Category: Richard and Judy Book Club

Categories
2008 Crime Richard and Judy Book Club

The Brutal Art – Jesse Kellerman

The Brutal Art begins when art dealer, Ethan Muller discovers a large number of pictures in an abandoned New York apartment. The pictures were the discovery of a lifetime:

Electrified, unnerved, I stared for six or seven minutes, a long time to look at a sheet of 8 1/2-by-11 paper; and before I could censor myself, I decided that whoever had drawn this was sick. Because the composition had a psychotic quality, the fever of action taken to warm oneself from the chill of solitude.

Ethan soon realises that he has stumbled across the work of a murderer, and tries to use the pictures to solve the 40-year-old crime.

The first third of the book was OK, as although the characters failed to engage me, the plot was interesting enough to pull me onwards. As the book progressed, I began to lose interest; the plot petered out to a virtual standstill, and chapters about Ethan’s past made the book seem dis-jointed.

There seemed to be too much arguing over how much everyone was going to pay for these paintings, and not enough crime-solving action.

I was really disappointed.

Categories
Richard and Judy Book Club

When Will There Be Good News? – Kate Atkinson

When Will There Be Good News?  is a very appropriate title for this book, as it is what I was thinking almost all the way through it.

It is a very depressing book. Each character is expertly introduced; we’re made to fall in love with them, only to find they’ve been murdered, or involved in some other terrible accident a few pages later.

The book begins with a happy family in a corner of rural Devon. One minute they’re having a quiet picnic, the next, all but the six-year-old girl have been brutally murdered.

Thirty years later the man convicted of the crime is released from prison, and the surviving girl, now a 36-year-old mother, goes missing.

The book advances at a fairly fast pace, as more characters go on to suffer extreme heartache, pain or death. The plot was well structured, and there were a few surprises at the end, but overall I found this book too depressing to be able to recommend it to anyone.

This is the first book by Kate Atkinson that I have read, although a few of her others are in my TBR pile. I’m sure I’ll read more of her books at some point, as her writing is very accomplished, but I’ll check to see if they are as disturbing as this one before I start one.

Also reviewed by Mysteries in Paradise

Categories
Other Richard and Judy Book Club

Richard and Judy Book Club 2009

Richard and Judy host a TV programme, here in the UK. Every year they chose a selection of books, and then review them on their show. I have been following their book club for a few years, and have read some great books thanks to them, including The Time Traveler’s Wife, Cloud Atlas and Random Acts of Heroic Love (one of my favourite reads of 2008)

This year Richard and Judy have moved to a new programme on a satellite channel called Watch. I don’t have satellite TV, so I can’t watch the show any more, but I’m still going to read the books, as most of their choices turn out to be great reads. So for the next few weeks, I will mainly be reading Richard and Judy’s 2009 selection, listed below. If you’re a follower of their book club please leave a comment below, as although I know there are 1000s of us out there, I haven’t come across any yet!

 

Richard and Judy’s 2009 Book Club Choices


Brutal Art by Jesse Kellerman

Sucked into an investigation four decades cold, Ethan will uncover a secret legacy of shame and death, one that will touch horrifyingly close to home – and leave him fearing for his own life.

Reviewed on Wednesday 21st January

 

 

Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

This true story has all the hallmarks of a classic gripping murder mystery. A body, a detective, a country house steeped in secrets and a whole family of suspects – it is the original Victorian whodunnit.

Reviewed on Wednesday 28th January

 

 

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

As she spins her tale, Scheherazade fashion, and relates equally mesmerising stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy and England, he finds himself drawn back to life – and, finally, to love.

Reviewed on Wednesday 4th February

 

 

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

In rural Devon, six-year-old Joanna witnesses an appalling crime. 30 years later the man convicted of the crime gets out of prison. In Edinburgh, 16-year-old Reggie works as a nanny for a doctor. But Dr Hunter has gone missing & Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried. DCI Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person.

Reviewed on Wednesday 11th February

 

 

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

Jordan returns to visit his mother in jail. As a teenager he was expelled from his family & community, a secretive Mormon offshoot sect. Now his father has been shot dead & one of his wives is accused of the crime. Over a century earlier, Ann Eliza Young, the 19th wife of prophet & leader of the Mormon Church, tells her story.

Reviewed on Wednesday 18th February


The Bolter by Frances Osborne

Idina Sackville first met scandal when she left her very rich husband and two small children for a penniless army officer in 1918. She went on to marry and divorce a total of five times and be the founder and ‘high priestess’ of White Mischief’s scandalous Happy Valley of Kenyan settlers. Here, her great- granddaughter tells her story.

Reviewed on Wednesday 25th February

 

 

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

In early 2006, Chuck Ramkissoon is found dead at the bottom of a New York canal. In London, a Dutch banker named Hans van den Broekhears the news, and remembers his unlikely friendship with Chuck and the off-kilter New York in which it flourished: the New York of 9/11, the powercut and the Iraq war.

Reviewed on Wednesday 4th March

 

 

The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite by Beatrice Colin

This novel tells the story of an orphaned daughter of a cabaret dancer and her rise from poverty and anonymity to film stardom, all set against the rise and fall of Berlin, the background of WWI, the debauchery of the Weimar era, the run-up to WWII, and the innovations in art and industry that accompanied it all.

Reviewed on Wednesday 11th March

 

 

December by Elizabeth H Winthrop

11-year-old Isabelle hasn’t spoken in nine months, and as December begins the situation is getting desperate. As her parents spiral around Isabelle’s impenetrable silence, she herself emerges, in a fascinating portrait of an exceptional child, as a bright young girl in need of help yet too terrified to ask for it.

Reviewed on Wednesday 18th March

 

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

Tense and heartbreaking to its last page, ‘The Cellist of Sarajevo’ shows how life under seige creates impossible moral choices. When the everyday act of crossing the street can risk lives, the human spirit is revealed in all its fortitude – and frailty.

Reviewed on Wednesday 25th March

Categories
Richard and Judy Book Club

December – Elizabeth Winthrop

December is set in New England, and follows the Carter family through the wintery month, as they try to find ways to encourage their eleven-year-old daughter to speak. A long line of psychiatrists have given up on Isabelle, declaring that there is nothing medically wrong with her, and therefore nothing that can be done. Isabelle has now been locked in a world of self-imposed silence for several months, and her parents are struggling to cope with their daughter’s problem.

It is a well observed look at a typical American family, but ultimately nothing happens. It is a very gentle novel, with light touches of humour. If you like books by Anne Tyler, then you’ll probably love this, but I like a bit more action in my novels.

Categories
2000 - 2007 Recommended books Richard and Judy Book Club

The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson

I had heard lots of good things about The Gargoyle, and seen it on several people’s “Best of 2008” list, so was expecting great things. Perhaps I built my expectations up too much, as I was slightly disappointed.

The book follows the nameless narrator, as he recovers from severe burns after a car crash. His life is enriched when Marianne Engel, a mysterious sculptress of gargoyles, begins to visit him in the burns unit. Marianne claims to be a 700-year-old Medieval scribe, and she slowly reveals some of the events that she has witnessed over her long life.

I really enjoyed all the modern sections of the book. The thoughts of the burns victim were incredibly vivid, but were described in an almost comic way, so I was not disgusted by them:

Even when the skin did take, the absence of oil glands in the transplanted tissue resulted in extreme dryness. “Ants beneath the skin” is not only too cliched a description of how it felt, but also not graphic enough. Lumberjack termites brandishing little chainsaws, maybe; or a legion of fiddler crabs wearing hairshirts and fiberglass shoes; or a legion of baby rats dragging tiny barbed-wire plows. Tap-dancing, subepidermal cockroaches wearing soccer cleats and cowbuy spurs? Perhaps.

The book was very well researched, and I learnt a lot about the treatment of burns, schizophrenia and Medieval Germany. I also found Marianne’s character very interesting. I loved trying to work out whether or not she was schizophrenic, but I found that many of her tales seemed to drag on a bit. Although I realise their purpose in the story, I think that many of them could have been reduced in length, or removed completely. They interfered with the flow of the book, and made it overly long.

I enjoyed the ending of the book, it brought everything together, and rounded it all off nicely. Andrew Davidson is clearly a very skilled writer, and this is a great debut novel, but I think he tried to fit too many things into this book. I look forward to reading future books by him, as his imagination is wonderful!

Recommended for the vivid descriptions of life as a burns victim, and for re-enforcing the message that a person’s real beauty is underneath the skin, but be aware that fifty percent of the book is fairly average.

Also reviewed by Fresh Ink Books

Categories
Orange Prize Recommended books Richard and Judy Book Club

We Need to Talk about Kevin – Lionel Shriver

We Need to Talk about Kevin won the Orange Prize for fiction in 2005.

It is an incredibly powerful book in which the narrator, Eva, describes the events in her life leading up to the day her son went on a killing spree at his high school.

The book deals with one of the few remaining taboos in our society: a mother, who doesn’t like her own child. She feels invaded by pregnancy, and before her son is even born she is scared of him:

….any woman who passes a clump of testosterone-drunk punks without picking up the pace, without avoiding eye contact that might connote challenge or invitation, without sighing inwardly with relief by the following block, is a zoological fool. A boy is a dangerous animal.

Once her son, Kevin, is born he is a difficult baby. He cries constantly and Eva becomes more and more alienated by him. He grows into a difficult toddler and Eva slowly loses control of him.

Having done much research on ‘spirited’ children, I did, however, feel that some of Kevin’s behaviour was unrealistic. A single child would not have displayed the strange mixture of reactions that Kevin did.

Eva is also supposed to be a powerful, high flying business woman, who must be of reasonable intelligence, so I find it hard to believe that she would accept things the way they were, and make no attempt to find solutions to her problem. She is rich enough to be able to employ any number of psychologists, or even just read a few books on the subject. I don’t really understand why she failed to do this.

Despite these minor flaws, this book was a great read. It was very thought provoking, and would be perfect for a reading group, as there are so many discussions that arise from it. Are all children sweet, innocent things, or are some born evil?

I couldn’t see how anyone could claim to love children in the generic anymore than any one could credibly claim to love people in a sufficiently sweeping sense as to embrace Pol Pot, Don Rickles, and an upstairs neighbour who does 2,000 jumping jacks at three in the morning.

And how much of a child’s actions can the parent be held accountable for?

When you’re the parent, no matter what the accident, no matter how far away you were at the time and how seemingly powerless to avert it, a child’s misfortune feels like your fault.

This a very important book, especially for new parents. It will remain with me for a long time, and I will be encouraging all my friends to read it – just so I can talk about it!

Highly recommended. Especially for reading groups.

Edit June 2011: Rating increased to after realising this is one of my all-time favourite books.