uncomfortable honesty, both about her shortcomings and her questionable successes displayed subtly a very dissatisfied, put-upon person, who was undoubtedly needy and irritating while deserving of our sympathy. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for Lev, until he overstepped the mark and from then on she refused to contact him. It was noted by our readers that not all loose ends were tidied up at the close of the novel, which made it so much more satisfying if they had been…there was no closure with Sophie, no occasion where poor Lydia got the respect she deserved.</p> <p>GK Ashe, the driven chef who employs Lev as a dishwasher in his fashionable restaurant is another interesting character; I was prepared to hate him for what would surely be ruthless exploitation and mockery of Lev, but it was a pleasant surprise that this job would actually set Lev up for his future as a chef himself, even if this has a whiff of unbelievability about it, the enthusiasm and spirit of teamwork engendered in his restaurant was infectious, even to a sceptical reader!</p> <p>The character of Christy, Lev’s Irish landlord, was well drawn, but I couldn’t help being a bit irritated that he had a drink problem. Why do Irish people always have to be portrayed as having drink problems? Lev certainly knocked back enough vodka during the course of the story, and Sophie did her share of drinking too, but it was the Irish guy who had the problem. Apart from that little bug-bear of mine, I thought his characterisation was spot-on, having the right mix of sadness and cynicism to pass for Irish. His accent was well written too, I could tell before he said it that Christy was from Dublin (even though he says “aye” once later on, which nobody in Ireland who isn’t from the province of Ulster would say. I know…nitpicking…). It was interesting that of two of the main male characters in the story were unsure of their own vices…Christy didn’t know if he had indeed ever hit his ex-wife as she claimed he did when he was drunk, and Lev was unsure whether he had raped Sophie. Both shed light on their relationships with their daughters; Christy desperately wanted to see his, while Lev seemed to idealise his without needing to see her much, even when he returned to his home. </p> <p>Speaking of his home, I was surprised to find during our discussion that I had assumed that Lev was Polish, while Gill pointed out that Tremain makes no mention of where exactly he comes from. Kathy later posted on his blog that the city of Baryn is in Ukraine, but it seems Tremain wanted to keep it a bit vague perhaps as to where Lev is originally from. This was a novel that was rich in texture, and kept me and the other readers very interested all the way through. Even our criticism, such as they were, could not mar the fact that this is a novel worth reading.</p> <p>Regarding next month’s book choice: Silas Marner by George Eliot; there was a bit of a mix up with the library’s booksets delivery; they haven’t got the books back yet from the last group who read it, and so we have decided this once to get our hands on the book by ourselves. It should be available to borrow from the library, and from charity shops perhaps, I got mine cheaply from Amazon, and one new reader has emailed me to say she found her old school copy on her bookshelf! If anyone has difficulty getting a copy let me know as the library may be able to send out a few copies from the readers group booksets later in the month.</p> <p>Congrats to Julie by the way, on having a new baby, and also winning the Hereford Times bookclub book review competition this month!! Well done!!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/03/10/the-road-home-5730367/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/03/10/the-road-home-5730367/Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:48:30 +0100 <p>On the 3rd of February a small band of readers braved the snowy weather and met at the Children’s Centre in Leominster, where we discussed The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards. This tells the story of the consequences of a moment’s impulsive action, when Doctor David Henry, having delivered his wife of a twin boy and girl, sees the signs of Down’s Syndrome in the girl and gives her to a nurse to place in a care home, while telling his wife that she had in fact died. His wife, Norah brings up the boy, Paul in a haze of grief and puzzlement at his lack of grief, and their lives develop an emptiness at their core as the effects of the lie become deeper and deeper felt. The nurse, meanwhile, cannot bring herself to leave the baby girl, Phoebe, in an institution, and leaves Kentucky for Pittsburgh to reinvent herself as the mother of the child.</p> <p>I read this novel last year, and must admit to having been carried along somewhat by the emotive content. As Julie said on her comment on the blog, it’s plot-heavy and emotional in an Oprah-ish way but gripping reading just the same. </p> <p>Our discussion on Tuesday went along the same lines, quickly giving way to criticism of the book. We all agreed that while it’s an engaging read, it’s the sort of book you’re nearly embarrassed to have read; why that is I’m still not sure. I’ve just come across an interesting review in the Guardian, by Joanna Briscoe, which might throw some light on the subject; she calls it “a skilfully packaged debate-provoker that is perfectly attuned to the era of the book club,” citing novels by Jodi Picoult and Anita Shreve as being cut from the same cloth. In fact Gill mentioned Jodi Picoult at the Babe in Arms discussion as being similar to Edwards, in that she disliked her style in the same way she dislikes Edwards’, and based on the single Picoult book I’ve read (My Sister’s Keeper), I’d agree that such books could have been designed with book groups in mind. So perhaps it’s this fact that grates a bit...are we being fed discussion fodder with this type of literature? Surely all novels should be discussable, not just those that tick certain boxes, such in this case issues concerning Practical Ethics. Maybe we feel just a tad patronised, and could do with a bit more showing and a bit less telling.</p> <p>Those of us who discussed this book on Tuesday agreed that the discussion brought to the fore opinions we had that we hadn’t really analysed privately, which shows the value of group discussion. Gill felt that she didn’t feel any need to get to grips with the ethical issues raised in the story because for her none of the characterisations worked. Norah, for example changed from being an untouchable female ideal, a very old-fashioned concept of a lady with few responsibilities to being a shoulder-padded eighties executive type who had lots of affairs. Real life issues don’t really gain traction on this kind of environment. Kathy agreed with this and said that for her the characters were all too successful – David is an amateur photographer, but his photography is exhibited and acclaimed, and on top of this he is a successful medical practitioner. Norah runs a hugely successful travel agency and jet sets around the world. Caroline, the nurse who raises Phoebe, becomes a successful advocate for the rights of children with Down’s Syndrome.</p> <p>While I agree with all of the above, I also couldn’t help being swayed by the discussion fodder, the actual crux of the novel; what happens when a child with Down’s is given away, and why it would be assumed that this would be the best thing to do in the first place. Edwards says of the book that many people have verified for her some of the more shocking aspects of the story, for example the casual assumption that crops up time and time again that Phoebe would be better off dead, and Caroline would prefer it that way also. In Can Any Mother Help Me? we read an account of the gradual diagnosis of a child with Down’s Syndrome, the almost brutal way that the mother was told, and the negative effect of her husband’s reaction. The child lived it seems from then on in an institution. This particular woman’s story was heartbreaking in that she seemed to be suffering from real mental anguish without knowing it, and surely the callous way most of the medical profession and goodness knows who else dealt with her child had something to do with it. It all seems like a long time ago, but disability, particularly mental disability is a thorny, stigma-ridden, guilt-ridden subject that very infrequently gets discussed.</p> <p>I do agree, however, with the others, that the story continued well past its natural conclusion and dragged towards an ending replete with loose ends being tied up as well as pointless coincidences. Was there really a necessity to have any family reunion with or without David? And was it necessary for Norah and Paul to discover what was empty about their lives? It certainly cleared things up for all concerned, but it seemed a bit trite as Gill pointed out that within a week of their meeting Paul had overcome any difficulty he had with dealing with his sister; it seemed less and less grounded in reality to have an Oprah-like closure to every issue. From what I think was a promising premise; an uncomfortable facing-up to the way society can let down its most vulnerable members, the novel degenerated to a redemptive, mostly happily ended crowd-pleaser. </p> <p>For next month we are reading The Road Home, by Rose Tremain, available as usual from Leominster Library. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/02/05/the-memory-keeper-s-daughter-5513345/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/02/05/the-memory-keeper-s-daughter-5513345/Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:38:52 +0100 <p>Our first meeting of the New Year was at Kathy’s house on January 13th, and we discussed Can Any Mother Help Me?, an account of the Cooperative Correspondence Club. The CCC was set up in 1935 on foot of a flood of responses a woman styling herself Ubique received to a cry for help she sent to the letters page of Nursery World. In her letter she indicated that she was in a rut in an unsatisfactory marriage with children being her main responsibility; she did not have access to a wireless or to a library or any intellectual stimulation it seems. The responses she received indicated that she wasn’t alone and so the club was set up, whereby every member, of which there would be about two dozen to keep it manageable would write an article every month, which would be sent to an editor who bound them all together in embroidered linen covers and sent them out to the members who read and sent on the magazines to each other in turn before they got sent back to the editor. Unfortunately complete copies of the magazine don’t exist as she (it was a woman called Ad Astra for most of the life of the magazine) sent a lot of the articles back to their writers. </p> <p>The club came to the attention of Jenna Bailey when she was doing some research at the Mass Observation Archive and came across some to the material which had been donated to the archive by a member of the group. This led her on to researching members of the group with the permission of their families, which not all families gave, and to the book we discussed, which told the stories of the individuals, the group and reprinted at length many of the original articles. As the magazine had circulated among its members until the late 1990s, it really was like a diary of adult female life in Britain from just before the Second World War until very recently, with the correspondents talking at times very candidly about their own grown-up children and grandchildren as well.</p> <p>The initial impulse to set up a club like this was one of the things that fascinated our readers; life was so different for married women with children in those days (let alone unmarried women with children), the marriage ban on work was a concept that was new to some of us, the very idea that on marriage you’d have to give up your job in the bank or wherever is suffocating. The women who signed up to join this club were all suffocating one way or another. The social pressure was on them to be good little housewives and mothers and not to have much time left over to be anything else. As Julie rightly pointed out on the blog and at the meeting, in one sense they weren’t much of a cross section of society, there was only one member of the group who could be called working class (Cotton Goods) and she was a source of endless interest to the others as to how the working class lived. </p> <p>The others mostly had very solid middle class backgrounds with third level education being the norm, and most gallingly (is that a word?) had domestic help in running their homes. This is not to take away though from the impossibly high standards that all people had to live up to in those days…housekeeping was like an art, homemaking was something you were being taught about at school, a wife’s duty was to be a clever little manager, stolidly supporting her husband’s stellar rise in the workplace, while not bothering him with the annoying details of life at home. He could be blissfully unaware of the children’s measles while the mother with her domestic crew would be subsumed in them. I’ve no doubt that the workload of these women wasn’t as punishing as that of the average factory worker or domestic help or miner’s wife, or else they wouldn’t have had time to feel the need for a magazine or to read and contribute to it, but it does seem the their lives could be awfully dull. Some of them seemed short of money, but I’m sure that’s relative; I don’t think any of them were threatened with repossessions!</p> <p>The contributions published in Bailey’s book were mainly personal, and intensely personal at times, which I thought was interesting, since the intention had been to discuss things outside of the sphere of housework and children, but as we discussed this as a group it was suggested that these were selective contributions designed to give a biographical picture of the women who wrote them. Certainly Bailey mentions in her introduction that political discussions tended to get a bit heated, and the only Jewish member had to point out on many occasions the casual anti-Semitism that pervaded early contributions.</p> <p>We mostly enjoyed the book, I felt it was a window on the recent past, from a much-ignored perspective, for instance it was interesting to read first hand accounts of the blitz and evacuations not from the points of view of soldiers or spies, but from ordinary people going about their lives. </p> <p>Some lengthy contributions however, had mixed reactions; there’s no doubt that Isis’ account, over several issues of a curious affair-non-affair she had with a doctor was self indulgent, some people found it really page-turning, while some found it annoying. For my own part, I thought it was sad as it gradually became apparent that the whole thing seemed to have happened in her head; she had a particularly disinterested husband and a baby son who was gradually diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome and during this time formed an attachment to the only male who showed any interest in how she or her children were; her GP. She ended up becoming a Catholic after being advised to meet a particularly charismatic monk (I thought she’d form an attachment to him too) and her son spent his life in an institution.</p> <p>On a lighter note, and one I forgot to bring up on the day, Yonire’s essays from the wild side (apparently she was given to exaggeration) were pure entertainment, her account of breaking into a church (in Edinburgh I think) while drunk in the middle of the night with a male friend so he could play the organ was very funny, especially the bit where he tries to kiss her and won’t take no for an answer and she practically brains him with a shoe…could have been from a different era.</p> <p>As the correspondents got older and faced illness and death, of children, spouses and themselves, the entries became very poignant, and it was brought to a close as it was felt it could not continue without key members. Some of the characters had been extraordinary; pursuing various careers successfully after their children had been raised, many of them in marriage guidance and counselling!</p> <p>Again, I feel I could write for pages and pages and not do justice to the book or our discussion, I’ll just leave it at that and say it provided plenty of conversation fodder, and all in the cosy environs of Kathy’s living room…many thanks Kathy for offering to house us for this meeting. It’s back to normal for the next one, i.e. The first Tuesday in February at the Coningsby Children’s Centre (our very own CCC, ho ho ho) to discuss the Memory Keeper’s Daughter.</p> <p>Many thanks to Gill too for sorting out tickets to the performance of Can Any Mother Help Me? on February 14th at the Courtyard…looking forward to a babe in arms evening out!!!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/01/19/can-any-mother-help-me-5409161/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2009/01/19/can-any-mother-help-me-5409161/Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:44:23 +0100 <p><strong>*</strong>*Our next meeting will be on January 13th at 10am at Kathy's house (she's kindly offered to host it as the room at the children's centre is booked out on this date, and there aren't very many of us around on the 6th). Directions to Kathy's house are in the box full of "Can Any Mother Help Me" ; our reading selection for January. Thanks to Kathy for the offer!<strong>*</strong>***</p> <p>Running for the Hills is Horatio Clare’s memoir of growing up in the 1970s and 80s on a sheep farm in the Black Mountains in Wales. The farm had been bought by his parents before he was born, so the memoir actually contains some re-imagining of the early days using information collated from his parents’ diaries and also from what his parents told himself and his younger brother, and includes extensive quotations from his mother’s diaries.</p> <p>The reaction to the book by our readers was mixed, varying from enjoyment to real hatred! I was particularly vehement in my dislike of Clare’s memoir and have found this blog difficult to write as I want to give in to the temptation to rant, and nobody wants to hear me rant (not if they’ve any choice in the matter). I did feel relieved however at the fact that I wasn’t alone in my criticism of the book, as all the reviews I had read online were glowing, leaving me to question why this should be so.</p> <p>In a nutshell, one reader enjoyed the book as she had first hand experience of growing up on a mountainy sheep farm in Wales, and felt that Horatio Clare was spot-on with his descriptions, particularly of lambing time and haymaking, such vital elements in a sheep farmer’s calendar. As such she did not focus on the characters of the protagonists involved, as for her the story was in the description.</p> <p>While I will grant that Clare writes some beautiful prose and certainly brought the nitty gritty of farming to life, this was very overshadowed for myself and another reader by the way he presented his parents to us, and in particular his mother. There’s no law of reading that says that you have to like or identify with characters in order to enjoy a story, but it was hard to escape the fact that Clare wrote about his mother for example with a deal of affection and that he made excuses for her behaviour in a way that the author of a novel would not feel obliged to do. And so, with this subjectivity in mind, it was very difficult not to give in to our own subjective feelings of dislike for a woman who comes across as needy and manipulative, and I could go on but I won’t because that would be ranting. </p> <p>One reader found that Clare’s recounting of conversations between, for example, Jenny (the mother) and Robert (the father) were unbelievable, for their high content of ‘oh darlings’ and ‘dearie me’s’, especially when they took place in a lambing field at two o clock in the morning; she felt they sounded like the utterances of a woman from two generations ago. Clare’s presentation of his father as a man who ‘relished competition with other men’, also seemed dated, and his parents came across on the pages as a pair who would have been comfortable striding across the pages of a Nancy Mitford novel. </p> <p>Their class backgrounds are inescapable, unfortunately, as their actions reeked of the confidence and arrogance of those who are born and bred to succeed; from the harebrained scheme of buying a farm in Wales and only farming initially at weekends and on holidays to the later instances of shunning local schools and considering themselves ‘above ‘ their neighbours in every way. This might seem unfair as they were decidedly anti-Tory and anti-hunting, but their shrill responses to both came across as plausibly as those of a disaffected teenager’s. Jenny still made sure that her sons Horatio and Alexander (names which really didn’t help them to fit in at the local primary school, though it’s to be hoped that they managed to keep their nicknames Pim and Twinkie under their hats) knew the finer points of etiquette and later it was without question that they should go as boarders to public school, despite the scant preparation for such of life on an impoverished isolated farm and no prep school. </p> <p>I’m all for people following their dreams and I don’t think that people should spend their lives trying to fit in either, but I also believe that you should be honest about the true cost of your dream and try not to step on too many toes in the process. The farm would never have been managed if it weren’t for a retired septuagenarian local man who basically ran the place for them. They also relied on their neighbours for help, as any small farm does, but there is no indication of remittances or of help going the other way. This of course doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It was galling though to get the impression in this account of farming in Wales that Welsh farmers starve their animals while lovely English farmers make pets of all their sheep. Of course the starvation of the animals could be accounted for by the fact that most of their neighbours were portrayed as mad. I hope that names were changed in this account, but I could see no indication of this. I come from a small community myself and know how long people’s memories are…some of the stories told indicated real financial difficulties and also isolation and loneliness; it might have been more sensitive to have left them untold or to have told them in another format.</p> <p>As I have already indicated, I could go on, but that of course would be ranting, and Babe in Arms is not a forum for my rants!! If anyone has anything they would like to add, or to challenge me on any of the above by leaving a comment, I’d be delighted to read it.</p> <p>In the meantime, have a happy Christmas, enjoy Can Any Mother Help Me and see you on January 13th at Kathy’s!!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/12/11/running-for-the-hills-5202942/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/12/11/running-for-the-hills-5202942/Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:15:34 +0100 <p>Our next meeting will be on January 13th at 10am at Kathy's house (she's kindly offered to host it as the room at the children's centre is booked out on this date, and there aren't very many of us around on the 6th). Directions to Kathy's house are in the box full of "Can Any Mother Help Me" ; our reading selection for January. Thanks to Kathy for the offer! Cold-ridden child permitting I'll update the blog with our thoughts on "Running for the Hills" tomorrow. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/12/03/news-about-meeting-in-january-5156018/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/12/03/news-about-meeting-in-january-5156018/Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:41:26 +0100 <p>Babe in Arms’ last meeting in Leominster Library took place on 6th November, when we discussed The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Everybody who attended on Thursday had finished the book and it got an enthusiastic response. It wasn’t considered an easy read by any stretch, and as previous contributions to the blog indicate, a lot of people find it hard going for the first 100 pages or so, until you get into the swing of the language and the shifting timelines of the story.</p> <p>The God of Small Things is the story of an illicit inter caste relationship in late 1960s Kerala, and the devastating effect of the fallout on several characters: the twins Rahel and Esta and their half Indian, half English cousin Sophie Mol, their mother Ammu, and the Untouchable Velutha to name but a few. It is clear from the beginning that the story is tragic and that several of the protagonists won’t survive till the end of the novel, and those that do, don’t manage to come away unscathed. But the story is told with freshness and exuberance and humour as well, having as a dynamic the innocence of the twins and their childish misapprehensions and excitements. </p> <p>Some of us had read the book years ago, about ten years ago in my case, and had looked forward to reading it again. I’m not great for reading books twice…I don’t have the patience, and so it’s great to get a chance to do so for a reading group. My memory of it was very vague, leading me to wonder if I had even understood it properly the first time round; my prevailing memory is of an extraordinarily rich novel, seething with life and death and corruption, rather like the swamps leading down to the river where much of the action takes place. Two of our readers have been to Kerala and they both agreed that Roy had brought something vital of the place in her descriptions of it, the dust that caked everything and the damp that made the place swell in the monsoon. </p> <p>Our discussion easily filled up the hour allotted for the meeting; there was no sense of having run out of things to say about it, and even throughout the hour new ideas about what had happened in the story occurred to us, which proves the value of a group discussion. From the obvious elements within the story such as the humour and the awful tragedy we were led to a very interesting chat about death and how it’s treated in different cultures! One reader also said she felt that some elements in the writing reminded her of Irish writing in a way, which of course I thought was interesting; its lyrical quality perhaps, and the sense that you are reading in a particular idiom, one that might take you some time to get your eye into so to speak. </p> <p>Another reader felt very strongly the feminist motivation behind the novel; which may not be surprising as Roy is the daughter of a well-known women’s right’s activist. It’s frustrating to see the waste of Ammu’s life; fleeing an oppressive family environment where her father beats her mother brutally and her clever but lazy brother can do no wrong, she runs into marriage with an alcoholic, and has twins, and when she can take the indignities of that marriage no longer she returns home to find that as a divorcee she is considered by her family to be shaming and worthless, and her children are somehow tarred with the same brush. Interestingly the prime mover in this blackening of Ammu’s name is her aunt Baby Kochamma, an unsympathetic character if ever there was one, whose own disappointment in love many years before has festered within her to render her a bitter, nasty old woman.</p> <p>When it comes to light that Ammu has had an affair with Velutha it is hard to know whether it is disgust or jealousy or more probably a mixture of both that makes Baby Kochamma steer the events following it towards disaster. But if the events seemed to everybody at the time to spiral out of control, with hindsight the twins could see the shadow of their aunt pulling strings behind the scenes, first of all to blight Ammu’s chance of happiness, next to clear the family’s name by accusing Velutha falsely of attacking her, then to blame Ammu and the twins for the death of Sophie Mol and finally to convince the twins that they had to renounce Velutha or Ammu would go to jail.</p> <p>The blighted lives of the twins as they were reunited many years later under her baleful eye in the now festering house of their upbringing is one of the saddest things about this book, and while it wouldn’t have solved anything, it made me wish for a bit of gratuitous violence towards Baby Kochamma. But the fact that she would carry the pain of her unfulfilled love to the grave with her made me feel a bit better, though it shouldn’t because it was probably that which caused the trouble in the first place!</p> <p>We all agreed that the most sympathetic character in the story, apart from the twins, was Velutha himself. He did so much for the family that was taken for granted or not recognised. The caste system is difficult to get our heads around in this part of the world, it seems so much more fundamental and engrained than the class system which we cannot deny in this country. But it even overrode the comradely overtures of the local communist party, which is of course supposed to be above all that. It must be admitted it didn’t take much to override the modern leanings of Chacko with his plans to unionise his factory and sign up his workers to the communist party, but still took a feudal-type advantage of his power over any of his pretty female workers, while his adoring mother turned a blind eye. One can’t help wondering what might have happened if Ammu or Velutha would have had the educational advantages Chacko had enjoyed.</p> <p>The stylised nature of the writing appealed to me very much on this second reading…the little rhymes the children had going round their heads for example, but also the stylised nature of the plot. It occurred to me as Rahel and Estha sat through a Kathikali performance that Roy’s explanation of it explained her own novel as well: that although you knew what would happen it didn’t take away from, rather it added to your involvement in the story. </p> <p>This was Roy’s first novel, and she donated her Booker Prize money to the Stop the Narmada Dam project in India. Since then she has contributed to and edited collections of essays, mainly to do with activism and politics, and she has also written some screenplays. Her main contributions have been as an activist herself, and she has proved an admirable thorn in the sides of India’s major political parties. In 2007 she said she would start on another novel. We look forward to reading that when it appears. It took her four years to write The God of Small Things; I’m sure the next one will be worth the wait.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/11/13/the-god-of-small-things-5029505/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/11/13/the-god-of-small-things-5029505/Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:19:09 +0100 <p>Our November meeting will be in the library in Leominster, as usual, at 11:15am on the 6th. </p> <p>From December, however, we are changing the meeting time and location to the Children's Centre at 10am on the first Tuesday; which in December will be the 2nd. This is because it is hard for the library staff in Leominster to provide us with a secure enclosed space in which to contain our roving toddlers. The Children's Centre has an ideal room for us to meet in and are very happy for us to take over this slot one day a month. The books will still be available to borrow from behind the lending desk of the library.</p> <p>I hope this time-change will suit Babe in Arms readers; I know we'll be sorry to leave the cosy environs of the library, where the staff have made us feel very welcome, but anyone who knows the Children's Centre will know that it too is cosy and welcoming, and I think we are lucky to be able to make this choice.</p> <p>We'll hopefully have the finalised book list for next year by Thursday.</p> <p>On Thursday we'll be discussing The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, and in December it will be Running for the Hills by Horatio Clare. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/11/04/changes-in-meeting-times-and-locations-4982237/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/11/04/changes-in-meeting-times-and-locations-4982237/Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:02:51 +0100 <p>On 2nd October we discussed How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. This is the story of Daisy, a 15 year old New Yorker who comes to stay with her aunt and cousins in rural England. Her cousins live an almost feral existence under the relaxed eye of their mother on their rambling estate, and even she leaves the picture once war breaks out and England is occupied by an invading army, as she has some shadowy diplomatic work to carry out. Daisy, who suffers from an eating disorder had by this stage embarked on an intense sexual relationship with her cousin Edmund, and when the family is split up she adopts a parental role over Piper, the youngest sister, although it’s clear that she learns as much about survival from Piper as Piper takes comfort from her. The attempt to get back to Edmund across a country changed by the effects of war has a profound effect on Daisy.</p> <p>All who attended this meeting had read the novel and found it an easy read even though the subject matter can hardly be described as lightweight. Possibly it’s because this is a so-called crossover novel which has made its way from the teenage shelves to more mainstream fiction. The book is written in Daisy’s voice; she’s a smart, cynical dissatisfied girl with problems at home; the aforementioned eating disorder and the fact that her stepmother seems to have it in for her. She tries hard to cast a cold eye on everything, but is quickly charmed by the strange family she has wound up in. Rosoff is successful in speaking with the voice of a disgruntled teenager, to the degree that I was surprised when I heard she was in her 40s when she wrote it. (It’s amazing to note by the way that this was Rosoff’s first novel…it hit the ground running when it came out in 2004, being nominated for a slew of awards and winning some.)</p> <p>Daisy’s mental health problems seem to be resolved by the end of the novel…the burden of care on her shoulders is too big it seems to admit of any internal struggles. She makes the decision, for example, to eat while everybody else is starving; the logic being what is the point under those circumstances of starving yourself? This provoked a discussion within the group about whether this was plausible, and whether we should be sending our neurotic youth off to boot-camp followed by a visit to a war zone to sort out their heads. The jury’s out it has to be said, though a visit to Gaza some years ago put life in Britain into perspective for one member of the group according to her own admission.</p> <p>There was also a lot of discussion about the war in the story and war in general and its effects. It’s been long years since Britain or Ireland has been invaded; even though Britain was bombed during WW2 it didn’t suffer the ground invasion Hitler had been planning. The concept then of the presence of an occupying force, of the cutting of food supply, communications and transport in such a familiar place is hard to fathom. We all commented on the return of the footpath system in the novel to being the main thoroughfares by which Daisy and Piper negotiated their way home. The occupying force is never identified as being from anywhere in particular and that makes them seem even scarier. To put it mildly they don’t seem to be too bothered about winning hearts and minds (if occupying forces ever are) and their cruelty has lasting effects in particular on Edmund.</p> <p>The initial lack of interest in the war shown by the teenagers came up for comment too, in contrast to the nuclear nightmares most of us suffered as children and teenagers. (Our own very unscientific analysis based on the members of our group suggests that older siblings are mostly to blame by the way for the terror-stricken Armageddon nightmares we endured as 11 year olds!) </p> <p>Although it was an easy read, and perhaps because of it, it was felt in general that this book does not stay with you for very long after you’ve read it. That’s certainly borne out for me as it was a while since I’d read it and as I didn’t get to refresh my memory during a very busy month, it actually took the group discussion to do that. I did read other books over the month, but felt unwilling to go back to this one in the long run, as I found it an uneasy read. I can never seem to read books about war twice, being too wussy, and though I was the only one, I maintain that I found it unsettling to have such an intense sexual relationship between first cousins, just described with no comebacks, not even from the admittedly relaxed family group, especially in a novel aimed at teenagers. In general, though, apart from that purse-lipped response, it was a thought-provoking read, and one I think we’d all recommend.</p> <p>Next month we will be discussing The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. No, really, we will!!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/10/07/how-i-live-now-4836453/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/10/07/how-i-live-now-4836453/Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:45:27 +0200 <p>Confusion reigned over the summer reading programme for Babe in Arms, with the net result being that those of you who read The God of Small Things and who didn’t get to our September meeting will have another chance to discuss it in November!</p> <p>Our latest meetings were in July and September, August being taken as a holiday, even from a reading group! What follows is a brief account of recent reading and events.</p> <p>On the 3rd July author Will Buckingham, then based in Birmingham (he has since moved to Leeds) came to our group to talk about his first novel Cargo Fever. This tells the story of Sam Rivers, an Englishman in Indonesia, who allows himself to get caught up in a shady smuggling deal where the cargo is actually part human; a kind of primitive human about which legends abound even today in Indonesia. The chain of events unleashed when the cargo escapes has implications not only for Sam and his fiancée Fon, but also for the inhabitants of the islands where the cargo absconds, and of course, for the so-called cargo himself. </p> <p>It’s hard to know where to begin to describe this book, as there is just so much going on in it…there is a full range of characters drawn into this situation; a Dutch missionary priest, a dodgy local businessman, a native of the islands who had to move to Jakarta because of something in his past, not to mention the young women of the islands who get to know the primitive human cargo on a very intimate level. At it’s simplest this book is a romp but it goes deeper than that, there are issues raised of a philosophical nature – the role of religion in everyday life, the cultural nuances in what is viewed as right or wrong or even as normal, the role of the outsider in telling a tale and in acting and how to treat someone who is very different from you.</p> <p>Our discussion revolved mainly around the impact that Will Buckingham’s journey to Indonesia and his stay there had on the story. He obviously knew the island cultures well and even though he didn’t begin to write the novel until he’d left, it feels like there’s a great flavour of the place in it. He talked about the sense of dislocation you feel as a foreigner and also how your cultural perceptions shift, and what might once have been extraordinary begins to seem ordinary. </p> <p>The novel is not a sentimental account of life in a tropical paradise; on the contrary there’s a warts and all approach which adds to its universality, a comment almost of the universality of human absurdity. </p> <p>The treatment of some female characters raised some eyebrows, and without giving too much away, Will said that two different women readers approached him about the novel; one said that she found it incredibly misogynistic, while another viewed it as a clarion call of female strength and power. When the same novel can evoke two such different responses it has to be worth a look!</p> <p>Many thanks to Will for coming and provoking such an interesting and amiable discussion.</p> <p>The following week we met again, this time to discuss What Was Lost by Catherine O’ Flynn. This tells the story of a bright young girl who lives with a grandmother that clearly isn’t up to the task of looking after her or relating to her. She turns detective in order forget her loneliness, and her detective work takes her to the local shopping centre. This being the 1980s the shopping centre is a beacon of newness and excitement and is visited by hordes of people ripe for getting in touch with their inner consumers. Fast forward several years to the same shopping centre, and we find it has expanded in direct proportion to the downgrading of the local urban centre. The story starts to revolve around two people who work in the centre; a security guard and a woman who works in a record shop. Neither is particularly enamoured of the career trajectory that took them to work in such a place, and it is when they meet and start to unravel a mystery of a young girl lost in the centre that their lives regain some authenticity. </p> <p>This novel is a cry against consumerism, the thing that blights the days and nights and weekends of its protagonists. The shopping centre has a presence of its own, it’s like a big glitzy badly lit monster full of things that are bad for you, like sugary food and appliances and changing fashions and bad music. O’ Flynn is at her funniest recounting the trials and tribulations of the record shop employee, who had meant to travel the world and make a difference, but was reduced to selling the Best of Queen to the hordes of people who lived in a loop of television and shopping and were essentially pawns of the ad-men.</p> <p>The contrast of this cynicism with the innocence and goodness of the main characters and the tragedies that happen unobtrusively throughout the story make this novel very readable and definitely one that leaves you thinking.</p> <p>For September we read Jacob’s Gift by Jonathan Freedland. As a practising Jew, Freedland began to question the value of the legacy he was passing on to his baby son Jacob when he had him circumcised…was it a burden or a gift? </p> <p>The need to ask this question comes about, because of the sheer bad treatment of Jews by the societies in which they live and have lived for thousands of years, but also because of the strength of Jewish identity. Freedland describes it as a portable culture of the diaspora; in any country Jewish people will have the same traditions as Jewish people in any other country. This can lead to distrust from the citizens of the countries they inhabit, as in the case of his uncle who felt and acted very English and yet was regarded by his English contemporaries as Jewish first and foremost. This worked the other way also; he was regarded by Zionist contemporaries as being too English.</p> <p>Freedland treats his questions by re-imagining the stories of three of his relatives, one of whom was his grandmother. By doing this he touches on some of the great issues of the 20th Century; Communism, Fascism and immigration to Israel. How could Jewish people remain in Europe after what had happened to them there? When they had assimilated in Germany to the extent that many weren’t even practising anymore? When even that didn’t matter…when anyone with Jewish ancestry was being sent to the concentration camps? </p> <p>The big question after this is how can Israel behave as it is behaving now to Palestine? Freedland is obviously not pro-Israel, and certainly not anti-Palestinian and he quotes “peacenik” Amos Oz in his explanation of the Israeli situation; (and I paraphrase: ) the right of the Jews to Israel in 1948 was the right of the drowning man to a floating piece of wood on the ocean. If there was someone else on the wood they would have a moral obligation to move up and share it. But they don’t have the right of the drowning man to the occupied territories. It’s still a tortured question though, if you’ve only lived somewhere a short time it’s home. </p> <p>This was a wonderful book to read, it answered some questions for me and started off some totally new ones. It gives a basic insight into a rich beloved culture, primarily a culture rather than a religion according to Freedland, and once again highlights the insanity of anti-Semitism.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/09/17/what-we-ve-been-up-to-4739596/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/09/17/what-we-ve-been-up-to-4739596/Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:07:47 +0200 <p>Just a quick note to confirm that we are not meeting this August due to families heading off in various directions for holidays and children being off school etc etc. We are however reading The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, as well as Jacob's Gift by Jonathan Freedland for September, the latter of which should be availbale for collection in the library this week. Don't feel bad if time isn't elastic enough to stretch to both of these!! </p> <p>More on our last meetings soon </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/08/05/happy-holidays-4546565/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/08/05/happy-holidays-4546565/Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:00:37 +0200 <p>It’s been a very busy couple of months for all concerned, so this will be a short blog, and fingers crossed normal service will be resumed. </p> <p>First, congratulations to both Shelley and Julie, for producing respectively the first Babe in Arms baby (a beautiful baby boy) and the first Babe in Arms wedding (hope it went well).</p> <p>Will Buckingham will be coming to talk to the group on Thursday 3rd July, about his novel Cargo Fever. We can have an extra meeting on the following Thursday for those that are able to attend to discuss our current reading; What Was Lost, by Catherine O Flynn. </p> <p>On 4th June we discussed Old Filth by Jane Gardam. It was a small group that met and only myself and Kathy had read the book, so it was a bit of a head to head. Kathy had really liked it, more than I had, and she had surprised herself by how much she got out of it. We both agreed that it was a classic case of not judging a book by its cover, or indeed its title, as titles like Old Filth don’t exactly jump off the shelf at you. Kathy thought that Gardam had done a good job in particular of writing about Old Filth himself as a child and an old man and all that comes in between. The particular sadnesses that afflicted the child and those that dogged him through his life matured along with himself and were all touching. </p> <p>I on the other hand am ambivalent about the novel; I didn’t enjoy reading it but I enjoyed what I got from it. I think I got more out of the discussion we had about it than I did from just sitting down and reading it…maybe I should just go and read it again. Or maybe that’s part of the problem of when you read a book…it wasn’t the right time for me; I was on holiday at home in Ireland, meeting friends and family and going to weddings; not the ideal time for an introspective tale about ruined lives. While it isn’t an easy read, I’m not sure about how much of a challenge it is, but the main aspect that I was unhappy with was that it didn’t flow well, I can handle jumps from childhood to old age and between people and seeing events from varying points of view, but in this case the book felt like a badly edited film, there were too many jarring notes and staccato leaps for me to feel like there was any meaningful flow.</p> <p>Both myself and Kathy agreed that the set piece stage dialogue in the Inner Temple between other barristers and QCs just didn’t work. It was clear that it was there to shine a light on the fact that Old Filth’s contemporaries didn’t think much had happened in his life but it served only to annoy us and the fact that one of these set pieces occurs just at the start of the book possibly meant it got off for me on the wrong foot.</p> <p>Having said that, I have been thinking about the book a lot since I finished reading it, and I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen all about it, so maybe it’s a slow burner. The subject matter of Raj orphans (children of Empire-building civil servants abroad who get sent home to avoid tropical diseases but end up being deprived of any affection from their parents) was affecting, and something that needed to be written about.</p> <p>In our May meeting we discussed White Masai by Corinne Hofmann, a memoir of time spent by the Swiss author living with a Masai tribe in Kenya, married to a Masai warrior. This book was almost universally panned by the readers in our group, not only for the arrogance of the author but also the sheer poor quality of the writing. It was like reading a badly-edited diary (which I suspect is what it was). Her interest in the Masai seemed not to extend beyond her husband (who she referred to a lot as ‘My Warrior’) even to finding out anything about their customs before she went to live with them and was so horrified by them. She seemed to have some affection for her mother in law, but it never came across as a meeting of minds, rather a patronising grudging regard. </p> <p>Going to live with the Masai was a brave thing to do, and she had a child under difficult circumstances and witnessed some dubious behaviour in particular in relation to women, but all through the selfishness of the author shone out and her inability to plan ahead (how many times can you run out of petrol or water before you start to think that maybe you should make sure you have some the next time?) began quickly to get irritating, as did her constant enumeration of how long it took to get her passport stamped for the sixth time, or how many nappies she washed…again. But all this I could overlook, or not be bothered by, if she hadn’t gone and bought herself a four wheel drive and set up a shop, almost as soon as she’d settled there. She didn’t seem content with anything in her new home and set about trying to change it…</p> <p>There was a lone voice of support for the author, from Anne-Marie, who said that no matter how you feel about what she did, or what her motives were, you had to admire her spirit. And even though I found it an annoying read, it was nevertheless a compulsive read.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/06/18/old-filth-and-white-masai-4331369/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/06/18/old-filth-and-white-masai-4331369/Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:41:48 +0200 <p>Today our meeting was to have been addressed by Will Buckingham, an author based in Birmingham. He travelled down from Birmingham today to talk to us about Cargo Fever, his first novel, but unfortunately his train was delayed due to a fatality on the line. In such tragic circumstances, we couldn't complain, but it was a shame not to have him talk to us. I went to meet him at Craven Arms and had a chat, before he went back to Birmingham. Apologies to those of you who turned up to no event, and hopefully next month's meeting will be back to normal. We'll be discussing White Masai by Corinne Hoffman. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/04/03/apologies-3992588/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/04/03/apologies-3992588/Thu, 03 Apr 2008 21:21:32 +0200 <p>This week Radio 4 are broadcasting the five short stories commissioned by Readers' Groups in the West Midlands (courtesy of the West Midlands Readers' Groups Network). Listen out at 3:30 pm each day! I think the Mil Millington story commissioned by Babe in Arms will be on Friday, but that would be only if they broadcast them in the order they were recorded in. And also listen in on Thursday morning at 11:30 to a documentary about the whole commissioning process. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/03/24/on-the-radio-3933374/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/03/24/on-the-radio-3933374/Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:15:33 +0100 <p>Our last meeting was held on 6th March at 11:15am. We discussed The Colour by Rose Tremain. It is the story of an English family moving to New Zealand in the 1860s during the gold rush, and attempting a new life there on a small farm.</p> <p>Although the subject matter didn’t on the face of it do much for the general readership of Babe in Arms, this book was universally popular (so you can like books you feel obliged to read!). </p> <p>I had never read anything by Rose Tremain, and didn’t know much about her or the kind of fiction she writes. Only one other member of the group had done so, she had read Restoration, twice. It seems that you’d be hard put to pigeon hole Rose Tremain, but also that meticulous research is a given in her writing.</p> <p>I was all set not to like The Colour (this is obviously a bit of a theme with me). The blurb on the back seemed to be setting us up for a saga of the blockbuster variety. I’m not a huge fan of historical novels anyway, they can be heavy on detail, and light on something like character development…you get the impression that the writers are loath to let even an hour of research go unused in their novel, but with The Colour nothing felt extraneous to the story, everything had its place, and the details were just there to get you even more immersed in an extraordinary ordinary story. </p> <p>The two main characters, Joseph and Harriet are a newly married couple trying to live as English farmers in the South Island of New Zealand. Their marriage of convenience served for both of them to make a new start in the new world, and at the beginning it looks like it could work; they are even mildly attracted to each other. But then Joseph succumbs to the temptations of filthy lucre as he finds a few slivers of gold. </p> <p>His desperation to find gold contrasts with Harriet’s wish to experience nature and love and with her ability to content herself with little. Her affair with a Chinese man who is regarded as an oddity by the gold diggers, brings her all kinds of riches, both real and metaphorical, far beyond what her husband considers her capable of achieving, and as everyone agreed it was a lot more romantic and a lot less sordid than the affair Joseph conducted in the same place with a young boy. </p> <p>Even though Joseph does make enough to go home with, it is no satisfaction to him, and he is revealed gradually throughout the novel as suffering from a guilty conscience. In fact I think he’s one of the most unsympathetic characters I’ve encountered in fiction in a while. His habit of covering his wife’s face with his hand while making love was just one of his many unappealing characteristics; he was a flawed, selfish, unlikeable character, the product of good, honest, gritty writing. A more wishy-washy author would have had us sympathise with him, but Tremain brought out in me an understanding of the primitive instinct of the other gold prospectors to steer clear of someone so obviously bad news (slightly disturbing). </p> <p>There’s a touch of magical realism in the story of a grander more successful English couple and their ailing son who has a mental bond with his Maori nurse Pare. Pare is introduced as being superstitious, but as the story goes on the line between real and not so real becomes more indistinct, and so she seems to live in a different place to the English settlers.</p> <p>There are some truly touching scenes in the book; the early death of Beauty the cow got everyone weeping; I was touched by the death of Joseph’s mother (more so than the others), and also by the powerful image of the cob house disintegrating, what a metaphor!!</p> <p>For May we are reading The White Masai by Corinne Hofmann.</p> <p>On April 3rd we are having a visit from a Birmingham-based author, Will Buckingham, who will talk to us about his novel Cargo Fever. There are extra copies of this book now available in the library; they’re behind the desk especially for Babe in Arms readers, and I have a copy that someone else is reading, but can lend to anyone who wants it when she’s finished. It promises to be an interesting discussion. Here’s a link to his blog by the way:</p> <p> <a href="http://www.willbuckingham.com/blog">www.willbuckingham.com/blog</a> </p> <p>as you’ll see, he’s just finished another novel, so he deserves a nice trip to leafy Leominster!!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/03/15/title-3884701/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/03/15/title-3884701/Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:57:06 +0100 <p>Firstly I should apologise for the lateness of this blog…teething babies and cranky laptops have sent me back to the 20th Century. Since we’ll be having a meeting later this week I’ll keep this one brief (especially while the baby’s asleep and the laptop’s working).</p> <p>Our February meeting occurred on the first Thursday of the month and that is how it shall be from now on. We now meet in the morning at 11:15, known more for bright eyes and bushy tails than the tantrums and sugar lows of the afternoons. </p> <p>In February we discussed Brick Lane by Monica Ali. Not everybody got to finish it, but of those that did, it was generally agreed that the ending was the weakest thing about it, letting down what was otherwise an entertaining and thought provoking read. This isn’t to say that views on the book were the same across the board. I found it a bit of a page turner, and read it fairly quickly, but some other readers found the prose a bit dry and didn’t feel motivated to keep reading. The death of the main character Nazneen’s baby for example, affected people differently; I felt traumatised by it and thought it had been well-treated by the author but some were put off by the way Ali moved on swiftly in time from the event. For a group of people brought together because of our small children and babies, it was a poignant discussion to have early on a Thursday morning. </p> <p>The views were mixed as well on the inclusion in the story of darker elements of Nazneen’s upbringing in Bangladesh, for example the story of the man hanging from the tree was disturbing for some readers and its place in the story in general was questioned. For some this illustrates the story of the girl who was left to her fate, an example of how people become what they are told they are, and so Nazneen lets fate and life buffet her in various directions and even over continents and into a marriage then an affair, until the unfortunate Hollywood ending when she starts to take life into her own hands. (I should point out here that we were happy at how things worked out at the end, but that it didn’t really seem believable in terms of the rest of the story). </p> <p>For me the story and character that had most resonance was that of Nazneen’s sister Hasina, whose effervescent and complex life defied any ending, happy or sad. The stylistic device of two sisters, one pushing against fate and being overwhelmed by it and one letting it buffet against her and eventually coming out on top worked for me, and I liked the neatness and symmetry of the characters.</p> <p>The hapless Chanu deserves a special mention too, for pure comedy, perfect comedy with a dash of sadness and regret thrown in. </p> <p>The overall reaction to Brick Lane was positive, but a more luke-warm positive that I was expecting, given its general popularity. It’s good but not as good as it could be.</p> <p>Our book for discussion in March is The Colour by Rose Tremain. </p> <p>More news anon.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/03/03/brick-lane-3812797/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/03/03/brick-lane-3812797/Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:33:17 +0100 <p>On Tuesday 8th January we met again at Leominster Library to discuss Saturday by Ian McEwan. It was a small crowd who braved the winter weather and the Norovirus and the January blues to make the meeting, but that did not make the discussion any the less enjoyable. Before we discussed our reading, we were treated to a poem from Jim Smith, who is organising a series of intergenerational writing workshops to take place from Wednesday 23rd January at the Priory School at 1pm. He assures me that babies are welcome!!</p> <p>It was a busy month for all concerned, so not everyone finished Saturday. Those who didn’t finish borrowed it from the library to continue their reading, so we tried not to give away the ending as part of the discussion. </p> <p>For my own part, I really enjoyed it, much more than I thought I would. Hearing Ian McEwan being described over and over as the premier English novelist of his generation is enough to put anyone off reading him (I think), and the assertion of its nature calls for rebuttal, which it gets in plenty. So without having read any of his work I was happily prepared to consider him overrated. Now of course I am eating humble pie, and planning to read a lot more of McEwan in the future…topical as that is; he’s all the rage at the moment with the success of On Chesil Beach, and the film adaptation of Atonement. </p> <p>I read Saturday at the start of December, before the rush to fit in Christmas and New Year etc. at various locations and countries (not quite as glamourous as it sounds), and in the discussion a different impression of the novel had stayed with me than I expected. It was only after everyone had gone home that I realised that we hadn’t talked about the overriding sense of foreboding and threat from terrorism that I felt the novel was suffused in as I read it. Nor did anyone mention the fact that it took place on Saturday the 15th February 2003 when millions of people marched against the upcoming war in Iraq, which was extraordinary considering that the march is omnipresent throughout the story. </p> <p>Instead the discussion focused on the wonderful detail in the novel, and on the depiction of the main protagonist Henry Perowne, a successful neurosurgeon, going about a not quite ordinary Saturday and interacting with his family, friends and colleagues. His is the sort of character we agreed we might not like if we met in real life, sure of himself and competitive to the point of arrogance, but the glimpses into the workings of his mind were forgiving, and it was as though we were given a chance to see what went into someone like this. The logic of each conclusion he reached was available to us; why, for instance, he was ambivalent about the march for peace and the marchers. His self knowledge too was laid bare, and with it his understanding that he had had luck in his life which as well as hard work had led to his success, and that he was lucky to be in love with his wife and she with him. </p> <p>The minute by minute coverage we got of his day brought us into detailed encounters with all of his family, from the dreaded visit to his mother, suffering from dementia and living in a home, to the almost wordless but nonetheless companionable meetings with his son, to the heightened tensions of his reunion with his daughter to the dreaded reunion of everyone with his difficult father in law. Underlying this is the balm of his relationship with his wife, herself at an important meeting, and there are tender tensions throughout as he tries to keep from her his own morbidity about the day. We know from his morbidity that something will happen to threaten the tranquillity of his existence, and when it does the tension becomes hard to bear, as we feel part of it, almost unwittingly we have come to care a great deal for what happens to this happy family. </p> <p>The detail was what won me over to this novel; the casual descriptions of operations and the peppering of the text with medical terms, the way Perowne saw everything through the eyes of a surgeon, the overwhelming need to win every point in a squash game even to the point of heart attack, the beautiful description of his son’s song sung during a rehearsal and the fact that when he thought it had all come apart, and that it was his fault for not backing down in a street encounter, it seemed to the rest of his family that he was calm and had a plan. I was glad that the character did not give in to revenge or petty-mindedness at the end (without giving too much away I hope). In general then Saturday was positively received by the group, with some still on tenterhooks as to how it would all end…</p> <p>We are changing the meeting times from next month to make it easier for people to make it; from the 7th February, Babe in Arms will meet on the first Thursday of every month at 11:15am, following on from Baby Bounce and Rhyme. This will cut out a trip for those who want to visit both! The meeting place will be more toddler and stressed-out parent friendly, and we are reading Brick Lane, a copy of which can be picked up from the lending desk of the Library.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/01/20/saturday~3605511/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2008/01/20/saturday~3605511/Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:10:20 +0100 <p>We met on Tuesday to discuss The Bad Mother's Handbook by Kate Long. Kate Long grew up between Bolton and Wigan in Lancashire and studied English at Bristol University. She taught English for ten years in a school near Chester before giving it up when her first novel, the bestselling The Bad Mother's Handbook was published in 2004. The novel was serialised on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime and was nominated for a British Book Award, and a TV version was aired earlier this year by ITV. Since then she has published two more novels; Swallowing Grandma and Queen Mum and a fourth novel The Daughter Game is due for publication in 2008. Kate Long has also had short stories published in Woman's Own, Woman and Home, The Sunday Express Magazine and the Sunday Night Book Club anthology. She now lives in Shropshire.</p> <p>The Bad Mother's Handbook is a story about three generations of women living under one roof; all of whom share the narration. There's Charlotte, the 17 year old bright student, studying for her A levels, who finds herself pregnant, something her mother Karen, a 33 year old classroom assistant finds much harder to come to terms with than she does herself. Then there's Nan, the grandmother, who's in her own little world, mainly made up of memories. There are lots of strands and tensions in the women's relationships with each other, alot of them based around the fact that Karen feels she's wasted her life and alternates between blaming Nan and blaming Charlotte for that. When Karen finds out she's adopted she feels that this may be the key to the change her life needs...</p> <p>In general this novel was positively recieved by the members of the group; maybe not the most memorable or important book we've read this year, but a good read nonetheless. It was slightly marred by there being a wierd little unexplained deviation at the end, which didn't seem to fit with the rest of the narrative and jarred. The characterisation was strong, with Nan being particularily popular as a sensitive portrait of someone in the early stages of dementia. The plain unfairness of old age on the old and the young who care for them was deftly handled, with the black humour that probably gets alot of people through it. The grimness of their life was discussed in the group...it didn't paint a very pretty picture of life on a big estate in the North. Sue, who is from near Leeds was at pains to point out that it's not always that grim, while Alice, who like me is the same age as the supposedly past-it Karen was at pains to point out that you are most definitely not old at thirty three!!! The life they lived seemed very old fashioned and limited for 1997, when it was set, and we canvassed each other to see if we all felt the same about that, which we did...so do some places just move slower with the the times than others, or are our memories playing tricks on us? Or is it a question of resources? We agreed that the slow internet connections the broadbandless among us experience mean we're behind alot of modern stuff like social networking, you tube, even podcasts, that is probably bread and butter to most other people in the non infrastructurally challenged parts of the country. If I wrote a novel about my typical existence alot of whippersnappers in the not-too-distant future might discuss my own technological limitations (whether or not a matter of choice).</p> <p>So while not the most memorable book of the year, it nevertheless got us talking. Next month, and next year, we will be discussing Saturday by Ian Mckewen. The meeting will be on Tuesday the 8th Jan at 1:30.</p> <p>Incidentally, some of us went along to the Reader's Afternoon in the Kindle Centre in Hereford on Saturday organised by Herefordshire Libraries and The West Midlands Readers Network. It was a really enjoyable afternoon with lots of discussion and recommendations and even a really hard quiz. The two authors who spoke to the group, Clare Brown and Paul McDonald, both gave alot to the discussion, and there were lovely little nuggets in the form of Reader's Lives where various people talked us through the books that had made an impact on them all through their lives. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2007/12/06/the_bad_mothers_handbook~3404729/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2007/12/06/the_bad_mothers_handbook~3404729/Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:04:57 +0100 <p>On Tuesday, we discussed The Accidental by Ali Smith. Smith was born in 1962 in Inverness. She lectured in English at Strathclyde University in Glasgow until she came down with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and took that as a sign that instead of teaching she should be writing. So she moved to Cambridge and since then has published several novels and short story collections. Her first novel Like was published in 1997, followed by Hotel World (2001); The Accidental (2004) and Girl Meets Boy (2007). Hotel World was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Man Booker prize. The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, The Orange Prize and won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 2005.</p> <p>Not everybody at the meeting had read the book, life having got in the way...moving house, looking after babies etc...we all sympathise, as we've all been there. I was lucky that Aisling was having great naps just after we got our selections last month, or I'd not have been able to read it either, as she was ill last week. It's not homework though; we shouldn't feel under pressure to finish our books, as that can take the joy out. I don't think that's the point of a reading group...you could even decide you just don't like a book, and that's why you didn't finish...I don't think a reading group should be a quest for unanimity! Speaking of unanimity...</p> <p>In The Accidental a family are on holiday in Norfolk where a woman turns up at their holiday cottage one day, and due to lack of communication and to misunderstandings in general, they don't figure out straight away that she is nothing to do with them. Her arrival time is the beginning of the story for all of them, and they all see in her the cure for their own ills. From the seedy academic step-father to the writer's block-afflicted mother to the teenage son battling demons and the adolescent daughter battling adolescence, they all see in Amber, the new arrival, a sort of lever towards salvation. The thing is, her name isn't Amber. All through the novel each individual gets a glimpse that she isn't who they think she is, that she is someone in herself, but they don't even choose not to see it, they just don't see at all. For them, in my mind, she becomes almost a religion, and it's a shrewd commentary on religion when at the end the daughter wears shades of red in protest at not being able to talk about Amber, a piece of symbolism that wouldn't make any sense when related to the woman's real name; Alhambra. The tricks and tropes are really used in abundance in this novel, but I found it fun and funny even, not annoying, I think it's because, to me at least, the author doesn't seem to be in thrall to her own cleverness. I normally can't abide clever clever novels, the merest sense of a stage whisper or internal laugh being enough to send me packing. </p> <p>Part of the discussion about the novel revolved around whether the author was having a laugh at our expense, something we were certainly divided on and probably what your general impression of the book hangs on; I think it depends on whether you mind reading in the dark or not. Since I never seem to know what's going on in real life, I can hardly complain if I'm in the dark in fiction as well, to be honest I quite like it!!! </p> <p>It got a tangent going to the discussion, to do with how we read, for example I skim read alot of the time, and so does Susanna; Julie reads intensely and slowly like my brother does, even with a dictionary sometimes (it's that kind of perserverence that's got my brother through Ulysses several times with all the right commentaries, and I still haven't got past 'Stately plump Buck Mulligan' and the snot green sea). I would have found out how everybody else read but by then after trying to drink my coffee, Aisling was testing the integrity of the gorgeous reading wigwam in the children's section of the library. Fortunately it withstood her attentions. </p> <p>Since so much of my attention was taken up by my improving child, if anyone has anything else to add, I'd love to continue the discussion on the blog. We're losing some members to work too, but if they want to continue being virtual members they're more than welcome to comment here as well...</p> <p>Our next meeting is December 4th and we're reading The Bad Mother's Handbook by Kate Long. The first Tuesday in January is actually New Year's Day, so we'll meet the week after, on the 8th.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2007/11/08/the_accidental~3265285/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2007/11/08/the_accidental~3265285/Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:42:00 +0100 <p>Some of us took the train on Saturday to Birmingham to hear Mil Millington's and the other commissioned short stories be read out and recorded for Radio 4. Myself, Anne-Marie, Julie and Madeleine made the trip, accompanied by a friend of Anne-Marie's and my other half and baby. Some others had intended to come, but stuff got in the way, from family commitments to a car crash, thankfully with no injuries, and at the last minute Julie had to decide to leave her baby behind which was very brave of her!</p> <p>Anyway, while my baby took my husband round the jewellery quarter and learned some new words by the canal (Ducks! Geese!) I and the others were being entertained, and might I say, honoured, by hearing five short stories being read in public for the first time. One thing I found interesting was that although we'd never met the other reading groups we could hear their influence on the writing, not in an overbearing kind of way but in the way that inspiration can come from something entirely new and tangential. So the story written for the Much Wenlock group was magical as well as topical, referring to floods as well as to a local saint; the Solihull group had a true story that married the author's talents for historical fiction with their desire to have a local history element; the Black Reader's group had a story which revolved around a great black character and touched on the author's own philosophical leanings and the Walsall group's discussion inspired a gently touching nostalgic tale. More information on all of the above will be available at <a href="http://www.westmidlandsreaders.org/">http://www.westmidlandsreaders.org/</a></p> <p>Which was all the more appropriate that Mil Millington's story revolved around trading precious sleep hours in a new 'sleep economy,' as it affects the couple of a 5 month old baby girl, something we had definitely discussed as a group. It was funny on paper but even funnier when Mil read it out, and it will sound good when broadcast in March 2008. In a way, it's great to hear something that non-parents might think of as trivial or dull (oh please, please stop talking about your child etc) being immortalised in fiction; it gives it an importance, even edginess that it might not have had before. Suddenly it's okay, for example, not to have heard of Facebook till about a month ago (every time I go near the computer my daughter manages either to turn it off or initiate keyboard commands I didn't know existed either); I've been busy parenting in a sleep deprived way, by the skin of my teeth, so to speak. I'm even considering venturing into reading baby-lit (Anne Enright who won the Man Booker Prize also wrote Making Babies, which might be worth a look): who knows we might even pick up a few handy home hints about snatching some sleep on the job, though Mil's tip about sleeping in the lavatory sounds a bit reminiscent of university-era parties for my liking.</p> <p>So, we all loved it and said so to the radio people and had a good laugh on the train home. Which makes me think that we should have more Babe in Arms outings - there's a readers day event in Hereford on December 1st for starters, but maybe we could discuss other possibilities at the next meeting.</p> <p>Thanks to Jonathon Davidson and the West Midlands Readers Group Network for providing this opportunity, and also of course to Radio 4, and last but not least thanks to Mil Millington for visiting and listening to us and we look forward to listening to you again in March!</p> <p>Next meeting is November 6th at 1:30, and this month's reading is The Accidental by Ali Smith.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2007/10/23/babe_in_arms_day_out~3182612/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2007/10/23/babe_in_arms_day_out~3182612/Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:43:37 +0200 <p>At our last meeting we discussed poetry. I must admit I was concerned that for everyone else it would be a heady intellectual discussion while I lagged behind bottom of the class because I didn't get to finish my books. Thankfully, though, it was a refreshingly honest and down to earth discussion. I'll lay my stall out now; I love poetry but I don't read very much especially these days, because it's too much effort. Not that you don't get back out what you put in and more, but when I can't shut the world out and sit in silence absorbing the distilled wisdom of another soul, so to speak, it goes right over my head.</p> <p>A lot of people don't 'get' poetry but it's almost like a shameful admission you have to make. Julie made her admission at the last meeting (I'm now naming names, but if I misattribute please let me know), and we're now considering a twelve step programme to get her back into the fold of poetry loving. I think that makes Wendy Cope a good choice for a month's reading; she manages to poke fun at forms of poetry and at long-suffering poets, while being an accomplished poet herself. Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis is full of little nuggets of humour and sweetness, from sonnets to haikus, and is very readable even with a tantrum throwing toddler at your heels. Her poems are good fun but they wouldn't be half so much fun if they weren't so good! Madeleine in particular was taken by the Wendy Cope collection in particular My Lover, and she read among others from Strugnell's Haiku; </p> <p> The cherry blossom<br> In my neighbour's garden - Oh!<br> It looks really nice.</p> <p>I had also taken to read Andrew Motion's edited volume Here to Eternity, which is a selection of poems made by Motion arranged under headings which refer to life, such as Self, Land, Work etc. I think it's a great idea, and was busily ploughing my way through in order, but started too late and got waylaid by various un-poetic matters…but I've taken it out of the library again and will continue where I left off once I've finished reading this month's selection. Some of the poems were familiar to me, but not many in terms of a percentage, and I think to get the best out of it, I will have to finish it and start it again. Interestingly, I felt defeated before the meeting last week, but we had such a great discussion about poetry and what it's for, that I feel re-energised and ready to tackle it again. </p> <p>Anne Marie read aloud a love poem by Pablo Neruda, as well as Blessing for a Child from the Poetry on loan postcard selection in the library, and also Late Fragment by Raymond Carver…</p> <p> And what did you want?<br> To call myself beloved, to feel myself<br> beloved on the earth.</p> <p>…which is filed in the Here to Eternity collection under Land.</p> <p>I couldn't help myself and read Patrick Kavanagh's Epic, describing a land dispute in Monaghan when it had to be decided who owned 'That half a rood of rock,'</p> <p> That was the year of the Munich bother. Which<br> Was more important? I inclined<br> To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin<br> Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind<br> He said: I made the Iliad from such<br> A local row. Gods make their own importance.</p> <p>A discussion of the relevance of poetry ensued, Julie asking if poets and poetry would survive the world we live but the general consensus was that while there's humanity, or inhumanity, there would be poetry.</p> <p>Anyway, news about Mil Millington: The short story is written and submitted!! Anne Marie has seen it and thinks it's brilliant, and reflects the discussion too which is a bonus. So, fair play to Mil and we can't wait to hear it read out on air. After they've been broadcast the stories will be available to read on the West Midlands Readers Network Website. Regarding the 20th October and the Recording of the story in Birmingham, a few of us are taking the train to New St Birmingham which leaves Hereford at 11:50 Saturday 20th. The recording starts at 2pm and is expected to take about two hours. The BBC want to interview reading group members, so if anyone wants to they can wait around for this for another half an hour or so. Those of us that don't want to be too far from our babies (I'm glad I'm not the only one) are bring along partners or someone to mind the babies nearby, so they don't drown out the authors reading from their works!! If we could have an idea of how many are planning to go that would be good, either leave a comment on the blog, or ring Anne Marie at the Library.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2007/10/09/poetry_and_short_stories~3108889/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2007/10/09/poetry_and_short_stories~3108889/Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:50:58 +0200 <p>When I had the idea for Babe in Arms, I was thinking primarily of the reading needs of parents of very young babies, optimistically imagining that those frenetic early days were past me at least for the time being. I hadn't reckoned on teeth and tantrums!!! While it's not meant to be a forum for talking about our wee ones (there are lots of mums and tots groups etc for that) I do feel entitled to moan just a little about the month I've just had….at least it's an excuse for why the blog is so late. </p> <p>That's not all. I've got blogger's block about The Bookseller of Kabul. It's the sort of book you feel you should be positive about. Written by Asne Seierstad shortly after the 'fall' of the Taliban in Afghanistan, when she lived for some time with the family of 'Sultan Khan', who owned a bookshop she and many other foreign journalists frequented. It should tick many boxes for me…a window into another world, another perspective on something we hear daily about but in a patchy way, a chance to learn about a fascinating culture; in short a worthy piece of writing that would be well worth reading. And it is…to a point, and I feel that the members of the group got something out of it, including myself. But I feel it could have been better, more passionate, in short, just because it's journalism it doesn't have to be so…bare. A member of the group suggested that the fact that it's translated means that it might have lost something along the way, and I think that's plausible as the style of writing is very stilted. </p> <p>That's not to take away from the story it tells, or rather the several stories it tells, for obviously it relates of a complex society. I found it slightly uncomfortable to read in such detail about a family that cannot be anonymous where they live…and a little research will show that it's very obvious who Sultan Khan is (and that he is selling his own version of events in his bookshop). I found Seierstad most compelling when she wrote about Leila, but the thin veil of anonymity made me wonder whether she had done her any favours by baring her soul like this. It was interesting that other members of the group found other aspects of the story more compelling. For instance, one member has a twelve year old son and so was very affected by the story which relates to Sultan Khan's own twelve year old. </p> <p>Personally, I found that her attitude to the Khan family and to Afghanistan in general was patronising, and lacked depth. She treated the Bookseller as the author of the family's woes, and his authoritarian behaviour could back this up. But she chose not to look outside of him and see perhaps the privations that made him such a hard man and the suffering that made him insensitive to the sufferings of others. He would seem to have taken the long view and chosen to maintain the family's prestige at the expense of its members; I can't say that I ended up liking her representation of him, considering his iron-fisted way of ruling his family, and his treatment of his first wife, but I think it is obvious from this book that not only women, but children and yes, even men, suffer under successive brutal regimes. </p> <p>On balance, the response to the book was on the positive side. The inevitable comparison with The Kite Runner took place and there were members on both sides of the fence. </p> <p>For Tuesday, we are reading poetry. Also we'll be discussing the trip to Birmingham on 20th October and finding out who wants to come. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2007/09/27/almost_october~3050475/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2007/09/27/almost_october~3050475/Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:46:11 +0200 <p>Apologies for the lateness of this blog. I know all great diarists write up their accounts of each day before they go to sleep at night, or claim to, but I’m afraid I’m not aiming for that kind of perfection. To paraphrase Mil Millington, I wonder how far I’d get with Aisling if I told her Samuel Pepys didn’t have to change nappies? Thanks to Mil by the way for the updates. It’s great to know that there’s a story out there with our name on it…or something like that…</p> <p>Anyway, at the last meeting, there were eight parents, with their babies, small children and Anne-Marie Dossett ensconced in the exhibition room at Leominster Library, where we could make as much noise as we liked without feeling guilty. As our children attempted to throw library books and each other out of the windows, which thankfully didn’t open very high, we had a wonderful time discussing Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. One or two readers hadn’t finished even though they liked the book, which is a good indication that we should keep our selections short.</p> <p>Everybody had good things to say about Black Swan Green. Despite the fact that it was an easy read, almost everyone agreed that it worked on several levels and the simplicity was deceptive. It’s a coming of age novel (a Bildungsroman) exploring a journey the protagonist sets out on towards adulthood, where along the way they encounter experiences to test their mettle. Other examples include Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and the His Dark Materials trilogy. Black Swan Green recounts thirteen stories based on thirteen months of Jason Taylor, a boy aged twelve to thirteen in 1981-82 in Worcestershire. The adolescent voice is convincing throughout, and you can see maturity develop throughout the novel in a subtle way. The concerns and fears of the main protagonist convince as well…his stammer, or stutter, and his position in the schoolboy hierarchy, and there are some poignant passages where bullying take place, as well as some where his parents’ marriage is visibly deteriorating. Along with this poignancy is a lot of real humour, we’ve all admitted to chuckling aloud when reading it… It’s one case where a review on a book saying something like: ‘darkly funny, it’s vintage Mitchell at his best,’ might actually be accurate (sorry, we appear to have stumbled into a personal bugbear…those reviews on the backs of books that claim they’re funny, when in fact they’re about the holocaust, and there’s no humour there at all, not even a little wry bit that can make you smile through the tears). Mitchell’s language got a lot of mention too…those cunning schoolboy made-up verbs - indications of a poetic turn of mind, they were really well conceived. And, last but not least, the characterisations were spot-on, from the charming but ultimately deceitful Irish fella to the colourful continental bohemian. We loved it!!!</p> <p>Next up is The Bookseller of Kabul. The next meeting is the 4th September, there will probably still be some books available behind the lending desk of the library should anyone not have got one. See you there!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2007/08/22/black_swan_green~2851201/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://babeinarms.blog.co.uk/2007/08/22/black_swan_green~2851201/Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:00:15 +0200