So, back to Cynthia Ozick's novel, Foreign Bodies, which we discussed at a December meeting at Sally J's (complete with festive stollen and a potentially large dog with a wagging tail). I was not alone in wishing that I was more familiar with Henry James' The Ambassadors which had so inspired Ozick in writing this book. The book is about belonging (there is a strong Jewish theme) and isolation, personal journeys of assimilation and integration into society on either side of the Atlantic. Both New York and Los Angeles seem unscathed by war whereas the Paris which is depicted in this novel is a sad, drab place which has become a transit lounge for the flotsam and jetsam of European refugees in the years after the war. It is only the wealthy young American tourists who play at being existentialists in left bank cafes. Real life is very much grittier.
The characters, not all of whom we thought were entirely credible and certainly not likeable, exist as islands, continually failing to empathise and communicate with each other. The novel's success relies on a lack of communication and the story would not have been possible in this form had it been in a contemporary setting - email, mobile phones and Skype would have undermined the basic premise of how difficult it is to trace people and maintain contact with them. There was a general appreciation of Ozick's spare and restrained style of writing and it was definitely a good book group read which provoked a number of interesting discussions.
Our January meeting is with the men and we will meet at Caroline's on 24th January. The men were given the task of choosing the book for this occasion and were unable to reach a consensus. So the choice is one or more of Ian McEwan's cold war novel Sweet Tooth, This Blinding Absence of Light by the Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jalloun and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn. Other than the fact that they are all short books, a theme will emerge.
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