Saturday 24 September 2011

September Meeting

This month we met at Rachel's where we ate far too many biscuits and discussed 'A Town Like Alice' by Nevil Shute.  In short, we loved it!  We chose this from the BBC's Big Read top 100 and it certainly deserves to be in the top 100.  We loved the language which really spoke of the 1950's era, how women couldn't be trusted with money until they're at least 45 - you couldn't get away with that nowadays. 

We felt the book had two definite halves, the first being the war story which was very evocative and beautifully written and the last half being of them meeting up again and building up the town.  Most of us preferred the first half and felt the book could have ended when they met again, but I liked the story of the small town booming, although it was rather twee and she had incredibly good luck.  In short, it was very much of it's time and showed that women could be clever and resourceful, even in the 1950's.

Result: 8/10 (I made that up as I forgot to get people to vote)

We chose our next book from the following:
  • The Small Hand by Susan Hill
  • Killing Floor by Lee Child
  • The Secret Life of Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay
We voted for 'The Small Hand' by Susan Hill which we will be reading for the November meeting.

Our next meeting will be at Jen's house on Wednesday 12th of October.