I’ve just finished reading our book club book – and for once I’ve finished it several days before we get together to discuss it rather than the night before/morning of our meeting. I’ve mentioned in a previous post the title and the author of the book, but I won’t repeat it here because what I’m going to write about will give away a crucial aspect of the story.The bcb (book club book,) is a historical novel of 352 gripping pages recounting a famous historical event which happened almost two millennia ago. I would guarantee that almost everyone who reads the book will know about this catastrophic event, and may have watched TV programmes about it, or visited the site where it happened, or museum exhibitions about it.
However, the book is about a character who in reality would have existed even if in the book they are imagined with a back story, and personality which is fictitious. Many ‘real’ people become characters and are more accurately portrayed, including one whose contemporary writings include notes on the catastrophe which caused his death. So, we readers follow the struggles of this main character, and unsurprisingly there is a love interest, which adds drama to the character’s predicament as a powerful and cataclysmic incident unfolds. Obviously he is a carriage for the reader to observe and understand what happened, to help us ‘see’ and imagine it, but we become invested in him and others connected to him, we’re willing him on though appalling, unbelievable challenges. We want him to survive – broken maybe, damaged, wounded, or maybe even an open ending where we are merely left with hope.
You can guess from what I’ve said what actually happens to this imagined person, and it’s not what I wanted or hoped for, having engaged so completely with him because of the brilliant and skilful writing. So why did the author kill him? There is a fuzzy episode which seems tagged on, which possibly could be construed differently, but no – that’s not convincing.
The same thing happened in another excellent, gripping and tremendous book, “Cold Mountain”, where we the readers had struggled against overwhelming odds with one of the many characters, urging him on, living every moment of his horrific trek back to find his love only for… Yes, he didn’t make it, and in a most brutal and tragic and final way.
I will be interested in what my fellow book clubbers have to say, especially about the ending!
Lois Elsden 