In February, we read Sea of Poppies by Amitar Ghosh. We could not meet on March 26th because the Governor of Vermont issued 'Stay at Home' guidelines for Vermonters. We decided to read the Dutch House by Ann Patchett for this month of April. However, communication was not well done by this blog author and not everyone got the message about the new book.We meet via Zoom, a first for the Greater Westford group. We had everyone except Terry-again, most likely due to my poor communication! We attempted to talk about Sea of Poppies, which was not fresh in anyone's minds. I think we mostly liked it, although had a difficult time grasping everything because of the heavy usage of dialect from pidgin, Chinglish, Hinglish, and seafarer's slang. There was a 30 page glossary of definitions and referencing it frequently interrupted the reading flow. Members also liked having a book that felt original in language and character development and decidedly representative of India,opium and opium factory workers, American sailors, French runaways, lascars, coolies, convicts, rajas, and sahibs. We liked learning about the Opium wars and found the character development of some characters to be interesting, but had a bit of disappointment in the main character development. This is the first in a trilogy and just one of us is going on to read the second book.
The Dutch House was warmly received. Ed had not know about it until a week before and he thought he would read a few pages and then could not put it down. Mindy also could not put it down. We talked about how well the dysfunctions in the relationships were described through Patchett's writing. The house was also an interesting focal point for discussion. The main character's mother was a source of enigma to most of us with some interesting speculation about her mental status. Overall, we gave it a thumbs up.
Next month we are reading an Anne Tyler's Redhead by the Side of the Road. We are hoping to meet at Chrysanne's on June 3rd at 7PM. If not, Cindy will set up a Zoom meeting!NY Times Review
