For our first meeting of 2015, we met at Colette's, with Betty hosting. Under discussion was The Light Between Oceans
(Betty's choice). She served yummy pinwheel sandwiches and cheese, a
pineapple upside down cake, and Australian wines, in honour of the
book. Beth, Colette, Shirley, Carla, Janet, Jolene, and Betty
attended, with Linda and Michèle joining us from Florida via Skype.
The book wrestles with
complex moral dilemmas and various forms of mental illness and grief.
The two central characters, Isabel and Tom, decide to secretly claim as
their own a baby washed up in a boat on their isolated lighthouse
island.
Reviews were mixed, but all of us had strong
reactions--we ached for many of the people and felt anxious and upset at
the decisions being made; the ending would have been so different, and
perhaps more appealing, had Isabel and Tom notified authorities and
returned the baby to her grieving birth mother early on. From a writing
point of view, we commented that the setting was beautifully painted,
but many found the dialogue stilted and coincidences forced. The life
lesson was that deception is harmful. There is nothing better than the
truth, however painful.
Other news--Linda's friend Norma
spoke to us via Skype, telling us about a neighbour of hers who worked
at Bletchley Park, famous for its code-breaking and prominent in one of
our 2014 books--A Man called Intrepid. We also awarded a prize to the 2014 winner of best book club read The Rosie Project,
Beth's choice. We had such good club selections last year that the
race was very tight. May that be the case as we move forward in 2015!
