On this one the various e-mails between people really said it all. The only additional things I can recall at this delayed stage are that:
- Mr Pink was particularly impressed by the structure of the novel, with two sections to each of the days having (apparently – as I couldn't see it) a logical process linking them all together
- There was a general view that she wrote well, but didn’t really seem to have anything to write about, no plot etc so it just became tedious – though Mr Pink in particular felt that a strength rather than weakness
- Differing views on the characters, varying from Steve claiming to have met most of them in his lifetime, to me thinking they were all parodies and wanting to either punch them on the nose or run out of the room if I was ever with any of them
- Mark T appeared to have an in-depth knowledge of the page numbers on which the graphic sex was contained
- My view that this felt a bit like going back 30 years and reading a Harold Robins novel – but with longer words and sentences and no ending
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Got to expand upon this a bit, given that there was quite a lively email exchange after the meeting. Group split between the dissapointed/didn't care/uninspired, and the admirers (Mr Pink and Steve). The range can be summed up by this quote from Neil:
"...literary skill and prose style may well be very worthy, but if it produces a book that is fundamentally boring and people are not interested in reading, then it is in danger of becoming the archetypal "up yourself" book. I believe a good book is one worth reading; I may not have thoroughly enjoyed every book we have read, but I have at least been interested in almost all of them for one reason or other."
Against this, I emailed the following: "...as we've said before the great thing about books, authors and the wacky wonderful world of literature is that 'people' are not all the same. We respond in different ways to the same things, which is why the book club is A Good Thing. I accept that my support for Ten Days is eternally flawed, or at least will be until I get round to finishing it, but I don't agree that it was fundamentally boring. I think part of the problem was that I wasn't able to give it the uninterrupted attention it needed - indeed I would probably find Ulysses, for example, a bit of a struggle these days, but it would still be a book worthy of a kind of admiration. I am glad that she was motivated to write it and found a supportive publisher."
Mind you I still haven't finished it.
Steve
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