Category: Off The Shelf

Off The Shelf bookclub

‘The Age Of Innocence’,Novel By Edith Wharton

‘The Age Of Innocence’,Novel By Edith Wharton

This month’s book was ‘The Age of Innocence’, a 1920’s novel by American author Edith Wharton. The book is set in the 1870s, in upper-class New York Society. Although we appreciated Wharton’s attention to detail, we found the book introduced too many characters in the first few pages and we discovered that we needed a family tree to catch up. When we established who was who, we found ourselves immersed in the plot.

The story is centred around Newland Archer a young gentleman lawyer who finds himself attracted to Countess Ellen Olenska, his fiancée’s cousin. The countess has a tainted background and is thus shunned by elegant society. The book demonstrates the boundaries and restrictions associated with wealth and class and one’s position in society. We couldn’t agree whether Archer’s fiancée Mary was actually an innocent in the proceedings (as suggested by the title) or manipulative in trying to save her marriage. We all agreed this was an enjoyable and insightful read and gave it an overall score of 8/10.

 

 

Library News Update

WENVOE COMMUNITY LIBRARY
Tel: 02920 594176 – during opening hours or wenvoelibrary@outlook.com
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Our library

At this stage we envisage that we will be staying in the existing library building for at least this winter. Therefore, we are endeavouring to make the building a brighter, warmer and more inviting place to visit. We would welcome suggestions from the village to help us achieve this.

Summer Reading Challenge

We are delighted with the number of entries for this year’s challenge. Children can still sign up at the library and read six library books of their choice to complete the Challenge. There are exclusive rewards to collect along the way, and it’s FREE to take part!

London trip Saturday Nov 30th

Tickets are now on sale in the library. The cost of the trip is £22

Off the Shelf – Normal People by Sally Rooney

This book has been in the best sellers list for quite some time. It is a well written coming of age novel and an easy read. Set in a small town in contemporary rural Ireland young people are trying to make sense of themselves and their peer group. We follow Connell and Marianne’s journeys of self-discovery from school through university in Dublin. The vulnerabilities and uncertainties of developing young adults are explored. The characters are well developed, and the author describes how their social interactions and lives in the two places are almost reversed. Some of us rated it higher than others, but all thought it an interesting read. We gave it 8/10

 

 

The Cuckoo’s Calling

The Cuckoo’s Calling

This month’s book was Robert Galbraith’s ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’. This is the first of the Strike detective series written under a pseudonym by J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. Rowling’s identity was leaked before the televised series of her third book was launched.

Cormoran Strike is a war veteran whose injuries resulted in the amputation of a leg. After a period of convalescence, Strike opens a London-based private detective agency on borrowed money. Strike’s story opens with his break-up from his glamorous but disturbed girlfriend and we find him camping out in his office. Robin Ellacott is sent by a secretarial agency to work for Strike and her initiative helps him solve the murder of a supermodel who plunged to her death from her balcony. Despite Strike’s financial difficulties, Robin proves her worth and her position is made permanent.

As with the Potter books, Galbraith’s vibrant attention to detail gives readers a vivid description of the characters and their surroundings. One of our group found this irritating and related that much of the first quarter of the book was distended and longwinded, but thereafter found it to be a page-turner. We all thought that the book was an enjoyable light read and that the protagonist proved to be more than the stereotypical hard-drinking private detective that had fallen on hard times. Galbraith painted a tawdry picture of mostly shallow people and we were all surprised by the choice of crude language which punctuated Strike’s thoughts and conversations. However, this was probably influenced by our knowledge of the identity of the author more than our sensitivity. Overall, we gave the book a score of 7.5 and might take the next book in the series as a holiday read.

 

 

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