A depleted group of 5 of us christened Catherine's very nice new flat last night with champagne and a good discussion about The Hand That First Held Mine. We agreed that it was a really enjoyable read but disagreed about whether or not it was superior to The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. The majority view was that whilst Maggie O'Farrell's technique of interweaving two separate but ultimately connected stories is clever and intriguing, in this case, Lexie's story is much more engaging than Ted's and therefore the book is a little imbalanced. There was a view by some that the post-partum boredom and misery in Ted's story was rather dull although it is an valuable contrast to Lexie's own competent and vibrant experiences during and after the birth of Theo. I confessed to having fallen in love with Innes - a hopeless soul but utterly romantic, bohemian and mesmeric. All thought that O'Farrell's descriptions of rooms and interiors were wonderful (the Soho scenes being particularly enjoyable). It was definitely a good book group read and there was much to discuss.
In the absence of an agreed genre for our next meeting, we defaulted to Evelina by Fanny Burney, the alternative title to which is The History of A Young Lady's Entrance into the World. I'm looking forward to it already! We are meeting at Caroline's but at the time of writing this, we are struggling to find a date. We were hoping to do 7th June but that may not now happen. Catherine, in a flash of brilliance, suggested that our next book should have a South American theme - which led us to consider how few South American authors we knew; Marquez (Columbia) and Allende (Chile) sprung to mind but then we had to resort to Wikipedia. So Caroline will be mixing the margaritas sometime in early June.
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