By Kathy Bryan
As I sit down to start writing this, it is snowing outside, the air temperature is -11℃, and the idea of going back to bed and curling up with a good book is a very tempting one... But which book? In honesty, I have three on the go, and I am not flying through any of them, but each is interesting enough that I keep returning to it. But they will wait till later. Now, to bring you all up to date with the Book Club. We met on Thursday, 11th February, and I think it was enjoyed by all. We have also selected our next book club read.
Future reads
In a slight change from the past, we have selected the books we will be reading for both March and April.
March’s book
From a shortlist of:
No Place to Call Home by J. J. Bola;
Bernard and the Cloth Monkey by Judith Bryan,
and
Swing Time by Zadie Smith,
we selected No Place to Call Home as our next book. As an on the ball member has already pointed out, this will be our first male author. No Place to Call Home was J.J. Bola’s debut novel and originally published in 2017. I am looking forward to reading it and hearing what the other members make of it. If you are a member of Über Moms and haven’t previously come to Book Club but are interested to read this book, please do come along and join in our discussion on 11th March at 8 pm.
April’s Book - Pause for Cause
Our book to be discussed at April’s meeting will be one of our four-a-year “Pause for a Cause” books. This book club meeting will be open to non-Über Mom members, so please do invite your friends or family along.
The subject of this Pause for a Cause is “The Environment.” We chose from a shortlist of five books, including fiction and nonfiction:
A Children’s Bible - Lydia Millet
Ministry of Utmost Happiness - Arundhati Roy
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster - Bill Gates
Who Fears Death - Nnedi Okorafor
The Future We Choose - Surviving the Climate Crisis - Christiana Figueres
We selected How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates (yes, that Bill Gates!). It will be published on 16th February and is currently available to order in advance: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates: 9780385546133 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
Thanks go to one of our book club members, Theresa, for both her help compiling the shortlist and for agreeing to act as host at our Zoom meeting in March.
February’s Book Club
It’s fair to say we had set ourselves a little bit of a challenge with the book we chose to read during December AND January. As one of our members said last night, we “have a newfound sympathy for High Schoolers having to read this book.”
The book in question is Villette by Charlotte Brönte, and I should say that whilst all of us struggled at times with this book and none of us has, to date, finished it, it still provided us with a lot of scope for an interesting and varied discussion.
Villette is one of four books written by Charlotte Brönte before she died just short of her 39th birthday. It follows the life of Lucy Snow and is written with Lucy as both narrator and main character. We first meet Lucy when she is staying with her godmother somewhere in England, then again in England when she is a live-in companion for a woman in poor health, and then again as Lucy makes her way first to London, then to France and a small town called Villette.
We all found it a bit of a slow burner, and the beginning of the book so much so that it didn’t awaken enough interest to encourage everyone to give their precious reading time to it. However, for others, once Lucy arrived in Villette, and at other points further on, they found they became more interested in her story. What was striking to us all was how Lucy acted, the independence she showed in some areas of her life, and her apparent capacity to “roll with the punches.” We mused at how Victorian women reading the story might have reacted to the story of Lucy. Would they have been as surprised as we were at the apparent freedom she had to travel to France and find herself a job? Would they have had a secret admiration for her or been shocked at such actions? Reviews at the time seem to suggest reviewers were split, but what about the people buying it in the book shop to read for pleasure?
We felt that some of the topics and views within the book gave it what was both called a timeless and a modern feel (language aside), which I do not think we were expecting. We also agreed that there was something different about Lucy Snow as a character, she was noticeably different from Jane Eyre, one of Charlotte Brönte’s more famous characters. Whilst Lucy seemed to appreciate other female characters' beauty, etc, and is frequently very harsh about herself, she is equally forthright about not wanting to swap positions. We, equally, agreed that we would not want to swap positions with a woman from the 1850s with the restrictions we perceive on their lives.
This, however, is not an ‘A’ Level English essay, so I will not dissect the book further, although there is a lot more that could be said about class, social standing, social expectations, the position of single women in society, etc. If you fancy a challenge, something a little different to read, and a book with no references to pandemics, world politics, etc, this might be the book for you.
Kathy Bryan
Kathy Bryan is a stay at home mum with 15 years experience of raising three independent, loving, fun-filled, maddening children. Prior to moving to a village south of Munich, she lived with her family in the middle of England. Being a firm believer that being a stay at home mum does not mean you have to forget who you are, she was always busy in the village, both as a Governor at the school and helping organise village fetes amongst other things. Since arriving in Germany and getting settled here Kathy joined Über Moms and is an active member of the Runners Group and recently started Über Moms very own book club. When not chasing children to do homework or running the highways and byways around her village Kathy can be found sewing patchwork and working out ways to hide “another quilt” in the house.