Ex Bookworm group review:I tried to like this book, but I didn't. I tried not to be prejudiced against the sort of women who live in Surrey and who have the luxury of enough money and time to agonise at length about how miserable they are, but I was. I think this was Elizabeth Noble's failure not mine. I wasn't the one to keep mentioning Agas. If "Surrey women" are portrayed as caricatures, as cardboard cut outs, you can't blame me for not caring a damn about them. And I didn't. I didn't care a stuff about any of them, with the possible exception of Alice. Curiously, while she lost her grip on reality, she seemed the most real of this bunch to me.I felt frustrated and a bit angry really, because a novel based on a reading group was such a good idea and it is a shame it was squandered on such a trivial story. To be honest, I was less interested in the characters than the books, and these were well and truly pushed into the background. I couldn't believe it when I got to the end and everyone was saying how important and meaningful the reading group was because it had been treated as so peripheral, just a literary device for getting so many whining women in the same room at the same time. When the women were chatting about the books, either you couldn't tell whose opinion you were reading, or one person hijacked the subject to relate it to her own angst-ridden domestic life. I didn't learn anything new about these women from anything they said about the books or even the book choices they made. Are we like this? I think not. I think we are more different from each other than this group of female, married, middle class WASPs. Most of us have a thread that links us (Brats, or whatever) but have lived different lives in different places. I think I could recognise one of Hel's reviews even if it were posted anonymously. I could certainly recognise one of Ray's. Sue's remind me of her – ordered and thoughtful. Carl is usually a bit of an agent provocateur, something this group could have done with. They were so civilised, so polite, so DULL. I wish I could have joined and thrown in Atomised or The Story of O. This was such a "women's book", just like the women's page in newspapers, full of household hints, tips about child rearing, cookery, flower arranging, weight loss and how to please your man. But I thought Elizabeth Noble accidentally said a lot about women that was negative. This was usually because her characters were so two dimensional. An example - many women like charming rogues, but because Gavin was textbook womaniser with no light or shade (and definitely no charm), Nicole's desperation to hang on to him looked merely pathetic. I think I'll stop now, but not without mentioning those names. Nicole, Eliot, Polly, George and Martha – and Cressida for God's sake – how Home Couties can you get? (This is where you all declare offspring called Martha, and cousins called Cressida).This book hadn't been properly proofread. I saw several typographical errors, which annoyed me. It bore the hallmarks of being rushed out to cash in on the current vogue for reading groups, and I doubt the story mattered much. I doubt also whether the book would have done a tenth as well without that title. Had it not been called The Reading Group, I think it would have sunk without trace.
I would have said simply, that this is a book best for a summer read, when you've run out of the books that are "serious literature," and that it would be an escape. There are a few laugh out loud moments - a wife desiring that her husband be shanked while he waits outside a gas station bathroom for her. But the other jokes, I don't think are actually intended to be funny - like the way grown womyn over 35 behave and the now cliche dramatization of harried housewives of a certain means. Let me start with what I appreciated. As a member of a book club I liked that many books were discussed - many of which I'd now like to read. I also appreciated Noble's realistic portrayal of book group dynamics - there's always an assertive one, someone more mild, someone who never reads the book and likes to socialize. This I found funny and even enjoyable as I compared it to my own reading group. Too, the idea that two different friends with drastically different marraiages interact is a level slightly below interesting. And that's where it ends for me.I like a good no-need-to-think-too-hard novel just as much as the next person, but the way in which womyn are portrayed in this novel unsettles me. I would have dismissed this if one of the major protagonists (spoiler coming don't read if you don't want to know part of the ending) has an abortion after conniving to get herself pregnant to make her man stay. The plot then delivers a wolf in sheep's clothing dissection of abortion, with which I have serious issues because it ultimately intimates that abortion is bad for womyn because they will be wracked with guilt (and other womyn, namely your friends, won't approve.) While that could be realistic for some communities and interesting to build upon, the complexity (though the author tried) is missing.For this reason and the number of characters it's necessary to follow, the dialogue which doesn't always flow (this could admittedly, be me as an American reading a Brittish novel), and the sheer length, make this not my number one pick for a lazy summer read. Instead, I would suggest a Sophie Kinsella novel - full of good laughs, completely unrealistic, and no abortion themes (as yet) that disservice womyn. The protagonist may be immature (this is in fact why we love her) but she's at least checked in her fantasies.
What do You think about The Reading Group (2005)?
First, this was written by a Britsh author... she uses the word leant instead of leaned and other interesting British grammar.That bugged me at first, but then I got used to it.OK, I really wasn't expecting much from this book. I mean, just look at the cover. It really looks ridiculous! I've read some other reviews that complained that this book took cliches to the next level, but I really didn't feel that way. For some reason this book gripped me and I kept reading. I wasn't looking for something serious, but a few situations in this book really were serious and the characters had to learn to get on with life. I liked that it didn't dwell too much on the sadness in life and that it showed how we love each other and how we keep loving our friends and family no matter what happens. It's a human flaw to keep loving someone even if they have made bad decisions in life and that's OK. So this book is about what happens outside of a book group. Each chapter gave a book summary and showed the women meeting at the book club, but that was sort of a secondary or even tertiary point in the book. The meetings didn't actually add a whole lot to the book, they were kind of just there to reiterate the plot and what the characters where going through.In the end, I really liked this book because it wasn't all about those lame book groups that just hang out and don't talk about the book group. It's about the people in the book group(see the Margaret Atwood quote at the beginning). I like that.Possibly, if I had read this book at some other time in my life I would not have liked it. It's an easy read that talks about some complex issues, but doesn't beat them into your head. It's a book about women and how they relate to each other, but doesn't make those relationships too sticky or too sour. It's a book about how to keep loving even when it hurts, but it doesn't make you want to throw up, or at least, it didn't make me want to throw up!
—Christi
I found it a little difficult to get the different characters and their relationships sorted at first because the book chops and changes between them. The book is broken into monthly sections with. Brief description about the book the group are reading that month at the beginning. The discussion bout the book is not attributed to characters which makes it interesting to work out who is saying what. The rest of the book is broken into vignettes based on each character or combinations of the characters as they go through some major life changes during the year. The fellowship of the group grows and is very strong by the end. An enjoyable read. I have only been in an online reading group, and wonder if other people have had similar friendships grow through the medium of reading books every month.
—Kate Millin
My opinions on this book changed as I read it. At first, there were too many characters to keep straight in my head. Fortunately there is a cheat sheet at the beginning of the book that helped a lot. The layout of the book bothered me in the beginning also. It seemed like really long chapters with few clear stopping places and choppy stories. After a while I got used to changing story lines and could see how it benefits the story. I also realized that the choppiness created many stopping places, perfect for someone with only small pockets of time to read.I hate to admit that I did struggle with some of the language. Being from the United States, I didn't know what some words or places were. For the most part I was able to figure it out from context. I started to really enjoy the fact that the women spoke a little differently than what I'm used too, it reminded me that they were in a different country. It was really kinda charming. I think I may start using "brilliant" and "clever" more often.
—Andrea
