Our next book

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The Tobacconist

The Wolfon Contemporary Reading Group will next meet on Wednesday, 5 July at the usual time of 7:30pm in Plommer A. We will be discussing Robert Seethaler's The Tobacconist (2012).

It is 1937. In a matter of months Germany will annex Austria and the storm that has been threatening to engulf the little tobacconist will descend, leaving the lives of Franz, Otto and Professor Freud irredeemably changed. In the tradition of novels such as Fred Uhlman's classic Reunion, Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and Rachel Seiffert's The Dark Room, The Tobacconist tells a deeply moving story of ordinary lives profoundly affected by the Third Reich.

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We really hope that you will join us in July - the participation of our members is what keeps the Reading Group alive. However, if you are unable to be with us, please email your comments and scores so that they can be shared with the group.

The book is available in local libraries, and in paperback and Kindle edition from Amazon* and other booksellers.

*Please remember to use the link on the Wolfson Alumni & Development website if you choose to buy from Amazon, as College will benefit from the sale: http://www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk/alumni/amazon/ 

May review: 'Burial Rites' and 'The Sea'

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Books
Burial Rites, Hannah Kent (2013)
The Sea, John Banville (2004)

WCRG meeting: 3 May 2017

Rating
Burial Rites: 8
The Sea: 7.5


Nine of us met to discuss two books and although at first we had thought this would be two separate discussions we found several points at which they connected with each other. We began with Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. Six of the nine of us preferred this novel when we began the discussion but one or two changed to preferring The Sea after we had talked. People liked the Icelandic setting of Burial Rites and the way in which the writer conveyed both period and setting with a profound feeling for the landscape and how the characters were dependent on the land in the mid-nineteenth century. The author spent time in Iceland as a graduate student and experienced the darkness and the cold of the place as well as the loneliness of the person who did not belong.

We were all involved in the feel of the place, the dark of winter creeping over the land and the vastness of the Atlantic which is described as ‘coiled’ and ‘ uneasy’ giving it a strange and sinister life. Kent conveyed the effect of the landscape on the people extremely well. Bones were like ‘knives beneath the skin.’ All the senses are invoked: sounds and smells are conveyed in blood of slaughter and the importance of the animals alive and dead.

No-one had found the Icelandic poetry helpful in reading but the novel itself was clearly experienced as poetic. The whole landscape is as someone pointed out, a character in the story. The people are powerfully conveyed and do change and develop as the novel unfolds. There was some disappointment in the group that the two daughters are brought sharply into focus at times but much is left unexplained. One person liked the structure and the way in which there are questions, most of which are answered. Everyone agreed that we hoped that something would intervene to prevent the inevitable ending but the bald description of the last scene is clean, cold and unforgiving. Although the ending is itself known from the beginning (it being based on a true story), the structure allows us to be fascinated by the characters and to want to find out more. No-one had problems with the way in which different narrative voices are used. In fact most people seemed to think that it enhanced the immediacy and claustrophobia of the families living in the farms in the winter.

When we voted we awarded it an average of 8

The Sea by John Banville, a Booker prize winning novel was much appreciated as an account of memory and the wish to revisit childhood and the dawning of sexuality. Nothing is entirely what it seems and nothing stays the same. We were all agreed that the seaside of childhood holidays is beautifully conveyed and the way in which the child witnesses but does not understand adults is reminiscent perhaps of The Go Between .

Not many of us had read this book but, among those who had, they agreed that the language was beautiful although the vocabulary was at times a bit abstruse. Perhaps this put us into the position of the child who is not sure what the adults are talking about? We considered the richly textured structure with the account of the death of the writer’s wife and his presence as an adult in that process in contrast with his presence as a child in the lives of the adults. The seaside in the 1950s or 60’s is evoked through memory and is more stable than the relationships or even identity of the people. One of our corresponding members pointed out the metaphor of the way the English seaside changes from the colour and life of the summer into cold and disillusion in the winter and we are invited by Banville to consider whether this is a metaphor for aging and the way the old man perceives the memories of his youth.

The score given to this novel was 7.5.