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This was Lee’s choice and was another doorstop novel to follow the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. It was an interesting selection, which I would never had read otherwise. I think this is probably my favourite aspect of the bookclub and why I don’t like choosing the book too often. The book is a famous study of 1980’s America taking into account greed, wealth, racial tension and ambition.

Our response to the book was mixed. Some of us really enjoyed the journalistic style of the writing , while others found it irritating. We all agreed that the book was tightly plotted, but criticisms included that the book was overlong, with a messy ending, and that the characters were too ‘larger than life’. It’s a very satirical book, pointing the finger at yuppies, corrupt community leaders and the media.

Loss and gain are the main themes of the book. People try to gain more and more material wealth and power, while losing their sense of identity and individual morality. Sherman loses his wealth and status at the end, but raises his fist: we wondered if the loss and humiliation gave him back his sense of himself. Peter Fallow (Paddy’s favourite character) has the most to gain from Sherman’s downfall, his newspaper articles transform him from a down at heel English journalist peddling a touch of class in return for free meals from wealthy New Yorkers, to a celebrated writer. Someone described Fallow as an ‘inversion’ of Sherman, who feeds off him to facilitate his own fame.

Racial tension is also a big theme. The hit and run incident is a pivotal moment in the book, and is used to explore how members of the wealthy white establishment can see themselves as above accountability. The novel also satirises how community leaders can take advantage of incidents like this to further their own advancement.

We felt that this book must have been a significant influence on American Psycho. Many of the same themes are examined and both books target the rich elite for satire in a blackly comic way. In both books the characters lose their real identities, choosing to define themselves by status symbols and labels. The deaths caused by the protagonists are totally different but what is similar is their attitude to accountability. Sherman could have probably done with some lessons from Patrick Bateman in covering your tracks. Interestingly enough, on checking the wikipedia entry for this novel, I noticed in the trivia section that both McCoy and Bateman are written as working for the company Pierce and Pierce so I guess our theory wasn’t that off the mark!

This weighty tome was Paddy’s choice, and if I remember rightly was really enjoyed by everyone. We thought that Jay Rubin’s translation was beautifully written. It’s an enthralling, baffling read of which I have amassed pages of incomprehensible notes. At one point I have written down ‘phone call’ . I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

It’s an Alice in Wonderland style story where an initially unremarkable man (Toru Okada) is guided through a journey in an unfamiliar world by strange, dreamlike characters. Toru is portrayed as extremely passive throughout the book, in contrast to the outlandish and forceful people that he meets. He talks about feeling ‘empty’ and appears to be on a spiritual journey to find out what is missing, which is sparked off by the disappearance of both his wife and his cat.

Toru’s relationship with the female characters are central to the book. The disappearance of his wife Kumiko, which spurs him out of his passivity becomes more complicated, involving her corrupt politician brother, her adultery and her changing role as his search changes focus. Toru’s relationship with his teenage neighbour May is also important to the book, although it was felt at times that her letters became a bit tedious. She also is the one who calls Toru the ‘Wind-up Bird Man’. Creta, Malta and Nutmeg are also women who help Toru through his journey; they are extremely strange and disturbing characters. We thought that it may be significant that Creta describes herself as being in constant pain, as most of the other characters describe themselves as feeling ‘numb’. Toru’s sexual connection to these characters is presented in a negative and sometimes nightmarish way – his wife’s reasons for adultery, Creta’s prostitution and rape, the seduction resulting in the blue mark.

The inclusion of flashbacks to the presence of Japanese soldiers in China during World War two was confusing but an interesting contrast to the dreamlike style of the rest of the book. It also contains one of the most horrific scenes I have ever read. I think we disagreed at this point about whether these chapters felt integrated into the book, and I don’t think we agreed on their significance.

One of the symbols that we never got to the bottom of in the book was the blue mark that appears on (I think) Toru’s face, and is shared by shadowy, wealthy patients who undergo a procedure to relieve them of their feelings of emptiness. Is it just a mark of transformation? Any comments would be welcome.

We thought that drinks were quite symbolic throughout the book. We interpreted beer as a symbol of normality, as the drinking of it seems to occur in the more conventional scenes. In dream sequences and in more surreal events, Cutty Sark whisky makes a number of appearances, for example when Mr Honda gives Toru an empty Cutty Sark box, and the bottle in room 208 (room 101?). We really felt that we didn’t get to the bottom of this.

And what did we make of the wind up bird itself… A harbinger of doom, a call over to the dream world?

I think that we all felt that our understanding of the book was quite superficial. It was so dense with surreal imagery that I think that most of our time at the meeting was spent unraveling what had actualy occured, what we felt was dream imagery etc. We could have done with an extra meeting to try and unpick the crazy metaphysical happenings underneath the surface. People’s comments, as always would be very welcome here! I wish I could remember what half my notes mean and would be interested to discuss the book further.

This book really divided us; I think that I enjoyed it the most, while Paddy probably disliked it more than anyone (feel free to correct me!). It deals with the relationship between two ’small islands’ after the second world war: Jamaica’s contribution to Britain’s war effort, and the appalling treatment that Jamaican immigrants to Britain received, in contrary to their belief at the time that Britain was their ‘motherland’.

Most people in the group felt that the book was too cliched and ‘issue heavy’, which wasn’t alleviated by the unsympathetic characters. However, I found the characters quite well drawn, although I agreed that their personal development was quite rushed at the end.

We all felt that the fact that the plot relied so much on coincidences damaged our ability to suspend belief and get lost in the book. We also thought that some of the motivation given for the characters’ behaviour was unconvincing, such as Queenie’s encounter with a black man as a child resulting in her lack of prejudice.

An interesting theme that we noticed in the book was food. Food represents wealth and comfort to the characters and favourite dishes are often remembered at difficult times. It is used as a symbol of belonging to a country: Hortense’s failed attempts to cook chips make her feel alienated in Britain.

Patterns of speech are also used to emphasise difference; although Hortense and Gilbert speak English, their accents and also their slightly formal and old fashioned vocabulary are not understood when they arrive in London, and they find the cockney accent difficult to understand.

Dreams are also very important to this novel. As the characters narrate, their version of events are not always reliable, and at times they are reluctant to admit that they have behaved stupidly, or have felt afraid or intimidated. Their dreams show us what they can’t tell us, and reveal their deepest fears.

Again, I’m sure that we had much more to say which I have forgotten. It would be great if people could add some comments…

This was a great book to discuss as it really divided us. Although all of us agreed that it is an extremely bleak book, we were split on whether we actually enjoyed it, or felt that it achieved what it meant to. The protagonist is very dislikeable, which made it a problem for some of us to engage with the book: a white South African academic who exploits others to fulfill his own emotional needs. Most of us felt that the character of Lucy, his daughter, was not fleshed out properly although Paddy disagreed with this (one of his few positive opinions about this book!).

Sex and intimate relationships are major themes in this book, inextricably linked with shifts in personal and political power. Lurie is divorced and initially has his sexual and emotional needs met through a regular arrangement with a prostitute. Lurie’s seduction of his student and subsequent disgrace and sacking, show how he first abuses, and then loses his own status in society. He is unable to protect his daughter’s rural farm from attackers which results in her rape and pregnancy. He cannot accept the reality of his changing situation: that he is no longer part of a dominant elite, but must accept the rapidly changing shifts of power in South Africa’s volatile society.

We also felt that the fact that Coetzee makes Lurie a professor of Romantic poetry linked in with these themes. He is traumatised by his daughter’s rape but earlier deceives himself that forcing his student on one occasion to have sex with him is not rape, and that his own sensory fulfillment justifies this. He scorns his students and regularly uses quotes from Romantic poetry to legitimise his behaviour.

Animals, particularly dogs, are also a recurring theme in the book. After he is disgraced he refers to himself as a ‘dog’. However, his redemption begins to come about as he works at an Animal Welfare Clinic (although unsurprisingly begins an affair with the manager) and tries to build a relationship with an injured dog. I felt from working in South Africa, that dogs are a particularly powerful symbol of protection and defence, which Coetzee uses in the book. When Lucy’s farm is attacked, the intruders shoot all of her dogs, which we felt was a way of practically and symbolically removing her protection and power. We thought Lurie’s identification with injured dogs might represent how he feels that power has been removed from him. he is not redeemed by the end of the book, but has lost his illusions and is starting to accept that he is powerless to control what events affect him.

I think we all felt that the book was well written, with the present tense giving an immediacy of experience. I found the book very effective, however, Paddy in particular felt that in addition to the characters being dislikeable, they were too unrealistic. Some people also felt that there was a lack of resolution, and that the shifts in plot led to the book being unengaging. Overall, a very split verdict.

Clare’s favourite book and her recommendation as our first read. We all loved it (which turned out to be a rare occurrence). Some of us felt that it anticipated the writing of the beat movement, with its positive focus on people who were living a different kind of existence; others felt that it reminded them of magical realism. We wondered whether it overly idealised some of the characters’ lives ( which it does) but decided that there was definitely an undercurrent of violence and threat, which questions and undermines this. We thought that the overriding message of the book (which links back to the beat movement comment) is that an ‘experience’ is always worthwhile, whether it was good or unpleasant – my favourite example of this being the ‘beer milkshake’ incident. Doc was identified as a favourite character, despite being a bit of a womaniser, who maybe represented the author just a little.

The tale of the gopher who couldn’t find a mate and has to move nearer a place containing traps, which appears at the end of the book confused us all a little. Some of us thought it might refer to the fact that despite the romanticised view, Cannery Row is a dangerous place where people cannot live freely, others thought it might be a warning about settling down to a mundane existence. Anyway we couldn’t agree – please comment if you can shed any light!

I’ve made quite a few more notes but it was so long ago that I can’t remember what they mean. Bookclubbers – please add anything vital that I may have overlooked. Overall a great start to the bookclub and a definite recommendation.