Meeting: January 7, 2016

Thanks to Annie for writing up the following detailed account of this month's meeting!

After not seeing each other for a month, there’s always lots to catch up on – what we’ve been doing, what our families are doing, what’s going on in the neighborhood, what we’ve been thinking and feeling – so it’s no surprise that we didn’t dive into all the delicious food that Christe prepared for us until 8:00! Our mouths were too busy to eat right away!! But lo and behold, as we sat down to eat in the candle light by the fireplace, we actually spent the rest of the evening talking about (of all things!) the book (All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr)! Annie, Christe, Ellen, Judy, and Julie attended this month's meeting. 

A winter peek at the river from Christe's driveway

But before we get into a recap of our book discussion…thanks to Christe for her hospitality and warm, inviting atmosphere! Enchiladas are no picnic to make, and she took time after a full day’s work to whip up a wonderfully delicious meal for us. Praise to the cook!

I have no idea how Nanc does this every month – even with me taking some furious notes, I feel that I missed key points that were discussed. With that said, I was able to grab onto some threads of our conversation…here goes:

We were all awed by Doerr’s use of imagery/poetic language, especially considering the topic. Here are some examples:

His voice is low and soft, a piece of silk you might keep in a drawer and pull out only on rare occasions, just to feel it between your fingers. 

Music spirals out of the radios, and it is splendid to drowse on the davenport, to be warm and fed, to feel the sentences hoist her up and carry her somewhere else. 

I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads. It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.

We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.

Having the main character be a young, blind girl added much to the storyline – being so dependent, yet being so strong.

When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same? 

There is pride, too, though - pride that he has done it alone. That his daughter is so curious, so resilient. There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if he were only a narrow conduit for another, greater thing. That's how it feels right now, he thinks, kneeling beside her, rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body. The walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane.

Of course with the setting being WWII, there were those hard parts of the story to move through – the conditioning of the boys, Frederick’s brutal attack, bombing/killing in general – but it was felt that by Doerr’s use of language, it was easier to wade through the ‘ick’, and the short chapters were a great tool to engage and disengage with the various story lines that were being tied together.

Ellen enjoyed ‘the worlds within worlds’ (literally speaking even, with the models that Marie Laure’s father makes) and the internal/external conflict and symbolism throughout the story.

Christe talked about her interest in learning more about Saint-Malo and also of how it would be a whole different existence without eyesight (sorry, Christe, I can’t make sense of my notes, but I liked what you said!)

Julie pointed out how Marie Laure could ‘smell fear’ and then spoke of a workshop she had attended years ago about how fear actually does smell and how she could then detect it in a subsequent meeting with a parent.

Annie was all about the use of figurative language and had more quotes jotted down than there was time for!

Judy hadn’t finished the book, but was fascinated all the same. 

We spent a lot of time discussing the key and the diamond…and what the heck happened anyway?! Julie paged through the book to find the various clues and read:

For a week he lives in the strange greenish light beneath the canvas of that huge tent, his duffel clutched in one hand and the hard corners of the little wooden house clamped in the other. When he has the strength, he fiddles with it. Twist the chimney, slide off the three panels of the roof, look inside. Built so cleverly.

So…when I googled ‘what happened to the diamond in all the light…’ it went right to that page that Julie read. Here are more snippets of it:

Werner’s body seems to have gone weightless under his blanket, and beyond the flapping tent doors, the trees dance and the clouds keep up their huge billowing march, and he swings first one leg and then the other off the edge of the bed. 

"Ernst,” says the man beside him. “Ernst.” But there is no Ernst; the men in the cots do not reply; the American soldier at the door of the tent sleeps. Werner walks past him into the grass. 

The wind moves through his undershirt. He is a kite, a balloon. 

The moonlight shines and billows; the broken clouds scud above the trees. Leaves fly everywhere. But the moonlight stays unmoved by the wind, passing through clouds, through air, in what seems to Werner like impossibly slow, imperturbable rays. They hang across the buckling grass. 

Why doesn’t the wind move the light? 

Across the field, an American watches a boy leave the sick tent and move against the background of the trees. He sits up. He raises his hand. 

“Stop,” he calls. 

“Halt,” he calls. 

But Werner has crossed the edge of the field, where he steps on a trigger land mine set there by his own army three months before, and disappears in a fountain of earth.

Again – I wish I could have been more accurate on some of the details we discussed, but feel that I at least captured the main threads of discussion.  I have a new appreciation for Nancy’s skills at our monthly recap without even jotting a thing down!! You rock, Nanc!

February meeting:

Book: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
Location: Judy's
Date: Thursday, February 11, 2016
Time: 6:30pm

Upcoming meetings:

March 2016: Brooklyn by Colm Toibin at Ellen's

April 2016: TBA at Julie's

May 2016: TBA at Nanc's

June 2016: TBA at Linda's

Books we've read so far:

January 2014 - Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
February 2014 - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
March 2014 - Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
April 2014 - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie
May 2014 - The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
June 2014 - Breaking Free by Marilyn Sewell
July 2014 - The Orphan Train by Kristina Baker Kline
August 2014 - The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
September 2014 - Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
October 2014 - The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
November 2014 - The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
December 2014 - No book.  Holiday gathering.
January 2015 - No book.  Watched The Book Thief
February 2015 - The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
March 2015 - Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
April 2015 - The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
May 2015 - The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
June 2015 - The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
July 2015 - Still Alice by Lisa Genova
August 2015 - The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
September 2015 - Ruby by Cynthia Bond
October 2015 - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

November 2015 - No book.  Watched To Kill a Mockingbird

December 2015 - No book.  Holiday gathering.

January 2016 - All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr