Helen Scheller
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Free Food For Millionaires by Min Jin Lee, about Korean Americans in New York in the 1990's has all the ingredients of a soapy - a large cast, and some high drama. The story opens with a slap, given by an irate traditionalist Korean father when his feisty daughter Casey refuses to take up an offer from the prestigious Columbia University. This is followed by the confrontation when Casey finds her current boyfriend Jay in bed with two other women. Finally, there's the discovery when our heroine finds out that her new beau Chul is a compulsive gambler. In the meantime her bestie's marriage ends, and her mother is raped by the choir director. However, like any soap opera, Free Food For Millionaires is superficial, and when Casey decides not to pursue a business career with her Ivy League friends, and make hats instead, we are are not surprised, and, indeed, we don't care. PS: Just a reminder that we meet again on Dec 4th, and please bring a plate for our usual end of year celebration. Also, could those with KIndles please remember to bring them so that the 2019 list can be added.
Helen Scheller The Way Back (Kylie Ladd), the story of the abduction of a teenaged girl, is described as a 'gripping psychological drama.' Sadly, few in our group would have thought this was accurate description. This modern day family, consisting of a workaholic mother, a stay at home put upon father, and a lonely, uncommunicative son, appeared just a tad dysfunctional. If anything the daughter Charlie seemed the most normal--horse mad, keen on netball and her new friend Liam. The defining event of her 13 year old life, is her kidnapping by a misunderstood recluse, and its emotional impact on her and her family. This should be the crux of the novel, but doesn't have the impact it should, because the circumstances surrounding her disappearance and eventual discovery lack a certain credibility. We agreed that younger readers may find some of the issues discussed relevant to their lives.
Helen Scheller Our last book was a very extensive biography of an English Spy - Daphne Park - for some of us it was fascinating, for others it was far too wordy!! However for those of us who could meet for the discussion of Park's life and work it was made all the more interesting because we had lived through the news reports of the political troubles of the Congo in the early 1960's and the Vietnam War - the times when this spy had been part of the English team that manipulated the outcomes of the times. Quite frightening!
Our reading group meets in a cosy corner of our Library from 10 a.m. on the 1st Tuesday of the month. If you are looking for a good reading group to join, why don't you "check us out!" You would be made most welcome. Helen Squire Our latest novel, The Gulf, by Anna Spargo-Ryan, is an all too common story of domestic violence and child neglect, but in the hands of this author, is fresh, poignant, and entirely convincing.
The most compelling character, is undoubtedly, six year old Ben, a walking encyclopaedia, appreciated by few except his adored sixteen year old sister Skye who understands only too well how vulnerable he is. Both are exposed to the continuing neglect of their flighty mother Linda, and the random brutality of her latest boyfriend, a thug and a petty crook. They have little choice but to escape from this toxic environment, but their flight doesn't end quite as they imagined, and indeed, their future may be as uncertain as their past. Spargo-Ryan writes beautifully, with a natural ear for dialogue, essential to the atmosphere of realism she wants to create. Helen Scheller Again our group met in the cosy corner of the library to discuss Hannah Kent’s new novel ‘The Good People’.
Kent is probably one of the best new novelists to emerge recently in Australia, but her books are far from an easy read. She confronts the dark side of the human psyche again with this narrative set in Ireland in the 1820s in a remote village where dire poverty, superstition and hopelessness confront the unlucky inhabitants. A disabled child is cruelly tortured by people who believe he is a changeling stolen by the fairies, a case of infanticide, women who struggle to survive in this harsh environment and one who does escape – but to what? Is anywhere better in this grim place? Does it have any relevance for us today apart from reminding us of what human nature can descend to if diminished by lack of education and hope? Kent creates a believable but unpleasant picture of this time but softens it with her lyrical descriptions of the countryside in Western Ireland. If you enjoyed her first book “Burial Rights’ you will want to read this. Meg Dillon Every year around about June, we begin to think about our book list for the year ahead. Since we withdrew from the CAE book groups, we no longer have access to their catalogue, hence we compile our own list mostly from reviews.
Members of the group submit their selections, and then a final annotated list is drawn up. Our choices are not confined by period or theme, and can be contemporary fiction or classic favourites. Whatever is chosen, we can usually look forward to titles which promote lively discussion, and sometimes the unexpected pleasure of reading a book we not have considered before. Helen Scheller Robert Drewe’s recent novel Whipbird provided our group with a lot of fun and animated conversations.
The Irish-Australian Cleary family from all over Australia is invited to the 160th anniversary of Conor Cleary’s arrival at the Ballarat goldfields in the 1850s. Around 2000 of this prolific family arrive at Hugh Cleary’s vineyard near Ballarat for the celebration. Hugh, a successful barrister, regards himself as the family’s leader since his elder brother, Sly, a former rock muso, addled by too much booze and drugs, believes he is dead and wanders around seemingly mute. Drewe pokes fun at all the middle class stereotypes in this satire on middle class manners. Thea the unmarried vegetarian doctor, two former bank managers now retired, and Father Ryan all contribute their bitter-sweet stories. Mining workers, film producers, grasping wives; mocking youngsters, Indonesian brides and Chinese husbands all add to the rich mix of this huge family. The pretenders, the disappointed, the pretentious and the mad: they are all here. We recommend this book as an amusing read to dip into on a winter’s afternoon. Meg Dillon Manal al-Sharif challenges the prohibition on Saudi Arabian women driving vehicles, aware that she is merely breaching custom, not the law. Nevertheless, she is arrested, treated like a criminal and gaoled for a few days in appalling conditions.
Her initial rebellion may be regarded as unwitting because, born in 1979 at the beginning of fundamentalism in Saudi Arabia, she becomes devoutly religious and fanatical about observance of all the rules, harassing her family to do likewise. However, al-Sharif breaks the rules herself when she feels stymied in her drawing, sport and academic endeavours and ultimately relaxes her extreme views. One salient point that emerges from her account of growing up in a segregated, oppressive society is the power of education. The author’s passion for learning combines with her Libyan mother’s adamant insistence on schooling to ensure success. She is the first female Saudi to be employed in technological information security and, working in the Western enclave of the Saudi-Aramco Oil Company, she earns a good income, works alongside males and is free to drive. Despite some apparent inconsistencies that group members attributed to the use of a ghost writer, the memoir is incisive and compelling. The violent beatings by parents, teachers and husbands and the emulation of this behaviour by the young, her disfiguring circumcision and the brutality of the religious police are related succinctly and dispassionately, resulting in a searing impact on the reader. Al-Sharif asserts that, ‘The rain begins with a single drop’ - and it does appear that rights for women in Saudi Arabia are advancing, albeit slowly. Barbara Rogers Gaita writes a heartfelt tribute to his father, a Yugoslavian migrant who established his family in a bush shack near Maryborough Victoria. Romulus, the blacksmith, is seen as a peasant saint by his son who, as a child, absorbed the hard lessons of his father’s stiff morality. Gaita’s German mother, Christine, was a deeply troubled woman who suffered periods of mental instability punctuated by her unfaithfulness to her husband and child.
Gaita blames neither of his parents for his harsh upbringing but instead claims he learnt both compassion and self-sufficiency from his parents who lived life more intensely than their Australian neighbours. The bush around Frogmore is beautifully described and a solace to the boy. “Does any child truly know his father?” was one of discussions the group followed as we tried to understand the complex family relationships Gaita explores. Some group members found their empathy for this type of child rearing sorely tested as the novel progressed, but no-one can doubt Gaita’s sincerity to this panegyric to his childhood. Meg Dillon We had no meeting in November, but just a reminder to bring your kindles, and a plate to our next meeting on December 5th.
Helen Scheller The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 1⁄4 Years Old is published anonymously and translated from the Dutch by Hester Velmans. Hendrik, an octogenarian in a care home in Amsterdam, has no intention of doing as he’s told, or dying quietly. He creates The-Old-But-Not-Dead-Club with a select group of friends who set about living their final years with careless abandon, trips outside the home, fun and hijinks. Along the way he meets Eefje, the love of his (age limited) life, deals with the care home director whose authority is threatened by these insubordinate oldies and details his exploits in a diary. This book generated a lot of discussion in terms of aging, friendship and care of the elderly. It was witty and relevant but also challenging in having us think about age related issues we’d rather not contemplate, none of us being spring chickens! The comic situations were interspersed with segments of darkness and poignancy; you could find yourself laughing and crying at the same time. The translation by Hester Velmans was excellent. Hendrik came across as an inspirational character. Look out for the follow up title, “As Long As There Is Life” - The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 85 Years Old. Pat Treleaven The following trailer of 'The Secret Life of Hendrik Groen' is very engaging, despite the lack of subtitles. Hopefully a subtitled version becomes available and Hendrik Groen can be screened at Swanpool Cinema program. and/or our Film and Literature group. Tobias Hill is a poet of some distinction in Britain, and also a fine writer. What Was Promised, is a beautifully constructed trip down memory lane, beginning in post war London, and ending in a somewhat different world in 1988. This quote 'Six years of war, nine of rationing, and everywhere feels the pinch', is the authentic voice of the East End, and accurately represents the lives of three costers, Solly, Michael, and Clarence, and their families who struggle to survive in poor accommodation and crowded conditions. The children, however, create their own imaginary lives on bomb sites. The one constant in all their lives is change, and some adapt better than others. Not all the endings are happy, yet Tobias Hill demonstrates very convincingly, the resilience of the human spirit and our need to belong in a place we can call home.
Helen Scheller The Natural Way of Things, by Charlotte Woods, has been variously described by critics, as a 'masterpiece of feminist horror, and a 'virtuoso performance'. We disagreed. The novel is supposed to be an exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control, in which ten women are imprisoned in a remote area, and subjected to every kind of abuse, as punishment for perceived sins. Yolande and Verla, the two main protagonists, are sympathetically and sensitively portrayed, and develop new personas to cope with a hostile environment, but the others remain deliberately shadowy. One horror follows another, but the writer's remorselessly angry tone means the novel loses clarity and focus. She is just too angry, and this is a pity, as she is a fine writer.
Helen Scheller
Magda Szubanski is well known as one of Australia's top comediennes, but A Reckoning: A Memoir, establishes her reputation as a gifted writer. Words leap from the page as she describes in intimate detail, her often fraught relationship with her father, and the emotional turmoil she experiences as she struggles with her sexual identity. Her very best writing stems from her vulnerability as she attempts to fit into new environments. We can laugh as she becomes a 'sharpie', sympathise when her tennis career fails, and then rejoice when she finds her niche as an actress. This autobiography, tender, funny, brave, and compassionate, we hope, will not be her only work.
PS: Don't forget to bring along your ideas for new titles for next year's list at our next meeting on Tuesday, July 4. Helen Scheller Lucy Treloar's Salt Creek is an impressive first novel. She has succeeded in creating an authentic colonial voice in her description of the Finch family, who, in 1855, are forced to move from Adelaide to distant wetlands with few resources, and surrounded by Indigenous people who regarded them as intruders. If there is a stand out theme, it is struggle: Hester struggles to preserve her independence; her father fights to make a living and ensure a future for the family, while Addie and Tully battle to keep their child and have a life together. It may well be that the past and its people are unknowable, but the author's respect for history, and her fine interpretation of one particular family, allow us at least a partial glimpse of the past.
Helen We were captivated by Our Souls At Night, by Kent Haruf. Above all, this novel was an exploration of the possibilities of life, and a celebration of the everyday small events which can shape and transform us. Our ordinary heroes Addie and Louis, live in the perfectly, unremarkable fictional town of Holt in the American mid- west. Mutual loneliness brings them together, until town gossips and their own families, almost succeed in driving them apart. This doesn't happen, and therein lies the success of this wonderful novel. Their tenacity, bravery in the face of obstacles, and memories of shared tender moments, ensure a future, maybe not quite as they envisaged, but a quiet happiness nevertheless.
Eat, Pray, Love, our March book, is an account of Elizabeth Gilbert's struggle to resurrect her life in the aftermath of a marriage breakdown, supposedly providing inspiration for many women in a similar predicament. It became an immediate bestseller, but we were not impressed. If the object of her forays into Italy, India and Indonesia was to encourage physical and spiritual regeneration, then evidence of this kind of progress wasn't apparent to the reader. Ultimately, it all became a competition: how much food she could devour in Italy; how long she could endure the discipline of meditation in India, and, finally, how she could be the very best lover in Indonesia. If there's a moral here, it is to avoid best sellers. Helen
We kicked off the year with the cult classic Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. This account of the trials and tribulations of a hapless young lecturer in a redbrick university in the provinces, became an instant hit when it was first published in Britain in 1954, and has been popular ever since. Jim Dixon's own ineptitude and lack of confidence inevitably set him on a road to destruction, and he catapults from one disaster to the next. He doesn't like his boss or his manipulative female colleague. Then his luck changes: he's offered a new position, and meets the delectable Christine. We enjoyed the vaudeville aspects of Jim's dilemmas, and were intrigued by the central theme of the nature of luck. All in all, this is a fine novel in the best traditions of English satire.
E Book Group meets again on December 6th at the Library at 10am. Please bring something festive for morning tea, and those with Kindles, please bring them. There were great expectations of our latest novel, The Strays, by Emily Bitto, which is a fictional account of a colony of artists based on the 1930's, the Heide group in Melbourne. At the heart of the story, is Lily, the first person narrator, befriended by Eva Trentham and her family. It's through her eyes that we witness the gradual breaking up of the group, the resultant anarchy and the inevitable tragic results for 'the strays'. Sadly, the narrative fails to sustain interest in what was after all, a momentous time in the history of Art in Australia. Much like the social experiment it describes, it just fizzles out. We were all a little disappointed. There is no November meeting. We meet again on December 6th at the Library at 10am. Please bring something festive for morning tea, and those with Kindles, please bring them. Helen, Stephen and Shirley - the last to leave in October!
Variously described as 'fast paced' and 'suspenseful', The Girl On The Train, a psychological thriller by Paula Hawkins, should have been engrossing, but, for us at least, it didn't live up to the hype.
The novel is mostly about Rachel, a depressive and an alcoholic, who sees something unexpected from her train window, which shatters her illusion of the perfect couple. Megan, the woman in question, goes missing and is later found dead, and so begins Rachel's obsessive desire to find the killer. Is it her ex-husband Tom, his wife Anna, Megan's husband Scott, or perhaps the psychotherapist? In spite of red herrings and withheld information, it becomes clear to the reader 'whodunnit', but by the end of the novel we simply don't care. There are many eminent writers in the crime genre, but sadly, Paula Hawkins isn't one of them. Nowadays, tourists fly over the continent of Antarctica on a regular basis, but not many will know the intimate details of Douglas Mawson's historic 1911 Australasian Antarctic Expedition.
A recent study of the subject Flaws in the Ice: In Search of Mawson by David Day. Based on meticulous and extensive research, the author reveals the enormous challenges of a journey into uncharted territory and makes some controversial claims about Mawson's ability as a leader, his conduct on the trek leading to the death of his two companions and his status as a hero. However, it's easy to debunk a hero from a distance but Mawson was a man of his time and his contributions to the study of geomorphology, hardly acknowledged by David Day shouldn't be ignored. The real interest in this novel was not in heroics but in the description of the small but significant everyday routines of the team members and their skills in improvisation e.g. building a stove that worked and using it to prepare special meals for Xmas and birthdays. All in all a comprehensive study of an interesting subject. Our latest novel was The Little Paris Bookshop, by Nina George. This was translated from the German and was on best seller lists in 2013. Despite rave reviews from many critics, we were not impressed by this offering, proving yet again that 'best seller' status can be illusory.
We are asked to believe that the central character, Jean Perdu, lived in seclusion for 21 years, as he believed his lover had abandoned him. An unread letter reveals a different story, and so he sets out in pursuit of the truth, accompanied by some other less than credible characters on their own quests. The best writing comes from the author's lyrical descriptions of French countryside. Sadly, this isn't enough to save a novel too heavily reliant on co-incidences and an insubstantial plot. The next meeting of E Book Group is scheduled for Tuesday 5th July at 10am in the Benalla Library.
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About 'Page Turners'The Page Turners group reads a selection of contemporary novels, some crime fiction and a few books based on actual events. Convenor and contact detailsMeg Dillon
5762 6558 Meeting times1st Tuesday
10 am to 12 noon Dillon's Home* *Please note - Page Turners is limited to 10 - 12 members due to constraints on where we meet.
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Developed and maintained by members, this website showcases U3A Benalla & District.
Photographs - U3A members; Benalla Art Gallery website; Weebly 'Free' images;Travel Victoria and State Library of Victoria
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