Welcome to our new page all about Book Groups. Discussing a book with a group of people is a great way to develop new friendships or deepen existing ones. If you feel inspired to start a new Book Group and would like OVRA’s help to publicise your group please email us at info@ovra.org.uk
Martyn Parker is a retired secondary school headteacher and English teacher. He has a passion for books and book groups and he is OVRA’s very own Book Guru! He has agreed to oversee this page and every term he will be adding some more reviews of books which he feels will promote stimulating discussion in book groups as well as being wonderful books for anyone to read. If you can’t wait that long, then you can always follow Martyn’s book blog, the details of which are in his article below.
An introduction by Martyn Parker
The 1990s seem to be back in fashion – a Labour landslide, an Oasis reunion and the Macarena (this last one may just be a bad fever dream brought on by the return of Strictly). Something that also seemed to really take off in the 1990s, and has never really gone out of fashion since, is the popularity of book groups.
The first book group is recorded as taking place in 1634; and women’s reading circles were extremely popular in 19th century America as an understandable act of intellectual independence against their restricted lives. However, in 1996, Oprah established her influential book club, the inspiration for thousands of copycat groups – so let’s go back to that Britpoptastic decade. As Tony Blair proclaimed a new dawn outside Downing Street in 1997, a literary new dawn was also rising in Bannisters Road as my wife, Sarah, and I hosted the first meeting of a book group that is still going strong in 2024. Being rather new to this sort of thing, we chose two books for that first meeting – ‘One True Thing’ by Anna Quindlen and ‘A Thousand Acres’ by Jane Smiley. This organisational error led to a rather disjointed consideration of the books because, busy people as we were in that child rearing decade, most of us chose to focus on reading one of the books: unfortunately, we didn’t all read the same one. As this was the 90s, when reasonably priced supermarket wine was also in its pomp, we probably over compensated for the lack of structure by responding enthusiastically to the refreshments.
From this stuttering start and several changes of membership as well as tweaks to the way the meeting was organised, we have found our feet; and as we near our third decade, the monthly meetings are as enjoyable and stimulating as at any time.
Now if the first and second rule of Fight Club (another 90s phenomenon) are that you never, ever talk about Fight Club, there are only two rules for book clubs. Rule 1 – there are no rules. Rule 2 – but if there were, the best rule is that members should read and complete the chosen book. Non-adherence to this rule can often lead to frustrations, including endings of the book spoilt for some, or over-reliance on the refreshments.
Although I believe there are no rules, it might be helpful if I explain, briefly, how our group runs. After all, we’ve had since 1997 to craft an approach that suits us. There are twelve of us in the group, including four men, which I do think is a strength. That’s not because I subscribe to the idea that there are gendered books – browsing the book covers in Waterstones might suggest that publishers think differently. I believe that we have an eclectic spread of reading tastes in our group and, if one of the reasons for joining a group is to read books outside of your comfort zone, the mixed gender nature of our group enriches that aspect.
We meet on the third Thursday of every month except in August which historically was left free because of school holidays but which now also allows us space to explore our own non-book group reading. We take turns hosting which means importantly that the host chooses the book under discussion and even more importantly supplies the wine. The host also starts the discussion by saying why they chose the book and what their initial reaction to it has been. They may also slip in some research about the writer or the theme – for example during a recent discussion about Elif Shafak’s novel set in 1970s Cyprus, ‘The Island of Missing Trees’, Caroline, our host, fed in some really useful information about the Civil War between the Turks and Greeks on this divided island.
This host’s intro is just a way to get things going, though, and because we are a long-established group of friends there is no issue with people chipping in. We have no set order for talking about the book but just pick up an incident, idea or character and run with it. If it’s been a good discussion, usually about books that inspire different responses, then the discussion lasts about 90 minutes or more. A book that we all respond to positively sometimes, counter-intuitively, leads to a shortened discussion. Nevertheless, books with heft and style can often lead you on myriad, discursive pathways; and so, at the end of this article, I have listed some recent books our group has read that engendered sparky, substantive discussion.
There is, however, one benefit from a shorter than usual discussion: we can quickly move on to one of the highlights of each book group meeting – admin! This can involve discussing the next host’s ideas for his/her book choice, shifting the date of the meeting because all the retirees are spending the children’s inheritances on non-term time holidays and, of course, arranging the group’s regular socials.
That’s the way we do it but in accordance with Rule 1 of book group, you might choose to meet say every six weeks to allow sufficient time for people with busy lives. You might also select the books more democratically and include non-fiction. You could go out to the local pub for the meeting or have different people hosting and providing a meal. You might prefer more structure with each person taking turns to speak or even sending out those ‘back of the book suggested questions for book groups’ prior to the meeting so people can prep. You might even break rule 2 and move very quickly from book to admin and onto socialising. However, I do think that this is to miss out. A good discussion of a book, with people who come from slightly different perspectives is a lovely experience. When a book group works well it is, in a small way, an antidote to the angry culture wars that seem to predominate at the moment, with people taking aggressive, no compromise positions about everything. Spending time with friends in a relaxed atmosphere and listening to someone’s view of a character might just make you think again about a book.
Onslow Village is awash with well-established book groups, so there must be something good about this 1990s phenomenon that has outlasted New Labour and, thank goodness, Beanie Babies. If you’re interested, just ask around and your friends will probably know about a group. Better still set up your own group, with your own friends and own rules, if for no other reason than to revel in the admin.
Recommendations below; and if you want more than you can read my rather pompous, overlong reviews on a user-unfriendly blog via this link 618c44dc9479d.site123.me
Lessons by Ian McEwan – This is our great contemporary novelist at the top of his game in a sprawling novel that takes in events from the end of World War II to the present day as seen through the eyes of a diffident, everyman narrator. Clearly drawing on McEwan’s own experiences, this is a book that looks at how we find meaning in our lives as well as the experiences and forces that shape us.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garman – Now an established book group favourite, and television series, that has a positive, life-affirming message centred around one remarkable woman’s determination to forge her own life and career as a scientist in conformist, patriarchal, post war America. Don’t be fooled by my seemingly positive precis, though, as I found aspects of the way this book problematic after the sugar rush from reading it. Remember what I said about contrary views often leading to good discussion.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – It’s hard not to be bowled over by this accomplished account of twin black girls from Louisiana whose lives take radically different turns when they run away from home. One of the twins decides to pass – pretend to be white – as a way to secure a better, safer life for herself. The consequence of this decision develops into a riveting exploration of identity and the fault lines at the heart of the American Dream.
Ideas from other book groups
A book group with book themed socials by Michelle Moyer
I’ve been a member of a wonderful book club for ten years and 100+ books. We met on the Fiction of Relationship class on Coursera (an online platform offering free university course content). Initially we met up weekly to discuss the set texts, but after the course ended, we decided to morph into a monthly book club with a twist. We thought it would be more interesting if we found a cultural activity to do with each book. We’ve done a huge range of activities from immersive theatre to magical brunches to West End plays and even a trip to Vienna. Some highlights were:
The New Life by Tom Crewe combined with a visit to the LGBTQ+ Museum, Queer Britain
I’ll Be Right There by Shin Kyung-sook with a visit to see Ahn Sook-Sun perform a Pansori
The Hounds of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with a brilliant afternoon at the Sherlock: The Time is Now escape room
Book Reviews
Set 2: Literary Prize Winners
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
Scrublands by Chris Hammer
Kala by Colin Walsh
Trust by Herman Diaz
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Set 1: Historical Novels
Precipice by Robert Harris
The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
Brotherless Night by V. V. Gananshananthan
The Great Swindle by Pierre LeMaitre
Booth by Karen Jay Fowler
The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
The White Girl by Tony Birch
A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee
Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller
Set 2: Literary Prize Winners
This term, I’m looking at books that have won some of the top literary prizes and might be good choices for your book group.
The Booker Prize and The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for a short period, attract the attention of non-professional but enthusiastic readers of contemporary fiction – readers like me. The fulsome citations from the judges and the appearance of big name writers at these award ceremonies – McEwan, Atwood, Rushdie – always tempt me to make an expectant purchase. Unfortunately, as often as some books live up to the hype, many disappoint. This may be because, as a Booker judge once revealed, readability is not the main criterion for a novel to be in contention for the prize. In fact, a quick search will reveal several book blogs listing the worst prize-winning novels.
I don’t intend to indulge in a naming and shaming exercise, tempted as I am having endured some wilfully complex, turgid novels. After all, books are incredibly important to people and I wouldn’t want to decry a book for its stylistic excesses and impenetrability if it was someone’s life changing, go to read. I’ve put my foot in it too often in the past because of my aversion to magic realism!
Instead, therefore, I’m going to pick out five novels that I think thoroughly deserve their awards. In some cases, such as my first choice, I took up the book fearing it was more loved by the professional book reviewers than the common reader, only to then be pleasantly surprised.
So, here are my five winners. And, even if your book group disagree with my choices, there will be ample opportunity for the sort of discussion that goes: I can’t believe that (insert title) won (insert prize).
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
Booker Prize Winner 2019
The novel tells the story of twelve characters, mainly women, from a range of backgrounds who are often outsiders or at the margins of society. They are fully realised with all their flaws and vanities examined but also their humanity and warmth. Evaristo avoids presenting a polemic about the state of our contemporary, multicultural society by focusing on engaging characters with interesting stories. The different sections are loosely structured around a National Theatre premiere of a play by a middle aged black woman about a tribe of African Amazonian lesbian warriors. And it works perfectly.
Scrublands by Chris Hammer
UK Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Award for a debut crime novel in 2019
If you enjoyed Jane Harper’s ‘The Dry’ then ‘Scrublands will appeal to you as it uses a similarly harsh Western Australia rural setting for a dark murder mystery. Like that novel, the setting, a sparsely populated and isolated town called Riversend, has formed its inhabitants: the good and the bad, their resilience and secrets.
Kala by Colin Walsh
Irish Book Award for Newcomer of the Year Prize 2023
This is the best page turner that I read in 2024. It has an archetypal murder mystery set-up but is a book with real depth and psychological insight.
The set-up – old school friends meet up in Kinlough, on the west coast of Ireland, 15 years after their world was ripped apart. In the summer of 2003, their final year before finishing school, the beautiful, charismatic and fearless Kala, the core member of their gang of six school outsiders, disappeared. Now a music gig and family wedding see the remaining five all together, again, in Kinlough just at the moment that the remains of a body are found in nearby woodland.
Trust by Herman Diaz
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2023
This book would appeal to the literati such as the Pulitzer judges and also to the wider reading public. The latter would respond to the gradual revelation of its central characters’ secrets. Whilst the literati would respond to its four different narratives that circle around the lives of Andrew Bevel, a wealthy New York businessman from the early 20th century and his enigmatic wife, Mildred. All readers would lap up the book’s exploration of where truth lies in every individual’s story, whose perception can be trusted and how truth can be constructed and mis-constructed.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2022
Keegan is a noted short story writer and this is a novella – I read it in one lazy afternoon – and, like the best short stories, it packs a powerful punch and leaves the reader with a sense of lives and events that will carry on after the story comes to a close.
It’s 1985 and Bill Furlong, a small businessman with his own coal merchant business in a small Irish town, is on a treadmill of hard work and family life. He is making his way with diligence and good humour – his energy and enterprise, we assume, will in a few years fuel the Celtic Tiger economy. Now, though, he is bound by the restricted and traditional society of this church dominated country. Keegan subtly hints at Bill’s restless inner life that occasionally bursts through the conscientious routine of his daily life. He reflects on issues of fairness in such a hierarchical society, and beyond the ties of family he considers the individual’s responsibility to others.
Then one Christmas during his final delivery to the local convent, an unexpected encounter forces him to challenge his passively complicit role in such a restrictive, cruel society.
Set 1: Historical Novels
Welcome to the first set of recommendations to help you choose something for your book group. I have listed 11 books, each with my best attempt at a snappy synopsis. If you click on the link, though, you’ll get a longer, slightly pretentious, and definitely verbose review – you have been warned.
I thought I’d start with historical novels because how successfully the author evokes the specific period covered is often a good starting point for discussion. Many of the books recommended here are also set in foreign countries and go back quite a way – the Greek-Trojan War is the most distant in time and the most recent is set in Sri Lanka in the last couple of decades before the millennium.
I hope you find these titles helpful. I always like to hear what other readers think, so please drop a line if you feel the urge to berate me for wasting your time with a hopeless book!
Precipice by Robert Harris
Here, the historical hook is well known but rather at the margins– Herbert Asquith’s relationship with a young aristocratic woman, Venetia Stanley, as he leads the country into conflict with Germany in 1914; and marked by his almost obsessive writing of scores of love letters, sometimes as he was chairing the cabinet. Harris, a masterly storyteller, brings the personal and public thrillingly to life as his characters and the whole of Europe teeter on the precipice.
Click here for the full review.
The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
This short, consistently enjoyable book is worth reading alone for its brilliant and, what seems, authentic depiction of Moscow life in 1913. Frank Reid, Russian born but from an English family, is the owner of a small printing business in Moscow who is coming to terms with his wife Nellie’s sudden departure from the family home. Once again, the personal and private are in crisis as Frank tries to make sense of what has happened and take care of his children, all against the backdrop of the faltering Tsarist regime.
Click here for the full review.
Brotherless Night by V. V. Gananshananthan
This epic novel spans the decades long Sri Lanka civil war and focuses on the Tamil community. We see this brutal conflict from the perspective of Sashi, an intelligent, idealistic young woman whose youthful hopes and happy family life are battered by violence and tribalism. This is a tough read, with only a few shards of hope, but it is packed with powerful evocations of the people and events from an often over-looked conflict.
Click here for the full review.
The Great Swindle by Pierre LeMaitre
This is a fictionalised account of a real-life scandal in France after the first world war. As the country tries to come to terms with its grief and looks how best to honour the dead, others see an opportunity to make a killing of their own. The story moves seamlessly between the most powerful in society and those scrabbling at its bottom end in the manner of a Dickens’ novel.
Click here for the full review.
Booth by Karen Jay Fowler
This book is always heading towards the murder of Lincoln by the book’s eponymous, actor assassin. It focuses, therefore, on an interesting study of the Booth family – theatre royalty – and the psychological forces that formed this notorious figure in American history. As well as some fascinating insights into what it meant to be an actor in the relatively newly formed country, the book considers the fissures in the US that resulted in the civil war and are with us today.
Click here for the full review.
The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
This was written in 1938 by Boschwitz, a young German Jew who fled to London from his homeland to escape the Nazis. In a dramatic opening, Hitler’s thugs are rounding up Berlin’s Jews in a bogus response to an assassination in Paris. They arrive at the home of Otto Silbermann, who is forced to flee out the back door and keep moving. And that in essence is the plot – the novel is subtitled ‘The man who took trains’ and Otto spends most of the novel moving around the country in a Kafkaesque limbo where all his attempts to escape the country or seek other possible solutions are thwarted.
Click here for the full review.
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
After his son’s death, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, a great play obsessed with death and pervaded by a sense of loss and melancholy.
O’Farrell makes a virtue of our sketchy knowledge of the bard and also his family who stayed rooted in Stratford whilst he ascended to literary immortality in London. This book is partly about him and his grief even though he is never named; but it is more about his wife and family and their life in a provincial Elizabethan town.
Click here for the full review.
The White Girl By Tony Birch
This is a quietly powerful story about the experience of Australian Aborigines in the period straight after the second world war.
The novel is set In Deane, an isolated, small, rural town, where the Aborigines live separate from their white neighbours and are alternately brutalised or condescended to but always seen as a group to be guided like children by an overweening state power.
The story focuses on Odette a resilient older aboriginal woman whose skill as an artist gives her a degree of financial independence, and her thirteen year old granddaughter, Sissy, the white girl of the title. We quickly learn that Sissy’s mother, Odette’s daughter, left when Sissy was a baby, traumatised and shamed by what had been done to her and which had resulted in this fair skinned, mixed race child. As such she attracts the wrong kind of interest from those who should be protecting her.
Click here for the full review.
A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee
It is 1919 and Sam Wyndham an ex-Scotland Yard detective, is newly arrived in Calcutta headhunted as part of a new CID force. He is looking for a fresh start following his experiences in the trenches and the death of his wife to Spanish Flu.
The uncertainty and turmoil in his own life is matched by the turbulence of Calcutta. A mixture of terrorist attacks and the more damaging effect of the nascent non-violence/non-cooperation movement are beginning to undermine British rule in India. He quickly has his first murder case to investigate whilst navigating the political pressures on him to reach the right outcome. This was the best sort of detective novel, not just because of the characterisation but the authentic whiff of fully realised historical milieu.
Click here for the full review.
Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
Barker’s 2018 novel is one of a recent trend of books based on well-known stories, many drawn from the classics, that present events from a female perspective. Here, the text is the Illiad and the main narrator is Briseis, a Trojan princess from the city of Lyrnessus. When the city is captured and sacked by Achilles and his Myrmidions, she is claimed as his prize. In one fell swoop her world changes utterly: she witnesses her husband and family being butchered by the seemingly unbeatable Achilles before being dragged to his camp on the beaches outside the great city of Troy as his prize, an object, and his slave who is forced to wait on him at post-battle feasts and in his bed.
Barker gives this intelligent and resilient woman her voice and perspective on the epic events going on around her.
Click here for the full review.
Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller
This is a historical novel with thriller elements and characters coping with physical and psychological issues that they struggle to overcome. The early nineteenth century world is engagingly and plausibly realised as is the mood in Britain as it responds to or turns away from the looming threat of Napoleon’s rampaging across Europe.
John Lacroix, a cavalry officer, brought home to his rundown family estate in Somerset, has escaped the Napoleonic War, fleeing from defeat in the Spanish Peninsular. He is injured and carrying an emotional burden that is just as damaging. He seeks solace and then escape in his love of music by setting out to the remotest areas of Scotland to collect folk songs. It is a deliberate turning away from his unfinished military responsibilities. However, the sinister forces of real politik are on his trail.
Click here for the full review.