Our Next Book

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Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine

The Wolfson Contemporary Reading Group will next meet on Wednesday, 28 August 2019 at the usual time of 7:30pm in Plommer B. We will be discussing the runaway success and winner of the 2017 Costa Book Award, Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine, by Gail Honeyman. 

Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend.

Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything. She has learned how to survive but not how to live.

One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she s avoided all her life.

Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely any change is better than... fine?

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We really hope that you will join us at this meeting. 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.


*If you choose to buy from Amazon, click here so that Wolfson College may benefit from the sale through the Amazon EU Associates Programme.

Our Next Book

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Circe

The Wolfson Contemporary Reading Group will next meet on Wednesday, 17 July 2019 at the usual time of 7:30pm in Plommer B. We will be discussing Madeline Miller’s Circe.

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child—not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power—the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

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We really hope that you will join us at this meeting. 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/

Reviews - Jan-May 2019

MAY 2019

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Book: Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel

Publication date: 2014

WCRG meeting: 15 May 2019

Rating: 5.9

Station Eleven is a post-apocalypse novel in which most of the world was destroyed by a pandemic. “A virulent new strain of flu that "exploded like a neutron bomb over the surface of the earth", wiping out 99% of humanity; characters holed up in tower blocks while the world collapses around them; "unspeakable years" in which the unlucky survivors walk blasted roads in search of vestiges of civilisation; crazed prophets leading murderous cults and "ferals" leaping out from behind bushes.”.

The flu pandemic which was the catalyst for the story was viewed very differently across the group. For some this was felt to be very believable, whereas others felt that this was just a very easy and not very believable plot device and compared this to other dystopian novels, such as Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which has a much more nuanced and worked out backstory to explain how we arrived at the world in which the book takes place. Other members again agreed that it was clearly a plot device, but still felt the use of the flu pandemic plot was needed and appropriate. 

It was pointed out that some kind of dictator/prophet always comes forward in times where structures fall apart. 

It was interesting to see the different ways people deal with extreme situations: from believe in something spiritual to people wanting to archive /preserve. 

To many the book felt disconnected between the two stories (‘aftermath of the flu pandemic’ and ‘the actor and his three ex-wives’). Many members felt that the links between different people didn’t work, that it was difficult to keep track of characters and especially that some chapters giving background to main characters (for example Arthur) came too late in the book.

What people liked about the book was that it was an interesting and different way to approach the topic. It was not purely a dystopian novel but also covered many other topics, such as what really matters, memory, regret, literature, adult/modern life etc. It also had some good metaphors, e.g. connectedness (through phones/internet, air & sea travel). Some also liked the use of the genre of graphic novel in the book. There was hope running through the book, with towns being established and Shakespeare still being played.

One criticism which repeatedly came up during our discussion was that some things didn’t ring true. It was interesting to see that different readers picked up on different points on this one (electricity, survivors, flu pandemic), and let other points go or were not bothered by it. Many liked the motto of the Travelling Symphony ‘Survival is insufficient’.

Overall, many found the book a bit too simplistic, and thought it needed a lot more work; more than one member of the group said, that it felt like a first book and that the author seemed a bit self-indulgent. However, others just enjoyed the read, and the way it made them think. The group’s average score was 5.9.

MARCH 2019

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Book: The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District, James Rebanks

Publication date: 2015

WCRG meeting: 13 March 2019

Rating: 

REVIEW TO FOLLOW

JANUARY 2019

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Book: Milkman, Anna Burns

Publication date: 2018

WCRG meeting: 23 January 2019

Rating: 7.3

Thank you to all who meet, or submitted their observations, to our meeting last Wednesday, where we discussed Milkman by Anna Burns.

Even though this is a novel about the Troubles in Northern Ireland and takes fear and division as its subject, the group was able to discuss it amicably. We were lucky to have one member who had lived there and was able to say that from her first-hand knowledge this gives a very good image of the life there.

We began with a discussion of the way the book is written and consequently read. Everyone agreed that the way it is put down on the page makes it difficult at first as the paragraphs are long and not broken up. One of us had listened to it on Audible rather than reading it on the page and had very much enjoyed the discursive, stream of consciousness nature of the telling.

We also considered the narrator’s habit of using titles rather than names which had caused some dismay in reviews but which most of us found funny and also sobering as a reminder of the dangers that were always present in the society where a false move could get you shot and betraying a friend or a relative was easily done. The titles were sometimes descriptive as in ‘Maybe Boyfriend’ and sometimes dismissive as in ‘Third Brother in Law’ and yet reminded us of the complexity and inter-relatedness of the society being described.

We went on to discuss the language and the way in which the writer is fascinated by language and invites us to understand something of the sensitivity where there were prescribed and proscribed names that could be given to babies and you could easily indicate that you were from the wrong religion or the relationship and put yourself beyond the Pale. Even though we heard about Nuns and St Teresa of Avila, we were not made to take sides.

The writer takes a subject where great delicacy of touch was needed and manages to stay sufficiently impartial so that no reader will feel alienated. Our Irish colleague said that to her there were enough signs to indicate one religion more than the other but we could still admire the skill with which we were left to see the stories of the individuals especially the narrator or ‘Middle Sister’.

We thought about the description of poisoning and what place it had in the story. Was it just an indication of a mad, sick society or was it about the way in which people damaged each other? It gave a role to the neighbours considering that no-one could go to hospital in case they got involved with the police or were seen as an informer. The neighbours took on a role almost as a Greek chorus foreboding trouble unless their advice was taken.

The question of the ending was raised. One person in particular thought it was weak and that it lowered the success of the whole book. The first sentence does link to the ending and perhaps makes some kind of structural unity, needed more when the subject is totally about disunity and fear.

We were glad to have written input from some absent members of the group. They had the same division of views as the rest of us- hard to read the long paragraphs, there being no names was disorientating but the overall effect was powerful , rewarding and worth the effort.

The general conclusion was that most of us really liked and appreciated this book and the average score was 7.3. One person suggested that if we took the mode instead of the mean it would have been 9.

December Review: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

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Book: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Haruki Murakami

Publication date: 2013

WCRG meeting: 5 December 2018

Rating: 6.4


Thank you to all who meet, or submitted their observations, to our meeting last Wednesday, where we discussed Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami.

Initially, several readers found the start of the book to be sterile; ‘lost in translation’ was one observation, possibly because Murakami writes for an American audience, any translation is going to be challenging, and may compromise the integrity of the book or the message it conveys. Once we started to unpack the book, more subtle threads were uncovered. The use of colour has significant meaning in Japanese culture, and Tsukurs’s friends were identified as follows, white which means mourning (Shirane); black –mystery (Kurono); red-passion (Akamatsu) and blue fidelity (Oumi). Whereas his name had no colour in it. The air of melancholy running through the text reflected Tsukuru’s pilgrimage, through friendships as they came and went in his life. This was noted as being a theme of other books Murakami has written, but he does do ‘melancholy’ well. The use of elaborate similes for Tsukuru’s mental state pepper the novel.

The curious phrase in the title: “Years of Pilgrimage,” is a reference, to Franz Liszt’s celebrated piano works about his travels around Europe: his Années de pèlerinage (S.160, S.161, S.163). The specific part of the Années de pèlerinage, Tsukuru Tazaki, refers to throughout the novel is number 8 of the first year of pilgrimage: Le Mal de Pays (Homesickness), or as another character in the book, Haida (name means gray), translates it “a groundless sadness called forth in a person’s heart by a pastoral landscape.”

(Another book by Murkami is Norwegian Wood which begins with Toru Watanabe, a middle-aged man who feels overwhelmed by a sense of nostalgia as he listens to the song 'Norwegian Wood' by the Beatles. Hearing this song sends Toru tumbling eighteen years into the past to a time when he was still a college kid - sound familiar?!)

Generally, the group felt the book never reached it is potential, several story lines started but the themes drifted off and were never revisited. The storyline of a young man seeking answers to his abandonment by his friends as teenagers, with his subsequent visits to see them ‘back home’ sixteen years later, (why did he wait so long), led to some interesting but mainly unsatisfactory stories. Many in the group enjoyed the descriptions of Tsukuru’s trip to Finland, a complete adventure, the images of the silver birches was evocative. His relationship with Sara, the catalyst, to his pilgrimage was felt to be shallow and manipulative, what were her motives? 

The group awarded the book a score of 6.4 out of a potential 10.