Old Filth At the Brick House

Katie, thank you for a delightful evening at the Brick House at Shelburne Farms.  Make no mistake, we enjoyed your tour over the the more traditional route!  And I think Edward and Betty would have been quite comfortable at the Brick House.  Betty in her pearls and Edward in his lawyer's attire.  The general consensus was that we liked Old Filth by Jane Gardam.  Katie started book group off with a question which got right to the heart of the matter.  "If you don't experience love as a child, can you ever really love?"  Edward, the main character, certainly struggled with love and relationship throughout, however, he fell in and out of luck in relationships which either caused pain or created unexpected opportunities for him.

Mindy particularly liked the Raj element of Edward and Betty's Empire Orphan life.  The couple never really fit anywhere, traveling about from London to Hong Kong to Dorset.  Edward finally feels at home when he breathes in the warm air of Singapore in the very last scene.  Poor Betty dies by her tulip bed...which brings me to the companion novel by Jane Gardam's The Man in the Wooden Hat which tells the story from Betty's point of view.  Mindy read the novel and wouldn't give a bit of it away.  Chrysanne immediately borrowed it and Ed was going out to get a copy.  Ed, by the way, was relieved he wouldn't have to hide the cover title.  He was tired of explaining that Old Filth stood for Failed in London, try Hong Kong.

Our next novel is Ann Patchett's State of Wonder.  We will meet at Ed's on October 19th.  Here is a link to the NY Times review of our book:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/books/review/book-review-state-of-wonder-by-ann-patchett.html