AWC Going Dutch June 2020

Ongoing Activities (cont.)
Continued from page 15
actually psychotherapy, leading to a desire to
write about the struggles people have within
their interactions with others. The main
characters in If Only I Could Tell You are in
a dance around one another to avoid the real
issue between them: why Jess has refused to
speak to Lily for the past 30 years. Audrey
wants to bring her daughters together before
breast cancer takes her away. Both sisters
and their mother are chasing the ghosts
of Zoe, Jess’s twin, who died of leukemia
when Lily was 16 and Jess 10, and their father
who committed suicide shortly thereafter.
Our discussion led to heated sharing
about family secrets, sibling rivalries, weak
parenting, childhood trauma, grief, etc.
Some found the writing too much like the
script of a BBC mini-series and others were
quite into the effect trauma has upon those
in the throes of the event. There was agreement
that the ending was a bit too contrived.
We also discussed that reading and listening
to an audio version may very well lend to a
different connection with a novel, as some
found the story riveting, while others found
the novel disappointing.
Evening Virtual Book Club
June Selection: Eleanor
Oliphant is Completely
Fine by Gail Honeymoon
Eleanor Oliphant struggles
with appropriate
social skills and tends to
say exactly what’s on her
mind. Nothing is missing
in her carefully timetabled
life of avoiding social interactions.
Everything
changes when she meets Raymond, the
bumbling IT guy from her office. When they
together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman
who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become
the kinds of friends who rescue one
another from their lives of isolation.
Wednesday, June 10
7:30 p.m.
Evening Book Club Recap – March
In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth
Gilbert writes an enthralling story of love,
adventure and discovery. Spanning the 18th
and 19th centuries, the main focus is Alma
Whittaker, a daughter of an ambitious and
wealthy father and a stoic hard-edged mother.
Alma has inherited her father’s brilliant
mind and becomes a gifted botanist while
living through an era of human history when
all the old assumptions about science, religion,
commerce, and class are challenged
and her own research takes her deeper into
the mysteries of evolution. While Alma appears
destined to lead her life as a single
independent woman, she is driven by her
intellectual and botanical interests as well
her desire to find love during her long life.
The book is set in a variety of locations including
Amsterdam and skillfully includes
several unforgettable characters. Our group
were full of praise for Gilbert’s ability to
write such a different type of novel to an
AWC favorite, The City of Girls. Gilbert’s
research and attention to detail is certainly
impressive. It is a long read, but it managed
to retain our attention and led to a lively discussion.
An absorbing page-turner!
Evening Book Club Recap – April
Meeting virtually in April did not affect the
intensity of our discussion. The Secrets We
Kept by Lara Prescott is based on a true
story centering around two women: one is
Boris Pasternak’s lover in the USSR and
one helps the CIA smuggle Pasternak’s
novel Doctor Zhivago back into the USSR.
Since women are often neglected in history,
our group was anxious to read the fictionalized
story. The discussion quickly turned
to the social equality of women in modern
society. Have the lives of women changed
since the 1950s? Are women still oppressed
and underappreciated? No one disagreed
about women being underappreciated! Our
agreement fell apart when discussing >> 18
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