Juliet Waldron and Marilynne Robinson

Have finished both books for this month. Independent Heart had the fine prose style I have come to expect from J. Waldron. It was good on authentic period detail as well. The ending I thought was a little perfunctory. The book was pretty tongue-in-cheek really not quite as fine as Mozart's Wife her other book.

Housekeeping was fabulously beautiful - every word carefully placed. Central themes from American literature were important in this book - the natural world as a place apart - somewhere to discover a lost innocence from the early days of America

A big fat page-turner

I've recently started reading a 700 page novel called The Historian, by Eliabeth Kostova. It's a bit of a page-turner so the size isn't as intimidating as it first seems. It's about a 16 yr old girl who discovers her father has some secrets, and it's all linked to folklore about Dracula. It's quite creepy and mysterious and I'm really enjoying it. I might even re-read Bram Stoker's classic soon, it's been ages since I read it.

I'm also inspired to re-read The Secret History which I've read twice before and always enjoyed tremendously. So, I feel after Julian's comments about the book, I need to defend it!

I finished Independent Heart in about 3 days, and what a jolly fun read it was too. It felt like a guilty little pleasure!

John Harding and the courage to be true to oneself

I think the ability and perhaps more importantly the courage to be true to oneself is what marks out good writing. That for me is what comes over in the Harding book. The book may have its clumsy moments in some of the comedy but this is a minor caveat when set beside the genuineness of his style and the thoughts and feelings which he has expressed.

To attempt a highly literary style with a surfeit of self-consciousness you need to have a very special gift and a high intellect. Harding sensibly rejects the high literary style and this gives his book an endearing and personal quality. Compare this to Donna Tartt in The Secret History who masks the vacuity of her work and characters with a veil of faux sophistication and arch mannerism that immediately alienates the reader. I could see this on reexamining the opening pages of The Secret History in the bookshop this evening.

Harding: better at tragedy than comedy?

Well, that's the opinion of Lorraine and I, anyway, and Julian very much liked the book. We were slightly mystified by the ending - would he really have done that? Would we have done the same in those circumstances? It brought up lots of thoughts and feelings about caring for aging parents, something some will already be doing, and others thinking about what might happen in the future.

Anyway, Julian's quite lengthy shortlist (longlist?) was as follows:

A Touch of the Sun David Evans
Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
Some Kind of Black Diran Adebayo
A Home at the End of the World Michael Cunningham
Fugitive Pieces Anne Michaels
Independent Heart Juliet Waldron

And the chosen book is: Independent Heart by Juliet Waldron

But we also chose to read a second book...
Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson

Next bookgroup date tba asap.