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Back to Reading Retreats - Part One!
Oct. 3rd, 2022 05:30 pmMy last reading retreat was over the last few days of February 2020, at which I was offered a last-minute, half-price place on the following retreat, which I believe was due to take place in the first few days of April 2020 - and obviously then didn't happen. This past weekend, I got to attend the first reading retreat since that time, which was held at the same location where the April 2020 one was due to take place!
I read four books in two-and-a-half days - and it was glorious! My theme for this retreat was books with girl, woman, sister or mother in the title, as that was a commonality for several that were already on my reading shelf.
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See:
For some reason, I expected this to be set in the early 1900s or even before that, so I was surprised when it started in 1988 and followed the story of Li-Yan, growing up in a remote village in China, through to 2016. At one point, about halfway through, it mentioned some tea buyers looking at futures prices on their laptops and it was really jarring because I was still expecting it to be further in the past.
That aside, I really enjoyed this book. Li-Yan's narrative voice is strong, her story is compelling and I really liked the continual conflict between knowledge and superstition, progress and heritage that ran through the book. It was a bit depressing in places, but in a way that made the subsequent upturns more satisfying. I also loved the snippets of Haley's story that were scattered throughout and how it all came together in the end. I also really liked all the really interesting detail about the tea industry, which I hadn't known before.
The book starts with a Chinese saying - 'no coincidence, no story' - which became important later on when several quite major coincidences did take place. That made me roll my eyes just a bit, since it was basically the author pointing out potential problems with her story and trying to excuse them to the reader. But it didn't bother me too much.
I would have liked a bit more aftermath, following what happened right at the end but, overall, this was a really good book.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Everisto:
This had been on my shelf for a while - and I nearly stopped reading after only half a page, because the lack of full stops and most other punctuation was really off-putting! But I was persuaded to persevere and I was glad I did. I found it hard going to begin with but, by the end, I wasn't really noticing the punctuation thing, and the interconnected stories of twelve very different people did draw me in and keep me reading.
The other thing about it, though, was that it wasn't really a story, as I would have expected. It was nearly all 'telling', more of a recounting of different lives than an immersive portrayal. There was very little dialogue and almost no direct action, which made it hard to really invest in the characters sometimes. The ending got a bit more dynamic and was impactful because of that. But (as with the first retreat book) I would have liked a bit more aftermath.
My biggest problem with it was that I couldn't see why it was written the way it was, so it just seemed gimmicky and a bit annoying - but perhaps I'm just not perceptive enough to understand the point. Regardless it's a masterfully interwoven set of very good stories, so worth a look if you can get past the presentation.
Weirdly, the events of the last few pages are almost exactly the same as those of Hummingbird Lane...
Sister Stardust by Jane Green:
This tells the story of a young woman, Claire, who gets swept up in a whirl of celebrities, alcohol, drugs, domestic abuse and wild partying in Morocco in the 1960s.
I related a lot to Claire - and felt what happened to her might well have happened to me, if I'd fallen into the orbit of similar people at that stage of my life.
I thought her early issues with food and self-esteem were very well portrayed, though those aspects seemed to disappear very easily as the story went on, and the very brief explanation of that didn't seem credible.
The settings and characters were richly described - but not a huge amount actually happened. And what did happen, happened to and for Claire, rather than her taking any kind of active part in the proceedings.
Quite a few of the characters were real people, though, and this was an extrapolation of what might have happened during some of the less well recorded bits of their lives - so I guess it made sense that the protagonist was much more of an observer than anything else.
It was a quick and entertaining read for the most part, but not all that memorable.
The Mothers by Brit Bennett:
This tells the story of an event in the lives of three teenagers, which has long-lasting consequences, years down the line. I wasn't too sure about the conceit of the Greek-style chorus of Church Mothers to begin with, but I started to enjoy it quite quickly and it was the main thing that pulled the story together and gave it some distinction.
Otherwise, I found the whole thing a bit dreary - none of the characters were particularly likeable and the progress of their lives felt rather mundane. It was all very well-written and well-realised - just not particularly dynamic, to me.
I read four books in two-and-a-half days - and it was glorious! My theme for this retreat was books with girl, woman, sister or mother in the title, as that was a commonality for several that were already on my reading shelf.
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See:
For some reason, I expected this to be set in the early 1900s or even before that, so I was surprised when it started in 1988 and followed the story of Li-Yan, growing up in a remote village in China, through to 2016. At one point, about halfway through, it mentioned some tea buyers looking at futures prices on their laptops and it was really jarring because I was still expecting it to be further in the past.
That aside, I really enjoyed this book. Li-Yan's narrative voice is strong, her story is compelling and I really liked the continual conflict between knowledge and superstition, progress and heritage that ran through the book. It was a bit depressing in places, but in a way that made the subsequent upturns more satisfying. I also loved the snippets of Haley's story that were scattered throughout and how it all came together in the end. I also really liked all the really interesting detail about the tea industry, which I hadn't known before.
The book starts with a Chinese saying - 'no coincidence, no story' - which became important later on when several quite major coincidences did take place. That made me roll my eyes just a bit, since it was basically the author pointing out potential problems with her story and trying to excuse them to the reader. But it didn't bother me too much.
I would have liked a bit more aftermath, following what happened right at the end but, overall, this was a really good book.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Everisto:
This had been on my shelf for a while - and I nearly stopped reading after only half a page, because the lack of full stops and most other punctuation was really off-putting! But I was persuaded to persevere and I was glad I did. I found it hard going to begin with but, by the end, I wasn't really noticing the punctuation thing, and the interconnected stories of twelve very different people did draw me in and keep me reading.
The other thing about it, though, was that it wasn't really a story, as I would have expected. It was nearly all 'telling', more of a recounting of different lives than an immersive portrayal. There was very little dialogue and almost no direct action, which made it hard to really invest in the characters sometimes. The ending got a bit more dynamic and was impactful because of that. But (as with the first retreat book) I would have liked a bit more aftermath.
My biggest problem with it was that I couldn't see why it was written the way it was, so it just seemed gimmicky and a bit annoying - but perhaps I'm just not perceptive enough to understand the point. Regardless it's a masterfully interwoven set of very good stories, so worth a look if you can get past the presentation.
Weirdly, the events of the last few pages are almost exactly the same as those of Hummingbird Lane...
Sister Stardust by Jane Green:
This tells the story of a young woman, Claire, who gets swept up in a whirl of celebrities, alcohol, drugs, domestic abuse and wild partying in Morocco in the 1960s.
I related a lot to Claire - and felt what happened to her might well have happened to me, if I'd fallen into the orbit of similar people at that stage of my life.
I thought her early issues with food and self-esteem were very well portrayed, though those aspects seemed to disappear very easily as the story went on, and the very brief explanation of that didn't seem credible.
The settings and characters were richly described - but not a huge amount actually happened. And what did happen, happened to and for Claire, rather than her taking any kind of active part in the proceedings.
Quite a few of the characters were real people, though, and this was an extrapolation of what might have happened during some of the less well recorded bits of their lives - so I guess it made sense that the protagonist was much more of an observer than anything else.
It was a quick and entertaining read for the most part, but not all that memorable.
The Mothers by Brit Bennett:
This tells the story of an event in the lives of three teenagers, which has long-lasting consequences, years down the line. I wasn't too sure about the conceit of the Greek-style chorus of Church Mothers to begin with, but I started to enjoy it quite quickly and it was the main thing that pulled the story together and gave it some distinction.
Otherwise, I found the whole thing a bit dreary - none of the characters were particularly likeable and the progress of their lives felt rather mundane. It was all very well-written and well-realised - just not particularly dynamic, to me.
