Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides is one of those books that it felt like everyone except me had read. You know, the one that all the commuters seem to be reading and that you see in charity shops by the bucketful.  I was therefore quite pleased when this got suggested as a book club read.  I hadn't even realised it was by the author of The Virgin Suicides which I had read and loved a year or so ago.

The great thing about this book was the number of ways in which I enjoyed it. It had the sweeping family saga (three generations!), the undiscovered secret and romance. With all of that in one story it is no wonder it has been enjoyed by so many people. The writing style is easy, straight-forward and familiar and while not comic in the traditional sense, there are certainly amusing incidents.

For such a chunky book, this was an incredibly quick read.  Although there was no real mystery in the novel, I felt I had grown to know the narrator so well that I wanted to find out how everything ended up, like listening to a friend telling you their family history, warts and all.  It's a really delightful book, despite, or perhaps because of, its unusual subject matter.

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Having read Wolf Hall for our last book club we all agreed that Brooklyn by Colm Toibin seemed like a good 'easy read' choice for our next book.  It was the winner of the 2009 Costa Novel award and longlisted for the Man Booker 2009 and so we had high expectations.  The story is of a girl from a small town in Ireland who moves to Brooklyn to start a new life and follows her experiences there.  Whilst we all thought it would be quite a light read, I think we were all surprised by just how light it turned out to be.  The one male in our book club felt he had been duped into reading a chick-lit novel and, much as it pains me, I tend to agree with him.  What we all felt it lacked was any depth, any real emotional tie and, indeed, any real point.  I didn't feel I had learnt anything at the end of the book.  The emotions and plot were all things I have read before and I failed to find anything 'novel' about it all.  Few of the characters seemed likeable.  Plenty of opportunities for interesting storylines seemed to be passed over (the department stores attitude towards black customers for example) and neither of the love interests fitted my idea of a romantic hero.

Who knows, perhaps we all missed the point of this book?  In its defence, it is a very easy read and you do get swept along in the story.  It's just that I constantly had the sense of waiting for something to happen, for a plot development that never really came.  The dramatic incident that brings Eilis back to Ireland even felt to me a bit underwhelming and skimmed over.  Maybe I'm too big a fan of melodrama - what do you think?

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman

Wow. For such a small book, this certainly packs a punch. It's a while since I read something that made me pause to think. These are forty short stories or imaginings (and I mean short, the majority are two pages) of what the afterlife might hold for us. They are like fairy tales for grown ups and raise some interesting philosophical questions. David Eagleman, the author, is a neuroscientist which I found made the whole thing even more interesting - what would someone who has studied neuroscience have to say about faith and death? Well, there are plenty of interesting and thought-provoking ideas: we are already in Heaven but God has stepped outside for a while, we are all actors playing parts in other people's lives, we can choose what we wish to be in the next life or perhaps rather than God being outside and bigger than us, He is actually an intrinsic part of each of us. Each imagining gives just enough detail and suggestion to explain the idea, leaving you to consider and expand on the implications and possibilities. This is not so much a book to sit down and read cover to cover, as one to dip into every now and then and even to return to over time. I am now intrigued to read Eagleman's other book - Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia

Next Book Club Book

The next book I am reading for my book club is Tomas by James Palumbo. As far as I can make out at the moment, it's a bit of a 'cult' book. Written by the founder of Ministry of Sound it couldn't really be anything else. All I know about it so far is that it has had a glowing review from none other than Stephen Fry and it has its own website: http://www.tomas-book.com/

I'm hoping it's not going to be a case of style over content - the book itself is beautifully compact and printed on good quality, bright white paper. And it has illustrations.