(Aug 2014 Meetup)

The books:

• Life Class  by Pat Barker
• The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriaty.

We loved….
…both books in their own way. They were quite different in a number of ways. Life Class is a heavier piece of work, and the only book that has ever made Chloe cry! and The Husband’s Secret is more of a lighter page turner which makes you ask yourself how you would react if in the same position of discovering the secret.  Most of us agreed that we would read other titles by the same authors, and not many of us had a clue what the secret was until we got to it.

We didn’t love….
…some of Moriaty’s ‘easy’ writing style in places, where she tended to fill in too much information, losing some subtlety even though the plot was gripping. Some of us weren’t that keen on the title either. As for Life Class, some found the scene where Elinor sneaks to the Front completely unbelievable. It was noted that all the characters change over the course of the war apart from Elinor who claims all the way through that she wants to stay true to her art and nothing else, but one of the artists of the bookclub group felt that you cannot be a true artist if you do not embrace change. Interestingly, those reading it on an ereader  who were unable to get information from the cover and the blurb, found it difficult to work out which era it was set in for quite a while.

We disagreed….
…quite strongly about whether the number and type of events that occur to the people The Husband’s Secret were realistic. Some believed that it was unrealistic to have so many dramatic instances in the lives of the group of characters and that the book would have benefitted from fewer dramas. Others firmly believed that a lot of bad things can happen to people in short spaces of time. Some felt that the dramas were just added to make it like a soap opera, whereas others felt that it portrayed the real lives of real people and how they deal with such events.

We digressed….
and talked about the recently released film, Lucy, which discusses the idea of primal instincts in relation to the mother’s in The Husband’s Secret doing whatever necessary to protect their families. We also discussed whether we would have read the letter in the attic and I believe it was a unanimous yes!