A warm welcome to the Rotary Book Club where we will travel the length and

breadth of the Earth, move through space and time, solve mysteries, and laugh and ​cry together.

SCORE - 7.3

Greetings Rotary Readers - I hope you’ve all had a good summer and have been ​able to put your feet up and read a few books!

Thank you for your messages and views on our third book, ‘The Secret History’ by ​Donna Tartt. It’s a long book at 629 pages but also deep and involved. Some of ​you couldn’t get on with it, others were able to persevere and make it through to ​the end.

The story is based in a college in Vermont and starts with the narrator telling how ​a group of students (of which he is one) have killed Bunny, a fellow student. The ​first part of the book covers the events in the run-up to Bunny’s death, with the ​second the aftermath and the reader is kept guessing all the way through as to ​whether they will be found out (spoiler alert – they weren’t).

I think it’s fair to say that there’s not a lot of humour and joy in this book, but ​even those of you who didn’t find it an enjoyable read appreciated how ​beautifully written (I would go as far as to say “crafted”) the prose is.

It’s quite incredible to think that the author was only 19 when she started this ​book with large parts unchanged from when it was first written. As a debut novel ​it really is pretty astounding, and it is clearly shaped by Tartt’s extensive ​knowledge and reading of classical literature.

Her classics background and her experiences at college provide a very solid ​context for the story and she draws on these without succumbing to the ​temptation of many authors to regurgitate everything they’ve read as part of ​their research. Personally, I didn’t understand some of the references, but that ​didn’t really matter to me.

The descriptions and sense of place at the college, (the equivalent of our ​university), was right on and the reader can easily visualise the campus and its ​buildings as well as the local area.

One of our readers described the book as “cults in university, testosterone and ​death…so much drug intake not sure they could have done anything!!!”

It’s definitely the case that the story takes the university experience and ​drastically develops it in many ways to something that would be unrecognisable ​to many of us. It explores very big questions on morality, ethics, family, ​drugtaking, and relationships.

Interestingly some of our readers struggled to identify the time period of the ​story, particularly due to the sometimes rather eccentric clothing choices of the ​characters – there weren’t many references to external events, but towards the ​end there were a few references to videotapes and other aspects of the ​1980s/1990s.

There were several central characters, all well-developed by the author. ​Unfortunately, none of them were very likeable and I do wonder whether our ​readers would have enjoyed the story more if they had been able to connect in at ​least a small way with one of them.

Even our narrator Richard isn’t that sympathetic a character, and the rest of the ​circle don’t seem to feel much, if any remorse for the two murders they have ​committed. Only Charles starts to crack but that is more because he was ​questioned several times by the FBI. It was also difficult to feel sorry for Bunny, ​who was killed so that he didn’t turn in the group for the first murder, but his ​actions seemed to be fuelled more by his feeling of exclusion from the group ​rather than any concern about the farmer’s death.

Julian, the enigmatic professor was an interesting character and it’s up to the ​reader to decide whether he was responsible in some way for the first murder; ​some of us felt that he was as he’d encouraged his students to pursue the excess ​and abandon of their drug fuelled Dionysian spree. Latterly though he didn’t turn ​out to be quite the sinister mastermind as he first appeared – he just ran away.

Given that the book wasn’t particularly sentimental or reflective of much morality ​at all, it was rather a nice and surprising touch to be given the details of how ​each of the characters’ lives turned out in the end.

Overall, you found this story interesting but rather dark. If I were to sum up what ​this book means to me, I’d say it’s about right and wrong and that appearances ​cannot be relied on. It also explores our need to belong and how that can affect ​our moral compass.

Your scores ranged from 6 to 9, with an average of 7.3.

Our fourth book is much lighter! Please send me your scores and views on The ​Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers by November 15 for the January ​edition. This book rates very highly in reviews and has been likened to Mackenzie ​Crook’s wonderful TV series “The Detectorists.”

It explores the themes of friendship and the protection of the countryside and ​sounds fascinating as well as uplifting. I’m really looking forward to reading it and ​learning all about crop circles!

REVIEWS BY 15TH NOV

I can reveal that you voted for ‘All The Light We Cannot See’ by Anthony Doerr as ​our fifth book. This has recently been made into a major Netflix series, and I’m ​looking forward to hearing your views on the book and the comparison between ​the two. Please send me your scores and thoughts by February 15th (2025!).

REVIEWS BY 15TH FEB

For our sixth book please send me your vote for your choice of the following:

• My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell
  
• Slow Horses – Mick Herron
  
• The Gustav Sonata – Rose Tremain
  

Lastly, we have moved to a Facebook group (away from the previous Facebook ​page), so we can really get the discussion going!

You can find our Facebook group at: facebook.com/groups/rotarybookclub ​and Email me at: rotarygbibookclub@gmail.com

Keep reading!