Buy "A Fraction of The Whole by Steve Toltz" from fishpond.com.au

The last book we “read” was “A Fraction of the Whole” by Steve Toltz.

This book was (Aussie) Steve’s first novel and was short-listed for The 2008 Man Booker prize.

The Sunday Telegraph said:

“Exhilarating. Don’t be daunted by the length of the book – it never flags and at no stage feels overwritten … Toltz is a magnificently talented writer who has created a full cast of utterly compelling characters, every one of them. A gloriously absorbing, preposterous and funny excursion to the brink of madness and the meaning of life.”

So that was nice.

For even more information you might like to visit the official fraction of the whole website.

Sadly, only NC and me had read it so it didn’t really get much of a look-in, especially in competition with the ODI in the background…

For those who may wish to revisit this great work or who are finding that the book might bare reconsideration, there is an audio review of “A Fraction of The Whole” from the Book Show on ABC Radio National (6 mins):

bsw_20081111_1036.mp3

Or you can download it here (3mb):  

The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemmingway

Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” was probably one of the most successful meetings in my enormous 3 book club meeting history.

Even though the actual discussion probably took up about 45 minutes of the 3 or so hours we were there, it was a good 45 mins with some searching questions and some provocative answers.

It felt like how it ought to be – and I guess it was very much the kind of book one might expect to be discussed at a men’s book club.

Never-the-less, we talked about it and we talked good.

It has been suggested that readership was high because the book was only 80-something pages long – and I for one will admit that I probably dashed through the last 40 pages the night before we met, but hey I read the book so you can’t complain.

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

The first book your loving moderator read with the Book Club was “My Name is Red” by Orhan Pamuk.

This was the general idea:

“In Istanbul, in the late 1590s, the Sultan secretly commissions a great book: a celebration of his life and his empire, to be illuminated by the best artists of the day – in the European manner. But when one of the miniaturists goes missing and is feared murdered, their master seeks outside help.”

But I have to say the book really didn’t work for me. I pushed my way through it because it was my first book with the club and because, like films, I hate to bail out before the end just in case something amazing happens that makes all the effort worthwhile. In this case there was no such amazement.

Sure some of the ideas were intriguing and the setting in a time when traditional eatern art forms were starting to feel the growing influence of European “realism” provided what might have been interesting tensions, but it still didn’t work for me.

I didn’t feel sufficient engagement with any of the many characters through whom we see the events of the book unfold.

I am willing to venture that it may have read more convincingly in its original Turkish. Perhaps. But in what is essentially a thriller, I never found that I cared enough to ever really give a monkey’s who-dunnit.

For those who may wish to follow this book further, there is an interview with Orhan Pamuk on the RandomHouse website.