Tim Winton: Breath

Tim Winton: Breath (Rating: 3.5)

Tim Winton’s writing is like the Western Australian coast; stripped of all but essentials, but yet rich. Breath is about escaping and fighting ordinariness by finding a way through extremes “a few seconds of really living” versus “the monotony of breathing”.

Tim Winton writes about dysfunctional relationships between self-centred people who are looking for satisfaction outside of themselves. Although the book is about two boys, Pikelet and Looney, being friends growing up and sharing the same interests, they never really developed any strong bond. Eva was sexually using Pikelet to try to heal her frustrated life. Sando was an un-centred, rather than self-centred man who needed the boys to witness his risk taking and to admire him.

Winton takes his readers to the waves, to the pain of holding your breath, and to the confusion of growing up in a country town where compromise and a middle way are seen as a failure.

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Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace (Rating: 4.5)

The Ath Book Club critics said that War and Peace is Tolstoy’s own interpretation of history and that he is too full of his own view, and that the war episodes are too dense for the present day reader. The War and Peace lovers said that the book works and survives through its uniqueness – combining a fictional novel with a lecture about history, philosophy, ethics and military strategies.

One of the most import themes in War and Peace is the futility of war – a war is a mess that is really only an ideologised struggle. In a war there is more fighting to get more medals. It also shows blind faith towards the Czar and Napoleon.

War and Peace has an overwhelming number of characters, some real historical people and some fictional. Tolstoy’s characterisation is genius; he is very precise, descriptive and insightful in the way they grow and mature. Pierre, who represented Tolstoy’s self, was nearly everybody’s favourite as well as Andrei. General Kutúzov, a real historical person, was essential for the main plot, not for his individual development. The Rostóvs and Bolkónskys were two very opposite families; one loving towards each other and others, the other bullying. Each character, however minor, had his/her place and gave the book substance.

Reading War and Peace you become a part of a whole other world. Written for over 140 years ago, it still has relevance today and it is truly a universal work.

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Bernhard Schlink – The Reader

Bernhard Schlink – The Reader (Rating: 4)

The Reader is a compelling meditation on the connections between Germany’s past and its present, dramatised with extreme emotional intelligence as the story of a relationship between the narrator and an older woman. It has won deserved praise across Europe for the tact and power with which it handles its material, both erotic and philosophical.

Ath Book Club comments:

The Reader starts as a boy’s first love story, but it can also be about obsession, desperation and exploitation, depending on the reader. Michael didn’t receive love at home, but felt needed by Hanna. Regardless of which view the reader takes, The Reader is a story about a deep human relationship between Michael and Hanna.

It is refreshing to read the ‘other side’s story’, and see that even ‘normal’ German people went through a terrible time during the Holocaust. In hindsight it is easy to be judgemental of their actions. This is pointedly illustrated in Hanna’s question to the judge: What would you have done?

Hanna was amoral, rather than immoral, but being illiterate she had very few options in relation to what to do with her life. Her illiteracy was her greatest secret, which had to be protected at all cost – even if it led to punishment and jail. This led the Ath Book Club to a great discussion about today’s adult Australian residents who cannot read and write.

The Reader does not leave the reader untouched. Several levels and questions of this book stay a long time in the reader’s mind after the book is finished. The Reader is a masterpiece!

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Chris Cleave – The Other Hand

Chris Cleave – The Other Hand (Rating: 4)

We don’t want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this: It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book More…doesn’t. And it’s what happens afterwards that is most important. Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don’t tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

Ath Book Club comments:

The Other Hand is a very skilful piece of writing, although it is a bit of a trashy melodrama at times. It is also a story of abuse of power in Nigeria as well as in England, and description of the fear of “when the men come”.

The Other Hand is thought provoking – it is about the treatment of asylum seekers, refugees, bravery, terror and hope. It is also about human relationships and ability as well as disability to help others. The book doesn’t leave the reader without a trace; it keeps living in the reader’s mind for a long time after the reading is finished.

The book is predominantly presented through women’s voices – Little Bee and Sarah – men, whether adult, children or “the men who’d come” were portrayed as fairly negative characters.

The set up of the book; present and past interwoven, was especially prized by the Ath Book Club.

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Jon Doust – Boy on a Wire

Jon Doust – Boy on a Wire (Rating: 3)

IN THE BOARDING HOUSE IT DOESN’T MATTER who hit you first, or if they miss-hit, you have to get them back. It’s kid against kid, dog against dog. We all have rabies. We all have pinks disease. We’re all foaming at the mouth. Tit for tat, the strong rule the weak, the weak cry. Only those who can find the mean steak in them survive. I’m a survivor. Briggsy taught me that. If you’re weak, unspeakable things happen to you. The bastards won’t get me.

It is the 1960s in Perth, Western Australia. For Thomas Muir – cool and steady – life is a thing that goes on outside him. But for his brother, hot-headed Jack – believer in honesty and justice – life must be wrestled to be understood.

Jack Muir’s years of survival and his coming of age in a boys’ boarding school are sharply revealed in this dislocated memoir. Jack’s story is funny and raw. It will strike a nerve in those who were there – and in anyone who has ever asked how it is that one becomes a man.

Ath Book Club comments:

Boy on a Wire is a believable account of a boy’s experiences in a 1960’s boarding school. That fact alone doesn’t make the book especially appealing for the reader. The story is seen through Jack’s eyes and as such the story is naive, simple and written as a series of unfortunate events rather than a story of substance. Also, it doesn’t quite ring true that good and reasonable teachers and role models were missing.

Boy on a Wire is a fictional book – How would the story have been if it had been autobiographical? Jon Doust has a lot of unresolved anger towards his boarding school years, which is clearly visible in his writing.

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Peter Hoeg – Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow

Peter Hoeg – Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (Rating: 4)

One snowy day in Copenhagen, six-year-old Isaiah falls to his death from a city rooftop. The police pronounce it an accident. But Isaiah’s neighbour, Smilla, suspects murder. She embarks on a dangerous quest to find the truth, following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow.

Ath Book Club comments:
The Ath Book Club gave special praise for the detailed descriptions of landscapes, the social/historical aspects of Denmark vs. Greenland and also the detailed technical knowledge. Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow is a fast moving story where the author maintained the suspension. It is also a very dark story with an unresolved ending. The characters are interesting but all of them have a mysterious side that doesn’t clearly come to the open – Nordic depression perhaps.
The action and violence was raw and fast moving – as if the author didn’t quite know how to write it, being such an interesting and skilled writer in all other aspects. The high rating from the Ath Book Club is for the “feeling for snow” and not that much for Miss Smilla and her actions.

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Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road

Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road (Rating: 4)

Hailed as a masterpiece from its first publication, Revolutionary Road is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright young couple who are bored by the banalities of suburban life and long to be extraordinary. With heartbreaking compassion and clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April’s decision to change their lives for the better leads to betrayal and tragedy.

Ath Book Club comments:
Revolutionary Road is an exposé of American marriage in the 50s and also a shattering of the American dream. The main characters are not very likeable: Frank is weak, self absorbed misogynist and his wife April is irritating, manipulative and unrealistic. Frank and April’s purpose in life was to be an “extraordinary couple”, a goal they didn’t reach that well. The other characters are well depicted.
Yates has managed to write an utterly gripping novel about nobody and nothing. The character building is intricate; Yates builds and dissects their motivations and relationships and skilfully increases a sense of dread. Revolutionary Road is a wonderfully written, relentlessly depressive novel. The Ath Book Club simply loved it!

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Peter Klein – Punter’s Turf

Peter Klein – Punter’s Turf (Rating: 3.5)

Peter Klein’s first book was his racing world memoir, A Strapper’s Tale. He now works in the media as racing manager for Australian Associated Press and, having spent his working life in horseracing and working for some of the top horse trainers, his credentials are good for this crime mystery set in and around the racetrack. John Punter, in his second outing, is a gambler and amateur private investigator who, right from the start, is drawn into an actioncharged scenario when the daughter of a bookmaker friend is abducted in Melbourne. When a young jockey dies under suspicious circumstances, and a local trainer hits a run of rare bad luck, Punter finds himself drawn further into a web of underworld crimes, which prove to be more personally dangerous than he could have anticipated. The book is full of colourful characters, and the realistic racing jargon will appeal to those who keenly follow the form guides. If you enjoy a Dick Francis-style thriller with a healthy dose of the Robert G Barrett style Aussie larrikin hero thrown in, this will do just fine for some light-hearted entertainment.

Ath Book Club comments:
Punter’s Turf is a page turner. The main character, Punter, seems to be almost too smart to be a professional punter. He is also very lucky and sensitive with his investments and almost too reasonable and restrained. If this is believable, none of the Ath Book Club members could say. Oakie, however, was one of the favourite characters as well as the Melbourne setting.
Klein’s writing is straightforward and easily readable. There is some nice humour and affectionate descriptions of racing life identities are done in an enthusiastic manner. Punter’s Turf also gave an insight to a world that is not very familiar to most of the Ath Book Club members.

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Steven Conte – The Zookeeper’s War

Steven Conte – The Zookeeper’s War (Rating: 3.5)

In Berlin, who can you trust? A story of passion and sacrifice in a city battered by war …It is 1943 and each night in a bomb shelter beneath the Berlin Zoo an Australian woman, Vera, shelters with her German husband, Axel, the zoo’s director. Together, they struggle to look after the animals through the air raids and food shortages. When the zoo’s staff is drafted into the army, forced labourers are sent in as replacements. At first, Vera finds the idea abhorrent, but gradually she realises that the new workers are the zoo’s only hope, and forms an unlikely bond with one of them. This is a city where a foreign accent is a constant source of suspicion, where busybodies report the names of neighbours’ dinner guests to the Gestapo. As tensions mount in the closing days of the war, nothing, and no one, it seems, can be trusted. The Zookeeper’s War is a powerful novel of a marriage, and of a city collapsing. It confronts not only the brutality of war but the possibility of heroism and delivers an ending that is both shocking and deeply moving.

Ath Book Club comments:
The war (WWII) is the catalyst and the zoo is an excuse for the people staying in Berlin, but the Ath Book Club agreed that The Zookeeper’s War really is about marriage and survival. It is about adaptation to very difficult circumstances by shutting down of emotions, ethics and morals when you really cannot make your own choices. Conte’s writing style is understated and that matched the bleakness of the story. However he constantly surprises with gems of phrases, such as “The skin had a memory” and “Unacknowledged a kiss might starve.”
The Ath Book Club praised Conti for his first book. The time sequence was sometimes confusing. The last 80 pages were well written, although some members wanted the book to end before the Russians came to Berlin. – Ten Ath Book Club members were in the meeting and the discussion went non-stop. Everybody had an opinion – that makes The Zookeeper’s War a great bookclub book.

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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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