Next up for July is Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell, with August's selection being This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. Due to heavy closings and slow re-openings, we continue to find it more challenging to get our customary supply of copies into the library and available to you in as timely a fashion as we'd like. That being said, going forward, Susan will be gathering copies with both the current and following month's reads in mind, in an effort to cover a few more bases. As a result, you many find you're being contacted more frequently than usual regarding book club selections~ please don't feel obligated to read ahead if you'd rather take the reading schedule as it comes, just know it may take awhile longer to get these books distributed.
Back to Little Bee~
The lives of a sixteen-year-old Nigerian orphan and a well-off British woman collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice. Two years later, they meet again... this story, and their friendship, starts there.
It was said in closing during our book club discussion that no other book as of late has divided us more in terms of how it was received, and subsequently scored, among our members. Normally, one would think that meant there were two distinct opinions, one that truly loved and appreciated the book, and the other that didn't care much for the read. In this case, however, the division mentioned referred more to how the plot, and especially the cast of characters, were perceived. It was widely agreed that Little Bee's character was very well developed and her story lines were preferred throughout. In the same way, with the exception of a few, Sarah's character and story lines felt disjointed, disorderly, and a bit unbelievable at times. No one particularly cared for Lawrence, and while Andrew's plight was understandable, we found his outcome excessive and improbable.
All that aside, we generally found that we liked Mr. Cleave's writing style. More specifically, he has an excellent way of crafting a sentence/scene/thought. While the overall score was low, and the majority voted they wouldn't recommend this book to a friend, we also recognized that despite all that, we still had a refreshing, thought-provoking conversation spanning the full hour's allotted time. You just never really know how book club will shake out!
A parting thought (and an incredibly insightful comment from the discussion) to weigh: Up until and outside of Little Bee's haphazard "escape" from the detention center early on in the book, what else of the plot could be considered believable?
At the end of every book club discussion we ask three questions and track the average answers:
Would we recommend this to another book club for discussion?
"NO"
Would we recommend this to a friend to read?
"YES"
Rate the book 1-4 stars with 1 being the lowest rating:
2.5 stars
