Barack Obama – Dreams from my father

Barack Obama - Dreams from My Father (Rating: 4)

The son of a black African father and a white American mother, Obama was only two years old when his father walked out on the family. Many years later, Obama receives a phone call from Nairobi: his father is dead. This sudden news inspires an emotional odyssey for Obama, determined to learn the truth of his father’s life and reconcile his divided inheritance.Written at the age of thirty-three, Dreams from My Father is an unforgettable read. It illuminates not only Obama’s journey, but also our universal desire to understand our history, and what makes us the people we are.

Ath Book Club comments:

The Ath Book Club’s discerning members rated Barack Obama’s autobiography Dreams from My Father very highly. His language is terrific prose and some descriptive chapters were comparable with Charles Dickens! Especially Obama’s descriptions of Africa and his relatives living there. Dreams from My Father is sensitive, insightful and also an unusually honest account of a man who now is a man of power.

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Helene Chung – Ching Chong China Girl

 Helene Chung: Ching Chong China Girl (Rating: 2)

Warning: Not to be read by convent girls not wearing their gloves.’Ching Chong Chinaman’ girls taunted Helene Chung in her Catholic school playground. An Australian-born Chinese growing up in 1950s Hobart, Helene not only dealt with being different from her blonde-haired, blue-eyed classmates but suffered the shame of having divorced parents. And she kept a shocking secret – her mother, Miss Henry, was a nude model, who also lived in sin with a foreign devil and drove a red MG.Surviving the embarrassment of childhood, Helene discovered the thrill of the theatre, fell into journalism and travelled the world. She became the first non-white reporter on Australian TV and the first female posted abroad by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Ching Chong China Girlis filled with honesty, humour, love and loss, and gives insight into life that traverses cultures East and West.

Ath Book Club comments:

Ching Chong China Girl has all the elements of being a good story. Unfortunately it was not very well told. Helene Chung is an excellent reporter and that shows in her book. Being an autobiography, it was lacking personal feeling – it was written like a report about somebody else’s life and family. However, Helene Chung gave an interesting insight into adaptation of early Chinese immigrants’ life in Tasmania and how she dealt with her own racial issues later, when she progressed in her career.

The Ath Book Club wanted to see more of the personal engagement that is necessary in an autobiography, hence the low rating.

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Peter Ralph – The CEO

Peter Ralph - The CEO (Rating: 3+)

The CEO is a pacy business thriller reminiscent of Douglas Kennedy’s The Job and some of John Grisham’s books, but with a couple of major differences: it is set in Melbourne, and in those novels, you are always rooting for the hero. She may be flawed, but in the end she comes good. In contrast, the ‘hero’ of this book is almost without redeeming qualities. As the blurb states, ‘Douglas Aspine is a cold, calculating bastard.’ The CEO is the story of how this aggressive, greedy and ambitious man lies, cheats and manipulates his way to the CEO position of an underperforming public company, and what he does once he gets there. It’s a tale of mass sackings, intimidation, insider trading, infidelity and unscrupulous behaviour—and that’s just the start.

Populated by thinly veiled versions of Australia’s most notorious white-collar criminals, it’s a page-turner about the dark side of the corporate world, and it makes compulsive reading. As his enemies gather and the desire to see him get his comeuppance increases, it’s scary to see just how much Aspine can get away with. Although The CEO is patchy in parts, and I found the ending just a little unsatisfying, it shows strong potential.

Ath Book Club comments:

The CEO is a good story of good and evil that keeps the reader engaged with the characters right to the end. The name Aspine (a combination of asp and spine?) was a good choice for the main character who, unfortunately, was very believable, and who none of the Ath Book Club members would want to meet in real life. Many of the members did recognise real people and events behind the story.

The ending was disappointing to some members, although it was a suitable punishment for a thoroughly evil character such as Mr Aspine. The alternative would have been a court of law and a possibility of escaping punishment.

Unfortunately the book was lacking a sound proof reading and there were a number of grammatical errors which diminished the pleasure of reading such a good story.

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Robert Hollingworth – They called me the Wildman

Robert Hollingworth: They called me the Wildman (Rating: 4)

They Called Me the Wildman is historian and artist Robert Hollingworth’s captivating reconstruction of Swedish-born naturalist Henricke Nelsen’s solitary life. Henricke lived on a mountain in Victoria’s Tallarook Ranges in the 1860s. Robert Hollingworth has written Henricke’s life story in the form of a prison diary. No imaginary work could arrange a better cast of characters than this meticulously researched story.

Ath Book Club comments:

When reading They called me the Wildman it was sometimes difficult to remember that the book is fiction. It is beautifully written, deliberately kept short and poetic, although there was material for more. Also the artistic cover, dust jacket, paper and binding increased the pleasure of reading this book.

They called me the Wildman scored a couple of “fives” from the Ath’s discerning Book Club – an honour only to be seen very rarely. – Robert Hollingworth has done a lot of research and tenderly given an authentic “voice” to an otherwise forgotten character.

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Kennedy’s Brain

Ath book club November 2008

Henning Mankell - Kennedy’s Brain (RATING 3)

An original and breathtaking thriller surrounding one of the most important issues of our time, from internationally acclaimed and bestselling author Henning Mankell.

When archaeologist Louise Cantor’s son Henrik is found dead in his flat, she refuses to believe it was suicide. Despite traces of sleeping tablets in his system, several clues that only a mother knows lead her to believe something more sinister took place.

However Louise soon realizes that Henrik had kept many things from her and is shocked to learn he had contracted HIV. While looking through his papers, she discovers he was obsessed with the conspiracy theory that JFK’s brain disappeared prior to the autopsy—along with the vital evidence regarding bullet exit wounds. The only lead is a letter and photograph from Henrik’s girlfriend in Mozambique.

Louise’s quest to unravel the mystery surrounding her son’s death takes her to Africa, a continent rife with disease, poverty and corruption. Struggling to cope with the oppressive heat and sickness, Louise sees fear in every face, even unexpectedly in the clinics set up by an American businessman. In Kennedy’s Brain Mankell confirms his status as a master of suspense, and delivers a timely and riveting thriller that will have readers on the edge their seats until the very end. 

 

Ath Book Club comments:

 

Although all Ath Book Club members has a lot of criticism for Kennedy’s Brain, 12 of 16 members turned up in the meeting – a record attendance in 2008. That’s the attraction with book clubs, you never know beforehand which book is most discussed!

 

Henning Mankell’s anger clearly shows in his writing of Kennedy’s Brain. That makes the story jerky, unfinished and unbalanced. Mankell may have used his fame to highlight AIDS issues in Africa, he may have been extremely frustrated about them – however, Kennedy’s Brain needs lots of editing and re-writing. Rating 3 is somewhat a top rating for this book considering all criticism it got.

 

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On Chesil Beach

Ath book club October 2008

Ian McEwan - On Chesil Beach (RATING 3.5)

It is June 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the wedding night to come. On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from Ian McEwan – a story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

Ath Book Club comments:

 

On Chesil Beach is an excellent book club book. The discussion was fierce – some of the members were very excited about this book whilst some others were bored to tears. The story is quite Shakespearean and very basic. A young couple, just married and about to spend their first night together as a man and wife. – It doesn’t sound very riveting, but McEwan is a master of words and he gets into the female mind as well as the male. McEwan also masters the art of writing of violence and incest without mentioning them at all.

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Carpentaria

Ath book club September 2008

Alexis Wright - Carpentaria (RATING 4.5)

Centred on the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance, a township shaped by cyclones, monsoonal floods and a river that spurns human endeavour with its incomprehensible tides, it tells the story of the powerful Phantom family. Led by Norm Phantom, the great fish-embalming king of time, legendary storyteller, suspected murderer and leader of the Pricklebush people, the Phantoms battle to retain sovereignty over a country where “legends and ghosts live side by side”. Sovereignty depends on stories. The official version of the region’s history makes no mention of the Phantoms or the Great War of the Dump that burst the Pricklebush people apart and set Eastsider against Westsider. Nor does it mention the old tribal tensions that resurfaced and the search for lost ancestral stories that lay claim to traditional ownership.

Ath Book Club comments:

 

Carpentaria is not the easiest book to read. Many Ath Book Club members gave up half way through. Those who finished the book were ecstatic about it, hence the high rating. In Carpentaria reality and dreams blend in. That can be difficult for some readers. The message for other readers from the Ath Book Club is: persist. The book becomes easier to read half way through but the first half is needed for background and rhythm.

 

Carpentaria is originally constructed and it is full of witty humour. The Ath Book Club’s opinion is that Carpentaria well deserves the award (Miles Franklin Literary Award 2007).

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The Lying Tongue

Ath book club August 2008

Andrew Wilson - The Lying Tongue (RATING 3)

Fresh from finishing university in England, Adam Woods arrives in Venice to begin a new chapter in his life. He soon secures employment as the personal assistant of Gordon Crace — a famous expatriate novelist who makes his home in a dank and crumbling palazzo, surrounded by fabulous works of art, piles of unanswered correspondence and the memories of his former literary glory.

Before long Adam becomes indispensable to the feeble Crace, and he finds himself at once drawn to and repelled by his elderly employer’s brilliant mind and eccentric habits. As Adam comes to learn more about the scandal that brought Crace to Venice years ago, he realizes he has stumbled upon the raw material that could launch his own literary career and makes a bold decision: He will secretly write the famous author’s biography. But outsmarting Crace is easier said than done, and the two soon find themselves locked in a bitter contest over the right to determine how the story of Crace’s life will end. Against the haunting backdrop of the serene city, the two men engage in a ruthless game of cat and mouse that builds to a breathtaking and unexpected conclusion.

Ath book club comments:

The Lying Tongue is a Ruth Rendell-type of first novel. The characters are creepy and not likeable. The plot is predictable until the events in the end of the book. The Lying Tongue is a light read with enough suspense to keep the reader’s interest. The Ath Book Club members were not too keen on reading Wilson’s next book, if there ever will be one.

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Two Caravans

Ath book club July 2008

Marina Lewycka - Two Caravans (RATING: 3.5)

From the author of the international bestseller A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian comes a tender and hilarious novel about a crew of migrant workers from three continents who are forced to flee their English strawberry field for a journey across all of England in pursuit of their various dreams of a better future.

Somewhere in the heart of the green and pleasant land called England is a valley filled with strawberries. A group of migrant workers, who hail from Eastern Europe, China, and Africa have come here to harvest them for delivery to British supermarkets, and end up living in two small trailer homes, a men’s trailer and a woman’s trailer. They are all seeking a better life (and in their different ways they are also, of course, looking for love) and they’ve come to England, some legally, some illegally, to find it. They are supervised-some would say exploited-by Farmer Leaping, a red-faced Englishman who treats everyone equally except for the Polish woman named Yola, the boss of the crew, who favors him with her charms in exchange for something a little extra on the side. But the two are discreet, and all is harmonious in this cozy vale-until the evening when Farmer Leaping’s wife comes upon him and Yola and does what any woman would do in this situation: She runs him down in her red sports car. By the time the police arrive the migrant workers have piled into one of the trailer homes and hightailed it out of their little arcadia, thus setting off one of the most enchanting, merry, and moving picaresque journeys across the length and breadth of England since Chaucer’s pilgrims set off to Canterbury.

Along the way, the workers’ fantasies about England keep rudely bumping into the ignominious, brutal, and sometimes dangerous realities of life on the margins for ŽmigrŽs in the new globalized labor market. Some of them meet terrible ends, some give up and go back home, but for those who manage to hang in for the full course of this madcap ride, the rewards-like the strawberries-prove awfully sweet-especially for the young Ukrainians from opposite sides of the tracks, Andriy and Irina, whose initial mutual irritation blossoms into love.

Ath book club comments:

 

Compared with last year’s book A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Two Caravans has too many characters and no plot. All Book Club members agreed though that it was delightful how Mr Mayevskyj from A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian made an appearance in Two Caravans.

 

Lewycka’s way of making all characters speak different accent is her strength, although Lewycka’s humour divided the Book Club members in two, those who loved her humour and those who didn’t get it. Without the humour this book would have been almost unreadable as the story and the life of the characters was quite cruel at times.

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The Secret River

Ath book club June 2008

Kate Grenville - The Secret River (RATING: 4.5)

Following The Idea of Perfection was always going to be a tough call. Five years on from her Orange Prize-winning bestseller about middle-aged love in the Outback, Kate Grenville has turned to something quite different: historical fiction and a story about convict settlement.

This is a narrative whose outlines we know already: convicts transported to Sydney, eventually pardoned, encouraged to settle what seemed to be an empty continent. They didn’t understand, and wouldn’t have cared, that the land they were occupying was sacred to the mysterious, dark-skinned people who appeared and disappeared from the forests and seemed to them no more than naked savages.

Ath book club comments:

The Ath Book Club members were in agreement; not only is The Secret River well researched and beautifully written, it also received the highest score during the Ath Book Club’s existence: 4.5 of 5.

 

The members loved the descriptions of different scenery in London and early settlement in Sydney. The building of suspense and believable characters make history come alive. The Secret River is worth all the numerous prizes it has received.

 

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