Ali Smith ~ How to be Both

Everyone agreed that How to be Both provided a eulogy on art and was full of colour, playful language, clever subversions and interpretation over time. It also raised interesting questions about all the ‘boths’: boy/girl; live/dead; empathy/sympathy; past/present; master/servant. We discussed the thread of grief for 2 lost mothers, the absence of a resolving ending (but history never ends), the parallels between contemporary art and contemporary literature and the impact on the reader of the order in which the 2 sections were read. And, most interestingly of all, we talk about why we read. However, although the group found it clever and full of high impact writing, for some it was too cold be enjoyable and hard to read as a story. Those who a story had read the book twice fared better and those who had bought it for the cover felt misled.

 

Scores ranged from 4 to 7 with an average of 6.

Sunjeev Sahota ~ The Year of the Runaways

There was a lot to discuss in the novel: the way the characters retained much of the innocence and optimism despite their rather bleak and grinding lives with Tochi the most engaging of them; the caste system and its significance today and it was felt that the book could only have been written by and ‘insider’; its setting in a supportive culture despite the different backgrounds of the main characters, but also one with huge pressures put upon younger family members by the older generation; the manipulation by the ‘traffickers’. However everyone had issues about the use of so much unfamiliar language and thought a glossary would have helped. Some ignored the terminology but then felt they were missing out, not just in the understanding of the words but the significance of colour, dress code etc.  We wondered if there was there a sub-plot only identified to those who could fully understand the entire context, but also noted the use of foreign terms decreased as the characters become more immersed in British society. Also for many the ending was unsatisfactory.

 

Overall the book offered a bleak vision of struggle with a quasi-documentary feel.