Thumbs Up For Geraldine
August 30th 2006 02:05
Image: www.geraldinebrooks.com
Well, Geraldine Brooks gets the thumbs up from our book club this month. Her novel Year Of Wonders, which covers a year in an isolated village that becomes infected with the plague when a bolt of fabric arrives from London, was thoroughly enjoyed by most everyone. We did have a huge attendance this month, a total of 16, which can make discussion a little difficult (not to mention noisy!), and we meet in a library! But generally everyone managed to get an opinion in. The positives were many—accurate research, great setting with a real feel for time and space, plenty of believable characters, even if our heroine Annie was a little on the ‘super-woman’ side. Brooks does a good job of portraying what life would have been like in a small country village during this time, and I’m sure this is one of the appealing aspects of this book. We are so far removed from that kind of life nowadays, it becomes a big pull on the imagination to set ourselves in these characters shoes.
Sorry, I managed to get off the track of our book. That tends to happen too. Don’t panic, it’s normal (at least in our group).
So, if you like history and a good, well thought-out yarn, try Year of Wonders or her latest title March, which won Brooks the Pulitzer Prize this year. She is also the author of Nine Parts Of Desire, about the hidden world of Islamic Women. Could her Middle Eastern ties have influenced the conclusion to Year Of Wonders? Whoops! I’ll say no more.
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