May Book: On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Our book choice for May is:

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.

You might like to check out the following links:

Ian McEwan's website

Amazon.co.uk's page for this book

SMH review

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Meeting: Monday 6th April 2008

Quorum: 6

Average Score: 8/10

I chose this book after reading it last year and being completely drawn into thinking about our relationship to the food we buy and eat.

This book chronicles the 12-month journey taken by Barbara Kingsolver (author of The Poisonwood Bible) and her family to see if they could live off whatever they could produce on their small property in Virginia, USA. Throughout the course of the book Barbara not only discusses the family's experiences but comments on the state of food production in the US, the trend away from eating a diverse range of food species and the number of miles food travels before it gets to our table.

"According to Indian crop ecologist Vandana Shiva, humans have eaten some 80,000 plant species in our history. After recent precipitous changes three-quarters of all human food now comes from just eight species, with the field quickly narrowing down to genetically modified corn, soy and canola." [excerpt from book, p.49]

Research by Australian group CERES (Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies) estimates that the contents of the average shopping basket will have travelled over 70,000km to get there.

This book is a discussion of the culture of food.

We discussed:

• the difficulty in sourcing locally produced food
• the Victorian family who became "Locavores" and committed to the 100-mile diet by eating only what could be grown, caught or raised within 160km of their home.
• understanding the "provenance" of food - where it comes from, who made it, how they made it
• food choice dilemmas: fair trade coffee or locally produced coffee? Is it better to buy an organic item from overseas than a non-organic locally-produced item? Could we give up Italian Parmesan? Kalamata Olives? Pine-nuts?
• that eating locally means buying in season and buying food that has had no or minimal processing. It means making more things from scratch and this goes right to the heart of our food culture: can we do this anymore?
• did the pursuit of local food completely take-over the Kingsolver/Hopp family's life? What else did they do in that year?
• are we prepared to kill our own animals? Or can we only handle meat in polystyrene packs? Do our children understand where Lamb or chicken comes from, really?

In relation to the writing:

• While some found this book to be an easy, well-flowing read others disagreed and found it "difficult to get into".
• It was generally agreed that a potentially dry subject was made readable by Barbara's expert writing.
• Many members enjoyed the side notes by Stephen Hopp and Camille Kingsolver noting that the extra information was important to the overall story. Others (myself included) largely ignored their entries choosing to focus on Barbara's contributions. We've heard reports that Camille's recipes are delicious so maybe I was wrong to ignore them.

We also talked about:

• Coeliac disease and other dietary restrictions
• The emergence of Peanut allergies in children - is it related to the increased intake of nut products including peanut oil in a wide range of foods?
• Whether by purchasing a product while overseas and bringing it back with you on the aircraft can be constituted as not having travelled additional "food miles" because you were coming back on that flight anyway, with or without the product? What if you had flown Carbon Neutral?

Love Life

February's Bookclub choice was Love Life by Ray Kluun. Translated from the Dutch, this (semi)-autobiographic novel tells about a couple trying to come to terms with the woman's breast cancer. The story is told from the male's point of view, Dan.

Dan is a self proclaimed 'monophoob' (afraid of monogamous relationships) and reacts to his wife's diagnosis by plunging into Amsterdam's nightlife, sleeping with lots of women and starting an affair with Rose.

The back of the book says the story is a modern love story and ultimately uplifting, despite the unhappy end. But most bookclub members didn't think the story was uplifting, as they kept on feeling really angry with the protagonist, preventing them from having any other emotions about the book.

Some of us felt that although Dan wasn't a very likeable character, the love between him and his wife seemed real and intense. Those people thought Dans wife, Carmen, knew about the cheating but chose to ignore it or consider it a character flaw. They felt Carmen was possibly the strongest person in the book, while Dan seemed clueless.

Even though most people gave Love Life a relatively low rating (6 on average), mostly due to the strong dislike of the protagonist, the book provoked good discussion. We talked about cheating, the effects of cancer on a relationship and euthanasia. And added, of course, that we would kick our husbands out of the house if he would even consider to behave like Dan.

Book Pile for February and March

Welcome to bookclub for 2008!

Here are the next three books:

Monday 4th February is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Monday 18th Feburary is Love Life by Ray Kluun
Monday 10th March is The Northern Lights (also published as The Golden Compass) by Philip Pullman

See you tomorrow.

End of Year Dinner

On Monday 10 December we celebrated the end of another fabulous bookclub year with dinner at Ripples in Chowder Bay.

A lovely night was had by all and our farewells were said to ArmyWife who has now moved to another city. However, once a bookclub member, always a bookclub member and ArmyWife cannot get away from us that easily. She will remain a club member and email her reviews in monthly - won't you ArmyWife?!

Bookclub resumes on Monday 4th February with The Book Thief our first read for 2008.

See you then.

Review of Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver

Pigs in Heaven was chosen by Fe. The evening was hosted by D. This meeting was the last bookclub (other than the end of year dinner) to be attended by ArmyWife before she moves interstate next year.

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver was published in 1993 as a sequel to her first novel The Bean Trees. While The Bean Trees was written in the first person this novel was written in an omniscient voice.

The novel was set in Kentucky, Arizona and Oklahoma. Kingsolver was born in eastern Kentucky in 1955 but moved to Indiana for her tertiary education. While at university Kingsolver became active in the anti-Vietnam movement and from there became a political and social activist.

Kingsolver's novels draw upon her social and political beliefs and she starts each novel with a question in her mind. The question in this book was "Can the needs of the community and the needs of the individual be reconciled?".

The setting for this question is the social position of Native America and whether a Native American tribe can have a child returned after she has been adopted by a non-native family. Kingsolver asks us to consider the needs of the Native American community to protect and promote its culture by bringing up all its children with the tribe as well as the benefits to the child of living with a non-native family.

This book provoked rigorous discussion about the situation posed in the book and we discussed whether parallels could be drawn with issues facing Aboriginal Australia. This made it a very interesting book to read in the light of Carpentaria which was read last month.

The ambiguity of the novel's central question is reinforced by placing all characters from the adoptive mother and her family to the Native American community in a low socio-economic band. The child (Turtle's) adoptive mother is fiercely protective and loving and yet struggles to care for her. Meanwhile the community, represented by lawyer & tribe member Annawake, is also fiercely protective of their tribe and yet struggles to keep it together.

All the characters in the book portray different ways of showing love as the novel works towards its very tidy movie-like ending.

Members agreed that the novel was generally agreeable but that perhaps the ending was a little too 'movie-like' and gave an average rating of 7.5

In other news

• As it was ArmyWife's last official bookclub meeting before her departure interstate we took commemorative photos.


• We confirmed that our annual end-of-year bookclub dinner will be at the fabulous new Ripples at Chowder Bay in December.


• The highlight of the food part of the evening was D bringing out tea and coffee using her beautiful vintage china.

October Book: Carpentaria by Alexis Wright

Review by L

I chose Carpentaria, 'sight unread' as such, as I felt that it would be a good choice to read the winner of the Miles Franklin Literary award for 2007.

Caprentaria is a story about an Aboriginal community set in the fictional town of Desperance on the Gulf of Carpentaria. Desperance is made up of four groups of people co-existing: the Westside mob who live on the edge of the rubbish dump, the Eastside mob who claim to be the traditional land owners, the Uptown people who are the whites and the Pricklebush people who are the 'old people'.

Central to the book are issues of land rights and mining as well as a host of social issues affecting Aboriginal people and how the four groups interact as well as their different belief systems. Wright explains that a central concern was 'How do you mend the broken line - the effect of colonisation?'

When I started reading Carpentaria I began to regret my choice. This was echoed by the grumblings from other Book Club members. The book is difficult to penetrate and requires real effort. However, the consensus of those who persevered was that it was well worth the effort. Wright says herself she expects her readers to work.

The story is told in a narrative style in the language of an Aboriginal elder. You soon realise although very descriptive, in the words of our 'linguist' club member, every word is there for a reason, nothing is superfluous. Wright did attempt to write the story in a more conventional style but felt it didn't strike the right tone.

The characters in the book give the story the depth to expose the serious social issues up for discussion,  with an added humorous slant to elicit some chuckles.  The three generations of female characters are almost 'extras' while the male characters are more extraordinary.  The story centers around the lives of  Norm Phantom and his family (Westend Pricklebush people) and their battles with the Eastend mob led by Joseph Midnight against a backdrop of struggles with the white officials of Uptown and Gurfurrit mine.

During our discussion, four members who were not raised in Australia quizzed the others as to details of the background of Aboriginal affairs in Australia. This highlighted how little direct exposure the rest of us have had to Aboriginal people although very much a current affairs topic.

The range of scores from the five members of our Book Club who finished and rated the book were:  9 highest and 7.5 lowest with an average of 8.1.  After our discussion several of the members who were there,  and had not persevered,  did commit to giving it another go.  I hope they do.