Four TIC members and one guest braved the damp and chilly weather to meet at Anne’s to discuss Miss Emily, by Irish author Nuala O’Connor. The book is primarily set around 1865  in the Massachusetts home of American Poet Emily Dickinson. There is a crisis at the start of the novel – the Dickinson household is without a maid, so the mother and 2 daughters have to do all the housekeeping and kitchen duties.

The discussion of the Booker Prize-winning book Timeshelter, written by the Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov, was interesting and full of questions. On one hand, the book has a philosophical side, contemplating the subject of memory loss and how our identity is intertwined mostly with the times when we were younger and happier. For this reason, it was not enjoyed as much by the younger members of the book club, who are practically living in these times now, while older members enjoyed the reflections on time, memory, and the past more, as they could relate to them.

The Book Club met at Donna Brown’s apartment on December 19^th, with a good group in attendance just prior to the holidays. The group all agreed that the fictionalized biography of anthropologist Margaret Mead was well written, though the majority did find the character of Fen quite offensive.  There was considerable discussion about the value of researching primitive cultures, as that was Nell’s (Margaret Mead) work and how anyone doing so has to be prepared to immerse oneself to do so.