I’m loving all the books we have been reading with the book club. Some books are better than others but I’m loving the diversity. These are the last 2 books we read in 2021. I hope you enjoy them.

The Casual Vacancy - J.K. Rowling

This choice was a success with everyone.  It follows the rhythm of the English pastoral novel.  Maybe Rowling’s choice of a name for Barry Fairbrother was inspired by Fairbrother in Middlemarch: in both cases the death of Fairbrother opens a can of worms.

We thought the novel a satire which exposed small town hypocrisy.  Her depicted community representing a fallen world, bookended by funerals and deaths.  The only worthy person in the town is dead.  The claustrophobic nature of the community is brilliantly managed.  Behind the net curtains, small-mindedness, right-wing pretentiousness, social climbing, sexual frustration and jealousy, violence, bullying, criminality, racism and poisonous relationships, are all revealed.  Rowling doesn’t hold back!  Fairbrother’s death led to the releasing of the Casual Vacancy in the Town Council.  This inspired its self-satisfied NIMBYs to take control of the Council and use it as an opportunity to eject the underclass and their drug-dependency unit, thus gentrifying the town.

Rowling’s message concerned social responsibility.  It was contained in Dr Parminter’s rant at the Council meeting.  She draws comparison between the loathsome Howard Mollison’s smugness and entitlement in trying to close down the drug-dependency unit on account of cost, with his refusal to take responsibility for his over-weight and self-indulgence.  She cites Mollison’s heart attack and bypass costs, his hospital stay, doctor’s appointments, asthma and skin rashes, all attributed to his refusal to lose weight, as equally draining on the public purse. 

We read passages aloud, enjoying the biting humour: Fats’s musing upon Krystal’s splendid breasts … and miraculously unguarded vagina. Samantha Mollison’s burnt casserole; the stream of consciousness bitching of Sam and Kay about one another.  The dreadful 65th birthday party …….

We thought Rowling really understood teenage boys and their inability to compromise.  Fats, especially, was superbly drawn.  In fact we found her extraordinary range and success as a writer, from the Harry Potter books, to Adult novels, to Crime Fiction in the  Strike books, quite remarkable.

Engleby - Sebastian Faulks

This was a disturbing and challenging read: a brilliant character study of a high-achieving, psychotic, narcissistic sociopath.  Some of us had read Faulks’s previous book, Human Traces in which he explored consciousness via historical thesis - here it is developed via character.

The 70s background and Engleby’s career path are based on Faulks’s own: minor public school, Cambridge degree, Journalism.  Interviews and encounters with Jeffrey Archer, Alan Clark and Red Ken are amusing, as was the parody of the ghastly dinner party.  As a first person narrator, Engleby is unreliable, so we don’t know what to believe!  Lots of discussion on this -   we thought that, as a narcissist, he simply believed what he wanted to believe. He can not cope with being proved wrong - it results in panic attacks - at one point ending up in an asylum.  He is a dangerous threat to anyone who crosses him.  

The pedantic, flat and superior tone of Engleby’s narrative is interspersed and relieved by the softer, homely tone of Jennifer’s diary, the contrasting sardonic tone of police interviews, and the scientific analysis of the criminal psychiatrist.  We see him from many different viewpoints.

A cold fish with no moral compass, he steals and deals drugs; sees women as different and dismisses sexual equality.  His obsessive stalking of Jennifer and furtive attempts to control her are creepy and sinister. He is a loner, unable to form relationships - shades of the asylum and prison threaten him throughout his narrative. Spoiler alert - we thought he murdered Jennifer because she threatened his sexual potency.  We couldn’t help drawing comparisons with Sarah Everard: in both cases murder was committed due to a betrayal of trust.

Engleby’s identity is fluid: as a victim of school bullying he is Toilet, he assumes the name of a woman Michele Watts, he then becomes Michael Watson.  We liked the book’s cover design which shows Engleby stealing Jennifer’s bicycle.  The figure is out of focus: the blurred outlines reflect his crisis  of identity and disordered personality. We felt the outcome was chilling: in reciting and quoting Jennifer’s diary verbatim, - spoiler alert again - the book ends as he is rewriting it according to his wish fulfilment.  He assumes a vicarious existence through her …… shades of Psycho?

It certainly provoked animated discussion, raised lots of interesting  contemporary issues, especially those relating to mental health and the vulnerability of women.