Association du Puits Au Chat
Reading Club
Reading Club
Burial Rites,
Hannah Kent
Summary
In northern Ireland, in 1829,
Agnes Magnúsdottir
is sentenced to
death for the murder of
her lover, Natan Ketilsson.
While waiting for the sentence
to be carried out,
Agnes Magnúsdottir is placed
underhouse arrest in Kornsá,
on the farm of the township’s
security guard, Jon Jonsson,
with his wife and their two
daughters.
Horrified at the idea of housing
a criminal, the family avoids all
contact
with Agnes, who inspires
them with both fear and
disgust.
Only Totti, the young reverend
whom the murderess has
chosen as her spiritual guide to
prepare her for her impending
death, tries to understand her.
As the months go by,
forced to share the daily life,
to work side by side this frozen
and hostile land,
the farmer and his family are
gradually tamed by the
condemned woman.
Encouraged by the pastor,
Agnes tells the story of her life,
of her love for Natan, and of the
weeks that led
to the tragedy, revealing a truth
that is not necessarily the one
everyone thought they knew.
Inspired by the true story of
Agnes Magnúsdottir, the last
woman sentenced to death in
Iceland. At the Grace of Men is a
novel about the truth we think
we know and the truth we want
to believe in.
Our opinion :
A novel unanimously
appreciated by the club for
its great narrative qualities
as well as its cold and gray
atmosphere in the image
of the Icelandic climate.
Different points of view
allow us to better
understand the tragic story
of Agnes’ character,
to empathize very quickly
and finally to perceive
the positive evolution of the
host family, full of
prejudices at her arrival.
Our readers also liked the
fact that this story is
anchored in an
everyday reality.
The themes of the
condition of
women in the 19th century,
male domination and the
strong influence of the
Lutheran church
in the life of the islanders
are extremely well treated.
At the edge of the orchard,
Tracy Chevalier
Summary
In 1838, the Goodenough family
settled in the swampy lands of
the Black Swamp in Ohio. Every
winter, the fever comes to adorn
with a new cross the piece of
orchard which painstakingly
supports these apple growers.
Fifteen years and a tragedy later,
their son Robert leaves to try his
luck in the West and his sister
Martha has only one dream: to
cross America to entrust him
with a heavy secret. From the
slums of New York to the
teeming port of San Francisco,
À l’orée du verger plunges us
into the history of the
pioneers and the little-known
history of trees, from the
cultivation of apple trees to the
trade in California’s
thousand- year-old trees.
Our opinion :
Overall, we enjoyed this
book.
A few reservations for some
readers who had difficulty
getting into the first part of
the book, which begins
with the harshness of
pioneer life, a life
endured by the mother,
hoped for by the father
who struggles to grow
apple trees in a muddy
field.
But also the taste of apples,
the story of a transmission,
first by apple seeds, by the
great trees of
Western America,
an initiation by a botanist, a
correspondence
included in the narrative,
which evolves from
letter to letter and
will allow the sister to find
Robert.
An endearing book, which
makes us look at the trees
of the Jardin des Plantes
in a different way,
which teaches us about the
trade and transportation of
trees in the 19th century.
La Cucina,
Lily Prior
Summary
This novel follows the journey of
Rosa Fiore, born in the 1950s in
a small Sicilian village into a
rather strange family.
She is the seventh child after six
boys, and when she is eight,
her mother, a passionate and
sensual woman,gives birth to
Siamese twins, Guerra and Pace.
From an early age, Rosa
developed a passionfor cooking,
an activity that became a
refuge from the two tragedies
of her youth:
the sudden disappearance of her
father and the murder of her
first love, both supposed victims
of the Mafia.
We then meet Rosa again, many
years later, in Palermo,
where she has become a
librarian, leading a somewhat
dull life, but always
enlightened by the kitchen.
She then meets a mysterious
stranger, the Inglese.
A real love at first sight. For
Rosa it is the rediscovery of love,
of her body, of her sensuality…
where the pleasures of the flesh
intermingle.
Until the day when the man so
loved disappears in his turn
without leaving any trace…
Our opinion :
This novel has been rather well
appreciated by the readers,
probably because of its light,
picturesque and excessive
Sicilian style, tasty
and especially sensual.
The theme of the kitchen and
the explosion of the senses
has seduced a lot as well as
Rosa’s character, who is
very endearing.
Some readers did not like this
overflow.
A general writing judged
globally accessible and
sparkling.
My absolute darling,
Gabriel Tallent
Summary
Fourteen-year-old Turtle Alveston
roams the woods of the northern
California coast with only a rifle
and a pistol for companions.
She finds refuge on the beaches
and rocky islets that she
travels for miles.
But if the outside world opens
up to her in all its vastness, her
family world is narrow and
threatening:
Turtle has grown up alone,
under the thumb of a
charismatic and abusive father.
Her social life is confined to
college, and she shuns anyone
who tries to break through her
shell. Until she meets Jacob, a
joking high school student who
is both intrigued and fascinated
by her. Driven by her newfound
friendship, Turtle decides to
escape her father and embarks
on a one-way adventure that
will determine her freedom and
survival.
Our opinion :
A book that left us with an
uneasy feeling.
It describes the relationship
between an incestuous and
manipulative father and his
daughter in white America.
Some of the incestuous
passages
are difficult to bear.
Only the strength of the
heroine keeps us going.
The atmosphere, the forest,
the birds, are wonderfully
described with a lot of poetry.
The nature is very well known
and impressive.
The writer describes the
psychological functioning of
the manipulator and
the manipulated.
The discomfort comes from
our position as voyeur in a
gloomy and heavy context.
We are caught in a duel
between fascination and
repulsion.
It is a book to be
recommended
but not to be put in all hands.
The reading is hard and even
shocking:
a warning is necessary.
Underground Railroad,
Colson Whitehead
Summary
Sixteen-year-old Cora is a slave
on a cotton plantation in
pre-Civil War Georgia.
Abandoned by her mother as a
child, she struggles to survive
the violence of her condition.
When Caesar, a slave recently
arrived from Virginia, offers her
to run away, she accepts and
tries, at the risk of her life, to
reach the free northern states
with him.
From South Carolina to Indiana
via Tennessee, Cora will live an
incredible odyssey. Hunted like
a beast by a ruthless slave
hunter who forces her to flee the
« miserable beating heart » of the
cities, she will do anything to
win her freedom.
Our opinion :
This book is about slavery in
the southern states of the
United States.
Some people think that the
subject has been very well and
strongly evoked by the cinema
(« Twelve years a slave » or
« Django Unchained »).
This new book is too long and
does not bring anything new.
Others find it of real historical
interest, showing the
difference in the treatment of
« slavery » according to the
different states through
which the heroine passed,
and the weight of religion.
Many of the scenes are
very harsh, with white and
black secondary characters
providing different points
of view.
In each
place reached by the
underground train, there are
encounters and deaths.
The book is well written but a
bit long on a problem that is
still relevant and resonates.
Station Eleven,
Emily St John Mandel
Summary
A devastating pandemic has
decimated the civilisation.
A troupe of actors and
musicians travels between small
communities of survivors to
perform Shakespeare for them.
This classical repertoire has
come to represent hope and
humanity in the midst of the
depopulated expanses of North
America.
Centred on the pandemic but
spanning several decades before
and after, Station Eleven
intertwines the destinies of
several characters whose lives
were linked to that of a well-
known actor who died on stage
the day before the cataclysm
while playing King Lear.
A mysterious illustrated book,
Station Eleven, strangely
premonitory, appears as a
common link between them…
Our opinion :
It is a novel of anticipation. It is
about relearning ancestral
gestures, about groups of
people who reorganise
themselves, about life without
modernity.
Opinions are divided among
the readers, although only one
person gave up reading this
novel. Interesting, catchy (the
teaming up of the theatrical
performance, the orchestra,
Shakespeare…) with the
demonstration that there is
only culture to share and
freedom of thought thanks
to this culture.
But also frustration, the stories
are overhauled, beautiful ideas
not sufficiently exploited, the
desire that things be more
developed, described.
The reading is fluid, easy and
the novel well put together.
The Bean Trees,
Barbara Kingsolver
Summary
Taylor Greer doesn’t intend to
live out her days in Kentucky,
where girls start making babies
before they learn their
multiplication tables.
The day she leaves Pittman
County in her old Volkswagen
Beetle, she is determined to
drive west until her car gives up
the ghost.
But that’s without the
Oklahoma desert where, in the
car park of a seedy bar, she
inherits a mysterious bundle: a
little Indian girl.
Our opinion :
A beautiful story that takes
us to the great sweltering
expanses of Western
America: a « Baghdad
Café » atmosphere for some.
An enjoyable novel in which
serious issues such as abuse,
war, torture, kidnapping and
migrants are addressed.
It is a book recommended
for a good moment of rather
optimistic reading.
The book of Ebenezer Le Page,
G.B. Edwards
Summary
Ebenezer Le Page is a strange
misanthropic man, a misogynist
and a bad sleeper, this peasant
fisherman from the island of
Guernsey is, at heart, a great
sentimentalist. Seeing his end
approaching, he records in a
school notebook the history of
his life and that of his island,
from 1880 to 1960.
A relentless observer,
Ebenezer immerses us
in an unusual and truculent
microcosm.
Our opinion :
Sarnia is the old name for
Guernsey, and this book
describes the history of the
island between 1880 and
1960.
An amazing and interesting
book describing the island
atmosphere of those times
through the 1st and 2nd
World Wars, the evolution
of material and mentalities.
The author describes a
world that has disappeared,
the rural world before the
1960s.
All the people who read
it were enthusiastic and
had a lot of fun reading it.
There are many characters,
it is advisable to read it
in continuity so as not
to lose the thread.
The Sex lives of Siamese Twins,
Irvine Welsh
Summary
Lucy, a narcissistic fitness
trainer, despises the fat, the
weak, the losers.
Now she finds herself
challenged to transform Lena,
the kind of girl she never
thought she’d meet. In a
decadent Florida obsessed with
the body, the two women
embark on an ambivalent and
extreme friendship that will
transform them.
Our opinion :
A book in which no emotion,
no feeling is conveyed.
The characters are
dehumanised.
The language is coarse.
A style perhaps deliberately
used by the author to show
society to excess?
An archetype of today’s
American society showing 2
important groups:
the obese and the people
obsessed with their
physical appearance.
A subtle game between
master and slave where
the master becomes
the slave.
The interest of this book lies
undoubtedly in the
psychology of the
characters.
2 people liked this book
a lot, 4 read it all the way
through and 3 stopped
in the middle.
Despite the very mixed
opinions, the comments
made 2 people want to read
it.
ADRESSE
POSTALE
APACh association
Passage Sophie
Scholl
44130 BLAIN
SIEGE
1 Chemin de la Prée
44130 BLAIN
(à côté du Cinéma,
derrière le
Centre Socio-
Culturel Tempo)
CONTACT
apach.blain@gmail.com