No Turtle Soup For Us.

Thanks to Margo Hardy for hosting a really fun and equally hot evening to discuss Babette's Feast by Isak Dineson, the pen name used by Baroness Karen Blixen-Finecke, (Karen Blixen) in the English language publications of her work. In Germanic languages she used Tania Blixen.

Interestingly, Karen Blixen wrote in both English and Danish, publishing her first book in English before the Danish version came out. This caused such a backlash in Denmark that she never did that again, but often published in both languages at the same time. She did not have the work translated, but rather wrote each work in both languages, and the details varied from version to version.

Although the Book of the Month Club selected five of books over time, she is best known for Out of Africa, a memoir of her life in Kenya from 1914 to 1931 and "Babette's Feast", a short story published in 1958 in Anecdotes of Destiny. 

There is a reason for that - the character of Babette is compelling. When she arrives, bereft of her family and her country, her impact is one of efficiency and compliance with the pious and austere aging sisters, the remaining heads of their father's religious sect. 

The lovely sisters had early chances at a fuller life and denied them out of devotion to their father and his faith. Now, with their lives closer to the end than the beginning, and the few remaining devotees in the tiny hamlet unhappy and bickering, their sacrifice seems futile. Babette changes all that with a dramatic gesture -spending all her winnings from a lottery to create a feast for the sisters and their sect.

Babette, it turns out is an artist, with this last chance to create. Her passion impacts them all, soothes the petty squabbles among the followers and raises the question of whether devotion in religion is less true to faith than the devotion of the true artist, no matter the medium.  

We all liked it, although it was a bit dark, or maybe we were remembering the movie version. If you want more Isak Dineson, I loved most of her short story collections, it is just hard to go wrong. 

So, on to September as so many of us are traveling in August that we decided to take a break. Our September book is Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. This novel is by a brilliant young author who has won two National Book Awards out of three novels. Not bad! We will meet at Karin's on September 17 at 6:30. 

October will be at Julie Joyce's on the 15th. Our book will be The River, by Peter Heller. I just finished it and hope to read it again for our meeting to see if I still feel the same as the first time through. 

November will be the 19th at Fiona's. That is a big week as that weekend is the VisArts Craft and Design show, yeah! The book will be A Giant Leap, by Charles Fishman, a friend of Julie W.'s.

Just to round out the year, we set the date for the annual Christmas Book Swap for December 16 - this is a Monday! Julie W. has agreed to host!

Happiness: A Novel had a lot to discuss

Many thanks to Lynn for hosting our discussion last month, what a beautiful and warm place for a lively discussion. What a nice night! 

This book, by Aminatta Forna was a great suggestion from Barbara that gave us so much to talk about. On its surface, a story about fox in London would not seem so engaging. In fact, they were a stand-in for the main characters  and Jean, all interlopers in ways that were unique to them. 

There was a lot going on in this novel - Jean's move to London and her struggle to overcome her failed marriage and strained relationship with her adult son unfolded fairly quickly. Atilla's story took longer to develop; the loss of his wife, the longer term distance from his home country while serving societies in catastrophe around the world, his shorter term distance from a niece. 

The niece serves as focal point for the story while never really entering it. Her son has disappeared and Atilla and Jean form a team to find him, using Jean's expertise tracking urban fox and her network of doormen and trash removers developed over the course of her project. 

That search, the unfair treatment of the niece and Atilla's last minute involvement in the trial of an immigrant charged with arson are the fabric of the theme that change and migration, like those of the fox into London, are inevitable and that fear and hate do nothing to stem the tide and do much harm in the process. It was a lovely novel, a bit clunky in places but definitely worthwhile. 

On to July! We will meet at Margo's house on July 16 at 6:30.  Lucky for us, we are reading a short story, Isak Dineson's "Babette's Feast". We talked about a fancy feast in support, any ideas? 

See you all there!