For the past 10 years, I've belonged to the Well Red Book Club. No that's not a typo, it's a pun on our love for red wine which is of course the perfect accompaniment for reading and discussions. We have been 10 strong since the club's inception in 2000 with a few members leaving and new members joining (I was a lucky latecomer to the group). What's unusual about our group is that we actually still discuss books when we meet. Isn't the term book club now code for a girls night out, away from the kids and hubby?
Each month we choose a book. One member hosts and provides dinner for 10. What we've discovered over the years is that the books that generate the best discussions are the ones that not everyone likes.
419 by Will Ferguson will be our January discussion book. I'm curious to know what everyone thought of it. I'm going to predict that not everyone liked it. While I appreciated the topic and the complexity of the storytelling, I have to say that I had a hard time immersing myself in the narrative. I found the characters on the shallow side and the multiple story lines disjointed. Perhaps it was because I did not connect with many of the characters. I understood the main character's need for vengeance but I didn't believe that she could follow through with what she did. I didn't think that her character had the chops to even dream up of the revenge scheme. The scenes in Nigeria were intense but lacked vibrancy. Last fall, I read Lawrence Hill's The Illegal and in that novel, Hill successfully breathed life into a foreign country - as a reader, I felt immersed in the sounds, smells, and life of the setting. This is where Ferguson fall short. What's most surprising to me is that Will Ferguson won the prestigious Giller Prize for this novel. Maybe someone in my book club will be able to enlighten me on how that happened.
No comments:
Post a Comment