Commonwealth

By Ann Patchett

November

The Great Reckoning by Louise Penny, read in November. Gamache is head of the police Cade academy and a strange murder implicates him.

My Reading Life by Pat Conroy ****

"I won this book from the monthly draw on Book Browse, and somewhere on a card, I have Conroy's autograph. That was four or five years ago. When I picked up the book last weekend, I thought I might read a chapter a week or something, and might perhaps find a chapter about bookstores, which is our Book Club theme for April,2017.  I have read two books by Conroy- Beach Music and South of Broad, and thoroughly enjoyed them, especially Beach Music. He is a writer who gets right into the bones of a subject and makes it come alive with beautifully descriptive language. I find that while I may not remember the plots of his novels, I do remember the emotions I felt while reading them, so they obviously made an impact on me.

This memoir is no exception. While the book definitely concerns his reading and writing life, he ends up telling you his life story, not in chronological order, but as these vignettes about books reveal his story to us.

Chapter One is about his mother, how they shared books and inspired one another's reading." To my mother, a library was a palace of desire masquerading in a wilderness of books."

Chapter Two discusses Gone With The Wind, how it is the quintessential novelof the south" There have  been hundreds of novels about the Civil War, but GWTW stands like an obelisk in the dead century of American letters casting its uneasy shadow over all of us"

Chapter Three, entitled The Teacher, tells the story of Gene Norris, Conroy's English teacher, who was a seminal force in his life, and- finally, because Conroy's father was an extremely difficult person, Conroy had met a great man. They remained friends until Norris died of leukaemia. This was a beautiful chapter, a real tribute to a wonderful teacher, guide, mentor, and friend.

Chapter Four tells about the year Conroy spent teaching 18 black children on a remote backwater island in South Carolina, a one- room schoolhouse, grades five to eight. " I was in way over my head and lacked all qualifications to teach those kids. even so, I pulled up a chair and told them not to worry,.'I can teach you everything you need to know', I said. 'We're going to have a blast'.

Chapter Five, The Librarian, relates his discovery of the library in the high school he had just entered- the library became his refuge, and there he met Eileen Hunter, the librarian. " My genuine fondness for Eileen trumps my irritation at the thorny relationship she brought to the librarian's craft. I can forgive almost any crime if a great story is left in its wake"

Chapter Six, The Old New York Book Shop, tells the story of a wonderfully strange bookshop in Atlanta, which Conroy says utterly changed his life. 

Chapter Seven is about a book rep who led Conroy through the process of having his novels distributed. 

There are chapters about writers' conferences, his time in Paris as a young writer, and so on. This has been a wonderful reading journey for me, too!

Lily And The Octopus by Stephen Rowley ***

Well, I did finish this, so that says something about the book, I guess, but it was one of my quiet reads. I actually finished it while waiting on the telephone for Shaw Direct to help me with my receiver- had to wait an hour, only to find I hadn't turned the receiver on ......duh. 

Lily is a dachshund who has a tumour on her head, which the author, who I believe is the narrator in this story, calls an octopus, and the book is the story of how the narrator, who loves his dog unconditionally, thinks he can send the octopus away.

It would have made an excellent short story, but became a bit too strung out.

The Nature Of The Beast by Louise Penny ****

Armand Gamache has retired to Tall Pines, but finds himself involved again in crime solving when a young boy, Laurent, is killed after telling everyone about a huge gun he had found in the woods. 

Gamache, his son-in-law Beauvoir, and Chief Inspector Isabel Lacoste are kept busy when the huge gun is actually found in the forest with a strange and evil etching on it. Several days later another person, Antoinette is killed, and Gamache discovers she was the niece of a man who assisted in its construction.

The plot becomes thicker, and the danger greater as more possible suspects seem to appear. In all of this, the cosy little town with its BandB and the bistro, the bookstore, the grocery store, offers a contrast to the evil gun resting in the forest.

Then ding has all the ends tied up nicely, then you read the afterword by the author and find that this story is based on facts!

Landing Gear by Kate Pullinger. ****

A woman named Harriet is pushing her grocery cart towards her car in the supermarket parking lot near Heathrow airport when a man falls out of the sky onto the hood of her car. The man- a Pakistani named Yacub- is unhurt, rolls off the hood, and Harriet takes him home, and hides him. His appearance is the catalyst for change in the household of Harriet, her husband Michael, and their teenaged son Jack.

Secrets are broken and kept, connections are made, and there are some coincidences as well. 

Facebook has a role in this story as well, and opens a discussion of how social media affects our day to day living.

I liked this book because it was a quick, entertaining read. I enjoyed the glimpse of a modern family, the connections throughout the book,, the stresses of living a regular kind of life .

No Relation by Terry Fallis ***

Fallis' fourth novel is about a young man called Earnest Hemmingway, his problems with dealing with a name so familiar to everyone, especially since he was also an aspiring writer. He forms a group of people who all have famous names - Jackie Kennedy, Mhatma Gandhi, Jesse Owens, Diana Ross, among others, plus Marie Antoinette, who runs a bakery called Let Them Eat Cake.

The story is comic, and there were a few chuckles, but I tired of it after a while, although I guess you could say I finished it.