WSwan LBC - The Eyre Affair - GUEST

White Swan LBC

Venue: White Swan Leeds

Date:  Sunday 12th of May 2012

Time:  6:00pm

Address: Swan Street, Leeds

Discussing:

THE EYRE AFFAIR

JASPER FFORDE

* * * * * S P O I L E R S * * * * *

* * * * * S P O I L E R S * * * * *

* * * * * S P O I L E R S * * * * * 

Thanks to Helen for this epic write up! She's been contributing so much, I think we'll have to create her own book shelf page!  

About the book

By Lurazeda, found on Deviant Art.
Ain't it awesome?

Pirouetting on the boundaries between sci-fi, the crime thriller and intertextual whimsy, Jasper Fforde's outrageous The Eyre Affair puts you on the wrong footing even on its dedication page, which proudly announces that the book conforms to Crimean War economy standard.

Fforde's heroine, Thursday Next, lives in a world where time and reality are endlessly mutable--someone has ensured that the Crimean War never ended for example--a world policed by men like her disgraced father, whose name has been edited out of existence. She herself polices text--against men like the Moriarty-like Acheron Styx, whose current scam is to hold the minor characters of Dickens' novels to ransom, entering the manuscript and abducting them for execution and extinction one by one. When that caper goes sour, Styx moves on to the nation's most beloved novel--an oddly truncated version of Jane Eyre--and kidnaps its heroine. 

The phlegmatic and resourceful Thursday pursues Acheron across the border into a Leninist Wales and further to Mr Rochester's Thornfield Hall, where both books find their climax on the roof amid flames.

Meet Thursday Next, literary detective without equal, fear or boyfriend. There is another 1985, where London’s criminal gangs have moved into the lucrative literary market, and Thursday Next is on the trail of the new crime wave’s MR Big. Acheron Hades has been kidnapping certain characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom. Jane Eyre is gone. Missing.

Thursday sets out to find a way into the book to repair the damage. But solving crimes against literature isn’t easy when you also have to find time to halt the Crimean War, persuade the man you love to marry you, and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays.

Perhaps today just isn’t going to be Thursday’s day. Join her on a truly breathtaking adventure, and find out for yourself. Fiction will never be the same again ...

About the Author

Jasper Fforde traded a varied career in the film industry for staring out of the window and chewing the end of a pencil. He lives and works in Wales and has a passion for aviation.

From the Author

Welcome to the inside of my head. Apart from a few panicked memories about getting lost in a department store aged five, my imagination is a pleasant enough place to be - if you’re me. If you’re not me then you can do the next best thing and order up 'The Eyre Affair’ and have a read. There should be something to appeal to most readers as the plot visits, at one time or another, most genres - thriller, crime, romance, humour, sci-fi, literary - a veritable Swiss army knife in fact; if you don’t like a subplot then wait awhile - another is sure to pop up soon. 

Over here at the Fforde Ffiction Ffactory we have many more novels bubbling away in our cauldron as well as a Thursday Next website and much else besides.

But for now I wish you health and happiness - and trust you have as much fun reading 'The Eyre Affair’ as I did

Helen's Review

It’s been a year since I went to my first LBC meeting and felt it would be fitting to write this review. However at the time I hadn’t read it. It took just over a day to finish it and, boy am I glad I did. This book blew me away and I didn’t know it was part of a series and can’t wait to get my hands on the next one. This was chosen by Alison to read and was LeedsBookClub's choice to give away at World Book night this year.

It was on a sunny Sunday evening sat in the cosy settings of The White Swan that our story begins, talk of Dodo’s as pets (actually happens in the book), Twitter identities, the story from monsters made of bubble wrap to a scary impression of Kate Bush and the fact that when you bite heads off jelly babies, they know!

To the book and here we meet Thursday Next, our heroine, Lover of books and a literary detective. Her job/role is to deal with illegal traders, fraudsters and copyright infringements. Living alone with only her regenerated pet dodo named Pickwick. An ambitious young lady wanting to further her career but unable to do so until she meets with Hades, A criminal ,mastermind out to bring characters into our world or banish them forever! 

From gothic fiction (Jane Eyre) to mention of Shakespeare and meeting characters from Charles Dickens this book dips in and out of different worlds yet keeping us firmly on our feet.  This book introduces us to so many worlds and with so much going on you would think the story and characters would be watered down, but they’re not. You’re sucked into another dimension without realising until you come back down with a thump on your sofa when the story ends.

I loved the fact that this book was based in England, there sometimes seem very few and the fact it used classic stories and twisted them into a sci-fi/ mystery adventure. It is probably only in books and in films where the impossible can become the possible. The fact that there is a magic machine which can extract characters from books into the real world, to be able to meet our heroes and heroines of our favourite stories, in Thursday Next’s case it was Rochester from Jane Eyre, who appears a few times to save her and in return she brings Jane back to him.

During the discussion a question was asked about the problem where we find what happens we fall in love with books, bringing the story to life in our minds is that sometimes we find to have someone else make it into a tv series or film may spoil the feeling of the book, spoil the journey you made with the characters like in the book, people were in uproar as the story changed in front of the eyes, demanding it be returned to it’s original form, however drab it was. Today TV & filmmakers do the same as it is their vision of the story, and especially if their 
idea comes from a book, sometimes they can make it how we see it or improve it, sometimes they can destroy it. But in the end stories are to be told and shared in whatever form.

And finally for people who have not read Jane Eyre but have read this would you go to the original now? Just food for thought. 

Best line - ‘Wotcha, Doofus!’

Reason to read it – The Dodo still exists and you can have it as a pet!

Score -  

8/10

For further details, please email me at leedsbookclub@gmail.com or tweet me @LeedsBookClub! 

The Pub can be contacted on @WhiteSwanLeeds

And feel free to let us know your thoughts using #WSwanLBC!

* * * * * 

WSwanLBC

17 - Jun - The Fire Gospel - Michel Faber
16 - May - The Eyre Affair - Jasper FForde
15 - Apr - The Waterproof Bible - Andrew Kaufman - GUEST
14 - Mar - The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak - GUEST
13 - Feb - Weight - Jeanette Winterson - GUEST
12 - Jan - Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates

11 - Nov - Lighthouse Keeping - Jeanette Winterson

10 - Oct - Winter's Bone Daniel Woodrell

09 - Sep - The Wind Up Bird Chronicles - Haruki Murakami 

08 - Aug - The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - Philip Pullman

07 - Jul - American Gods - Neil Gaiman

06 - Jun - The Travelling Hornplayer - Barbara Trapido

05 - May - Atomised - Michel Houellebecq - GUEST

04 - Apr - Even the Dogs - Jon McGregor

03 - Mar - Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut

02 - Feb - The Swan Thieves - Elizabeth Kostova 

01 - Jan - Suttree - Cormac McCarthy

First Book Picked

I'm just full of good ideas...WSwanLBC  

* * * * *

Book Club - Table of Contents

* * * * *

Full Table of Contents 

WSwan LBC - Write Up of The Book Thief - GUEST

White Swan LBC

Venue: White Swan Leeds

Date:  Sunday 10th of March 2012

Time:  6:00pm

Address: Swan Street, Leeds

Discussing:

THE BOOK THIEF

MARCUS ZUSAK

* * * * * S P O I L E R S * * * * *

* * * * * S P O I L E R S * * * * *

* * * * * S P O I L E R S * * * * * 

THE BLURB (from Amazon)

It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.

This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.

LeedsBookClub is delighted to welcome back our epic Literary Guru @AlisonNeale who has kindly written up our most recent #WSwanLBC discussion. I particularly enjoy our (frequent) distractions being included!

To parallel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, I’ll begin at the end: re-readers commented when giving their scores that while all had greatly enjoyed the book on first reading, when reading the book for a second time they recognised how manipulated they had been. Scores reflected this.

One manifestation of this manipulation was in the form of Death, which some readers felt to be a device, and not a terribly original one. More than one person had been reminded of Pratchett’s Discworld Death character. Some book clubbers said that Death’s parts of the story interrupted the flow and were outside of the reader’s perspective; however, others felt that the ‘gimmick’ of this character added to the story.

Another plot device was the interjections by the author, clarifying foreign words or filling in bits of history. It was pointed out that these were like the text cards during a silent movie.

~ Likes ~

The relationship between Liesel and Hans

The book-within-a-book structure

The poetic imagery

A number of book clubbers agreed that the characters felt very real: one could imagine them off living their lives while they weren’t on the page. The mayor’s wife, for example, rarely appeared in the story, but was essential to the plot even when not the focus. The baddies, too, were realistic rather than sketches.

Liesel was felt to be a sad character: a little girl far stronger and more independent than she should have had to be, taking care of herself and untrusting of adults. It was amazing that this child should have managed to keep such a big secret even from her best friend.

~ Easily distracted as always ~

The book clubbers at this point went off into a conversation about:

Sweet Valley High

cliff-hangers

various TV series

The ending was inevitable, someone pointed out – we know our history – but this book offered a different perspective. Someone else commented that it wasn’t really about the Holocaust, but
instead about those outside of it – why they didn’t speak out or rebel. It was a tale of the universal human experience rather than focused on one nationality or side. However, the bombing in the latter part of the book was unusual in that criticism and questioning of the actions of the winning side are still fairly rare.

While such a serious subject being treated in a light-hearted way could have been seen as callous and ‘a tough sell’, fortunately it was very well handled: ‘whimsical without being twee’, someone
commented. One reader had issue with the book not picking up on the true horror of the situation, but it was pointed out that it was a YA book (news to some readers including yours truly), which
might account for this to some extent. An example of this lack of seriousness was the comment after the street was bombed that Death had ‘a busy day’. Some readers thus expressed a preference for non-fiction books on this subject, rather than fiction.

~ Another aside ~

A rant about The Titanic became relevant to this discussion

when readers expressed their dislike of the manipulation

of more modern historical events. Anything documented

on film felt more personal, more reliable and thus less acceptable

for re-telling, it was decided. Someone then went off on one

about conspiracy theories: I have no idea how that fitted in.

(LBC - I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU GUYS, BUT I READ THAT LAST LINE IN THE DRIEST TONE *EVER*)

There was some discussion of precisely what we were reading: was it Liesel’s book, or Death’s extra-interpretation of her book, or some mash-up of different books and characters’ stories? Some
readers thus felt the narrator(s) to be trustworthy, others unreliable. Conflicting views gave the reader a choice.

The story also fixated on the format of the book: the themes of propaganda and the book-burning destruction of information were inverted by a book being wiped to create ‘more than a book’. The
descriptions of this were very physical.

On the illustrations, the question was if they added to the story. Some readers loved that the book contained them and pointed out that they hinted at what would happen. Others suggested that they were yet another device – interesting and unusual, but in the end pointless.

~ Righteous indignation ~

An incensed reader cut in at this point and we all had to look

at the most appalling front covers of Anne of Green Gables,

The Princess Bride and The Bell Jar. A new round of drinks

was then bought before we set to on scores.

Some of those who read The Book Thief for the first time mentioned hesitation before beginning, and confusion with the shifts of characters, narrators and formats. However, most were desperate to finish the story once started, and very few expressed a dislike of the book. Re-readers were glad to do so, with positive recollections of the tale, but found that they separated the individual storylines more easily this time through – to its detriment, as explained earlier.

Score -  8/10

For further details, please email me at leedsbookclub@gmail.com or tweet me @LeedsBookClub! 

The Pub can be contacted on @WhiteSwanLeeds

And feel free to let us know your thoughts using #WSwanLBC!

* * * * * 

WSwanLBC

17 - Jun - The Fire Gospel - Michel Faber
16 - May - The Eyre Affair - Jasper FForde
15 - Apr - The Waterproof Bible - Andrew Kaufman - GUEST
14 - Mar - The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak - GUEST
13 - Feb - Weight - Jeanette Winterson - GUEST
12 - Jan - Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates

11 - Nov - Lighthouse Keeping - Jeanette Winterson

10 - Oct - Winter's Bone Daniel Woodrell

09 - Sep - The Wind Up Bird Chronicles - Haruki Murakami 

08 - Aug - The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - Philip Pullman

07 - Jul - American Gods - Neil Gaiman

06 - Jun - The Travelling Hornplayer - Barbara Trapido

05 - May - Atomised - Michel Houellebecq - GUEST

04 - Apr - Even the Dogs - Jon McGregor

03 - Mar - Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut

02 - Feb - The Swan Thieves - Elizabeth Kostova 

01 - Jan - Suttree - Cormac McCarthy

First Book Picked

I'm just full of good ideas...WSwanLBC  

* * * * *

Book Club - Table of Contents

* * * * *

Full Table of Contents 

WSwan LBC and Canongate Book 08 - Weight Write Up - GUEST

White Swan LBC

Venue: White Swan Leeds

Date:  Sunday 10th of February 2012

Time:  6:00pm

Address: Swan Street, Leeds

Discussing:

WEIGHT

JEANETTE WINTERSON

* * * * * S P O I L E R S * * * * *

* * * * * S P O I L E R S * * * * *

* * * * * S P O I L E R S * * * * * 

THE BLURB (from Amazon)

Canongate Books, together with thirty great international publishing houses, is proud to announce a new series - "The Myths". 

In ancient Greek mythology Atlas, a member of the original race of gods called Titans, leads a rebellion against the new deities, the Olympians. For this he incurs divine wrath: the victorious Olympians force Atlas, guardian of the Garden of Hesperides and its golden apples of life, to bear the weight of the earth 
and the heavens for eternity.

When the hero Heracles, as one of his famous twelve labours, is tasked with stealing these apples, he seeks out Atlas, offering to shoulder the world temporarily if the Titan will bring him the fruit. Knowing that Heracles is the only person with the strength to take this burden, and enticed by the prospect of even a short-lived freedom, Atlas agrees and an uneasy partnership is born.

With her typical wit and verve, Jeanette Winterson brings Atlas into the twenty-first century. Simultaneously, she asks her own difficult questions about the nature of choice and coercion, and how we forge our own destiny, Visionary and inventive, yet completely believable and relevant to our lives today, Winterson's skill in turning the familiar on its head and showing us a different truth is once more put to dazzling effect.

About the Author

JEANETTE WINTERSON'S first novel, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit won the Whitbread prize for Best First Novel. Since then she has published seven other novels, including The Passion, Written on the Body and The Powerbook, a collection of short stories, The World and Other Place: A Book of Essays, Art Objects and most recently a children's picture book, The King of Capri. She has adapted her work for TV, film and stage. Her books are published in 32 countries. She lives in Oxfordshire and London.

This month's write up has been (ever-so-speedily) provided by +Helen Carr @isfromupnorth - one of the spectacularly awesome Leeds Book Club Guest Star Super Stars. 

Thanks so much!

This is also one of the Canongate Challenge books, so is structured more like one of those write ups. 

FOREWORD TO WEIGHT 

“When I was asked to choose a myth to write about, I realized I had chosen already. The story of Atlas holding up the world was in my mind before the telephone call had ended. If the call had not come, perhaps I would never have written the story, but when the call did come, that story was waiting to be written. Rewritten. The recurring language motif of Weight is ‘I want to tell the story again.’ My work is full of cover versions. I like to take stories we think we know and record them differently. In the retelling comes a new emphasis or bias, and the new arrangement of the key elements demands that fresh material be injected into the existing text. Weight moves far away from the simple story of Atlas’s punishment and his temporary relief when Heracles takes the world off his shoulders. I wanted to explore loneliness, isolation, responsibility, burden, and freedom, too, because my version has a very particular end not found elsewhere.” 

Jeanette Winterson 

Jeanette Winterson is one of those writers you either love or hate. Best known for her novel Oranges are not the only fruit, she takes a well known myth and creates a story about life’s journey, betrayal, greed, freedom, responsibilities, rejection and our search for our own identities.

We started this discussion while munching on some fabulous homemade mint brownies made by regular bookclubber Kirsty aka @kayelle5, (recipe should be on LBC website shortly) and one of the first things to be brought up was the fact this book, although beautifully written, is split in to thirds which didn’t sit well with the story although almost everyone agreed the  favourite part of the story was the introduction of the space dog, Laika. 

As mentioned below the story is a retelling of the famous Greek myth Atlas and Heracles (also known as Hercules in Rome and the modern west). As punishment for going against Zeus, Atlas is 
forced to carry the weight of the world on his back. As stated in the book the two characters are very different we have Atlas who is a powerful man who doesn’t notice much. He doesn’t need to. Other people notice things for him’ and then there’s Heracles ‘His strength covers up his weaknesses, as he was born with rocks for muscles and rocks between his ears’. Two totally different characters yet in a way the same. 

As humans we all want to be the best, to be important, to strive for power, and sometimes will do anything to get it. In this story Heracles is on a task and requires the Golden Apples of Hesperides which only Atlas can collect with no harm coming to him.  

So Hercules offers to take Atlas’s burden for a short while to get what he requires. On Atlas’s return Heracles realises he is not going to take by his burden and so tricks him by saying that he needs to adjust his cloak. Atlas is then left once again holding up the world.  Heracles then goes off on his adventures, finds ‘love’ and gets killed. It then jumps to many years later and Atlas isn’t aware of time or the Gods demise and then the story jumps forward to 1957 and Laika, the dog who was blasted into space by the Russians as a prelude to manned space flight. This piece was for everyone the most beautiful part of the story and how Atlas rescued her and in a way she rescued him when he finally realised he could be freed of his burden, because the reason he was carrying it didn’t exist anymore.This comes from two quotes in the book ‘No hero can be destroyed by the world. His reward is to destroy himself. Not what you meet on the way, but what you are will destroy you.’ 

In the end Heracles destroyed himself due to greed, Atlas came close but realised that he didn’t need to carry his burden anymore because the people who expected him to carry it were not there anymore and it is only when we realise what is expected from others and ourselves can we then let go of our worries and we can free ourselves.

The unfortunate thing about this book that we discussed that no one seemed to like was the sudden interruption of the auto-biography piece about Jeannette being given away. It didn’t seem to fit and distracted from the main story. Nor did the short piece on Hera being a sexualised object for Heracles, for me almost turning into Fifty Shades of Gray and blushing.  Along with the need for Heracles' wife to do an infidelity spell. And I quote ‘Had She not read Harry Potter? These things don’t end well?’

One thing from this book was to understand the stories created from these myths and try to get an idea about it’s characters, (perhaps we should have read up on them first) to know our heroes, that superheroes and Gods are only powerful because of the belief/ideas we put into and  to know that actually Thor ‘god of war’ is ‘Kim’ from Home and Away who used to date a teacher. Oh and his friend Vinnie became a vampire in True Blood - obviously needed to change the day job. 


Obviously in any book all the characters have different personalities, but all are alike in a way because they want the same thing. We didn’t like Hera we thought she came across as a bad character, but is perhaps hard done by. 
Then there’s Atlas who went against his father and then coming to realise after being punished and shouldering the world, listening to all what was going on with the world that he didn’t want to be a part of that was able to release his ‘burden’. 

And then there’s Heracles who through pure greed and desire for being a typical bloke gets himself killed. Silly begger.

To sum up this book is about life, lesson and the burdens we carry, and how we are a ‘self pollutant’ and it is only ourselves that can realise that we have the power to know when to let go of these things we carry around us. We are always searching for more, for better, we take ourselves too seriously and we don’t realise what we have is actually good enough and can make us happy until it’s too late.

Note for Readers - Story of Atlas - Myth Encyclopedia

In Greek mythology, Atlas was usually responsible for holding up the heavens. This marble relief from a Greek temple shows Hercules holding up the world for Atlas so that Atlas can bring him the golden apples of the Hesperides.

Another story concerns Hercules (Heracles)!, the grandson of Perseus. One of the labors of Hercules was to obtain some of the golden apples that were guarded by the Hesperides. Hercules asked Atlas to help him get the apples. Seeing an opportunity to escape from the burden of holding up the heavens, Atlas asked Hercules to take over the task while he obtained the apples. Hercules agreed. When Atlas returned with the apples, he told Hercules that he would deliver them for him. His intention was to leave Hercules to support the heavens. However, Hercules asked Atlas to take back the heavens for just a moment so that he could adjust his burden. When Atlas did this, Hercules walked away with the apples.

Score -  

7/10

A story to relate to the myths 

Bagenders – legend becomes myth.

We also mentioned Tom Holt and Jasper Fforde.

If this book were a cake...

We didn't get round to discussing this really. We were too busy munching on the mint-cookies!

For further details, please email me at leedsbookclub@gmail.com or tweet me @LeedsBookClub! 

The Pub can be contacted on @WhiteSwanLeeds

And feel free to let us know your thoughts using #WSwanLBC!

* * * * * 

WSwanLBC

17 - Jun - The Fire Gospel - Michel Faber
16 - May - The Eyre Affair - Jasper FForde
15 - Apr - The Waterproof Bible - Andrew Kaufman - GUEST
14 - Mar - The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak - GUEST
13 - Feb - Weight - Jeanette Winterson - GUEST
12 - Jan - Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates

11 - Nov - Lighthouse Keeping - Jeanette Winterson

10 - Oct - Winter's Bone Daniel Woodrell

09 - Sep - The Wind Up Bird Chronicles - Haruki Murakami 

08 - Aug - The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - Philip Pullman

07 - Jul - American Gods - Neil Gaiman

06 - Jun - The Travelling Hornplayer - Barbara Trapido

05 - May - Atomised - Michel Houellebecq - GUEST

04 - Apr - Even the Dogs - Jon McGregor

03 - Mar - Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut

02 - Feb - The Swan Thieves - Elizabeth Kostova 

01 - Jan - Suttree - Cormac McCarthy

First Book Picked

I'm just full of good ideas...WSwanLBC  

* * * * *

Canongate

Book 08 - Weight - Jeanette Winterson
Book 07 - Ragnarok - AS Byatt
Book 06 - Where Three Roads Meet
Book 05 - Dream Angus - Alexander McCall-Smith

Book 04 - The Helmet of Horror - Victor Pelevin

Book 03 - Binu and the Great Wall - Su Tong

Book 02 - Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith

Book 01 - The Penelopiad - Margaret Atwood

Book List

* * * * *

* * * * *

Guest Stars - Table of Contents

* * * * *

Book Club - Table of Contents

* * * * *

Full Table of Contents 

Arcadia LBC - Hard Times Write Up

Arcadia LBC

Venue: Arcadia Bar
Date:  Sunday, 18th of November 2012
Time:  5pm - 7pm

Discussed:

HARD TIMES

CHARLES DICKENS

* * * * * S P O I L E R S * * * * *

* * * * * S P O I L E R S * * * * *

 * * * * * S P O I L E R S * * * * * 

Due to the length of this novel, it is frequently regarded as the ‘easy’ Dickens option. In our opinion - this is a mistake.

Despite its brevity, we found this to be a dense read, one that took considerably more time than expected and felt even longer as there were few of us that were enthusiastic to complete it!*

It had all started so well though. As a whole, we tended to quite enjoy the opening volley – especially as the educational models were broken down. FACT and FANCY – or practical versus creative – as ideals for child rearing fascinated us and had the book continued in this vein – we might have had a very different conversation about it!

Those familiar with other Dickens stories immediately noticed that this novel contains very few of the recognisable Dickensian motifs. It’s far less gothic in tone – though this is at least in part down to the storyline. Flashes of gothic would indicate creativity, not a feature of the society created here. The action is set in a fictitious northern town – not in London. There is a strong industrial setting, rather than the social focus that we have come to expect. As noted previously, the length of novel is also a break from his norm; considerably shorter than one might expect. Finally, love does not redeem or restore or improve anything throughout this book – a very unusual feature for Dickens.

This might be the angriest book that Dickens ever wrote. It’s a shame that it inspired so little emotion from any of us.

More importantly, we missed passion. We didn’t care about the characters – whose structured, practical and emotionless lives left us cold. We felt pity for Stephen – but more for his ‘lunatic’ wife. Rachel seemed decent enough but her piety turned us off. The use of phonetic dialect was just painful to read throughout – particularly for the character with a speech impediment (and for those who know I hate this writing affection particularly – this was something more than one person raised!! Honest!!). Many of us had copies with blurbs on the back labelling this as an uplifting read – a description that we couldn’t understand at all!!

We also speculated on the state of the authors romantic life at the time as the book is near pathologically anti-wedlock. As is typical of the author, the wealthy are depicted as less moral than their poverty stricken counterparts and have opportunities available denied to others (as demonstrated in Stephen’s inability to divorce, but Louise being able to separate from Josiah).

We discussed whether politics was the most meaningful element of the novel, especially as a commentary of the time. While we acknowledged that we are less well informed of it today; we couldn’t help but think of other Dickens novels that introduced concepts less familiar today that just gripped us. A Christmas carol and A Tale of Two Cities can be read and enjoyed by a wide swathe of society regardless of the century that the readers lives in. Dickens was usually excels at creating that near unobtainable writing goal - timeless fiction – however he missed the mark here for us.**

We chatted for a bit about how this is a moral tale yet how we felt it utterly failed as one. None of the characters end up happy by the end of the book – regardless of their upbringing, philosophical beliefs or the social structures that they were raised in. So, what exactly was the message supposed to be? A life without creativity is one without spark, but even if you have a tiny bit of a spark or a good heart; you’ll still end up miserable? It felt a little bit like the author was furious at the world around him and wrote this as a sulky rant – if you take on board these elements, society is doomed. No one can be redeemed during it. Such pessimism was very off-putting for us.  We pondered on whether he was trying to pull the ultimate reverse psychological argument on an epic scale, however not enough counter to normal viewpoints were included to allow us to think of this as a serious option.

Many of us thought that this might work better in a visual medium and were surprised to realise how few adaptations there are of this book as opposed to of Dickens other works. This appears to sit uneasily with the rest of his tremendous output. We tried to visualise the action as a BBC drama (yes, others do period dramas, however rarely ever so well!), wondering if the details would stick better; the characters appeal more; the ending jar less. If anyone does watch a version – do let us know how you got on with it!

Those of us who have read and enjoyed Dickens previously have been inspired to seek out old favourites or other unread novels to give them a try after reading this book – even though we didn’t wholly enjoy it. So the Dickens appeal lives on!

However, those amongst us who read this as their first Dickens novel felt no great need to ever try one of his books again. Don’t worry – we totally tried to talk them round! There is far too much goodness oozing out of Dahl’s Chickens to not encourage people to try the rest and The Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations came highly recommended.

And that was that! Our final Arcadia LBC meeting of the year!

* Three of our regulars who LOVED the book were unable to attend the meeting at Arcadia for various reasons. Each has spoken to me briefly about what they loved about the book – from the political intrigue to the philosophical underpinnings, to important social observations to the near dystopian elements especially towards the end of the novel.

We really missed having an enthusiastic defender or two for the book – always leads to a more rounded discussion than when only one opinion holds sway – and wanted to reflect that there were those amongst us who enjoyed this immensely! 

**A member did express the view that in their opinion, Charles Dickens did not seem to have fully grasped the political concepts that he was writing about – especially obvious in this treatment of trade unions as depicted by the entirely vicious and wholly unrealistic Slackbridge. However, as the rest of the group were less interested in the political element, this wasn’t really explored in too much detail.

Other Books Mentioned

North and South – Elizabeth Gaskill

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 

Score  

5/10

For further details, please email me at leedsbookclub@gmail.com or tweet me @LeedsBookClub!

Contact the bar on @ArcadiaBar

And feel free to let us know your thoughts using #ArcadiaLBC!

* * * * * 

Arcadia LBC

21 - Nov - Hard Times - Charles Dickens

20 - Oct - The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster - GUEST - @CultureLEEDS

19 - Sep - The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins - GUEST - @CultureLEEDS

18 - Aug - The Princess Bride - William Goldman

17 - Jul - A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini - GUEST

16 - Jun - Cry the Beloved Country - Alan Paton

15 - May - 1984 - George Orwell - GUEST - @CultureLEEDS

14 - Apr - BloodChild and Other Stories - Octavia Butler

13 - Mar - The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna

12 - Feb - Heat Wave - Richard Castle

11 - Jan - The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint - Brady Udall

10 - Nov - Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes

09 - Oct - Grace Williams Says It Loud - Emma Henderson

08 - Sep - The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

07 - Aug - Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi

06 - Jul - The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst

05 - Jun - Soulless - Gail Carriger

04 - May - Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

03 - Apr - Touching the Void - Joe Simpson

02 - Mar - The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

01 - Feb - The White Woman on the Green Bicycle - Monique Roffrey

* * * * *

Book Club - Table of Contents

* * * * *

Full Table of Contents