Minutes March Book: People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Minutes March Book: People of the Book
by Geraldine Brooks

(chosen by Gypsy)






Gypsy chose this book as she had already read it and thought it a worthy bookclub read. In a completely transparent grab for popularity, she confessed she thought it was ‘worthy of some 10s’!

We worked out that this is the third of Geraldine Brooks’ books that we have read in the 10 years of the No.1 Melbourne Ladies’ Bookclub.

Geraldine Brooks is an Australian-born author and journalist who grew up in the Western suburbs of Sydney. She worked as a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald for three years as a feature writer with a special interest in environmental issues.

In 1982 she won a scholarship to the journalism masters program at Columbia University in New York City and later worked for The Wall Street Journal.

She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her novel March. Her first novel, Year of Wonders, is an international bestseller. People of the Book is translated into 20 languages. She, her husband and their two sons divide their time between homes in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and Sydney, Australia.

(biographical details sourced from the Author’s official website)

What the publisher says about the book:

When Hanna Heath gets a call in the middle of the night in her Sydney home about a precious medieval manuscript that has been recovered from the smouldering ruins of war−torn Sarajevo‚ she knows she is on the brink of the experience of a lifetime.

A renowned book conservator‚ she must now make her way to Bosnia to start work on restoring the Sarajevo Haggadah −− a Jewish prayer book −− to discover its secrets and piece together the story of its miraculous survival. But the trip will also set in motion a series of events that threaten to rock Hanna′s orderly life‚ including her encounter with Ozren Karamen‚ the young librarian who risked his life to save the book.

As meticulously researched as all of Brooks′ previous work‚ People of the Book is a gripping and moving novel about war‚ art‚ love and survival.

What we discussed about the book:

• Did the structure of the novel work for us? What was the effect of unfolding the historical narrative in reverse chronological order, while the contemporary story moved forward?
• To what extent did the novel explore the concept of human frailty?
• Was there a theme of destructive and dysfunctional fathering within all the female characters in the book?
• How plausible did we find Hannah Heath as a character? What was the intent of her seemingly out-of-character ‘ockerisms’ of speech at times?
• How compelling did we find the contemporary story in comparison with the historical stories?
• Was the contemporary story the human drama of The Book in today’s world – could it conceivably takes its place as one of the stories of The Book if the novel was set 100 years into the future?
• Were there too many conveniences and coincidences in the plot?
• The skill it take to start with an item such as the image of the Moorish woman at the table and then create an entire story from that spanning hundreds of years and many cultures and countries.
• What were the links within the novel to true stories?
• What did the novel have to say about cultures and religions co-existing peacefully?

And then we were sidetracked into:

• What is a codex?
• Do books such as these need a glossary for us to fully enjoy them? Is that our own responsibility to look things up?

And in other news:

• We discussed JMs recent 40th party – and she handed out huge blocks of parmesan as party bags!
• We analysed the appeal of the TV show Ladette to Lady. Why is it so strangely compelling?
• We admired KE’s photobook from her trip over Christmas.

Ratings:

Ratings range: 7.5 to 9
Ratings average: 8.14
(three DNFs, one chose not to score)

Next book: Speeches that Changed the World edited by Simon Sebag Montefiore