The Melbourne Athenaeum Book Club

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.

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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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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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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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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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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Ath book club May 2008

Steven Carroll - The Time We Have Taken (RATING: 2.5)

One summer morning in 1970, Peter van Rijn, proprietor of the television and wireless shop, pronounces his Melbourne suburb one hundred years old. That same morning, Rita is awakened by a dream of her husband’s snores, yet it is years since Vic moved north. Their son, Michael, has left for the city, and is entering the awkward terrain of first love. As the suburb prepares to celebrate progress, Michael’s friend Mulligan is commissioned to paint a mural of the area’s history. But what vision of the past will his painting reveal? Meanwhile, Rita’s sometime friend Mrs Webster confronts the mystery of her husband’s death. And Michael discovers that innocence can only be sustained for so long.

The Time We Have Taken is both a meditation on the rhythms of suburban life and a luminous exploration of public and private reckoning during a time of radical change.

Ath book club comments:

The Time We Have Taken is difficult to read, overwhelming with too much detail, it is depressing and it has very shallow characters. However, the book is a believable story of Melbourne suburbia – what happens happens because it could not happen any other way. The book has a strong theme of death, or moving towards it.

5 of 9 members were not interested of reading Steven Carroll’s other books. Only a couple of members enjoyed this book but said that it must be read when you are in a good mood as it is so overwhelmingly sad.

 After the Ath Book Club meeting The Time We Have Taken won Miles Franklin 2008 award.