It was book club night last night; we are only a small group and one of us is on an eight week course, so we knew she wouldn’t be with us, and another was away of on a short break.
As none of us had finished reading the book, a biography of Patrick Leigh Fermor by Artemis Cooper, we dithered as to whether we should meet. Andrea is doing a degree and as part of her course she is studying the short story as a form, she suggested we meet and she would read us a short story and we would discuss it in the light of her assignment. It sounded a splendid scheme.
We met as usual and after an exchange of news, Andrea gave us a little background to the story by V.S.Naipaul which was about an Indian servant moving with his master from Bombay to Washington. She read for about ten minutes and then we discussed various aspects of the story including freedom and liberty. We had a cup of tea and some biscuits, and then Andrea read a little more; by this time the evening was getting a little late so we decided there was not time to finish the story. We talked about it some more, in a very lively debate, which we couldn’t help but think was very different from our usual meetings. usually we send five minutes saying whether we liked the book or not, and the rest of the time gossiping and laughing. Gossiping and laughing is great, but the point of the evening is to discuss the book we’ve chosen!
We had a lovely evening, and decided that maybe we should adopt an aspect of it for future meetings; maybe we should each choose a passage or extract from the chosen book and read it aloud to prompt discussion; even if one of us didn’t like the book there is bound to be a bit of it we like!
Lois Elsden 