After January's meeting was first postponed and then cancelled because of the winter weather, imagine our disappointment when February's meeting had to be postponed as well. And then, on the rescheduled day, more snow. At that point, we just couldn't bother to care any more. And while we had a small turnout, with just four of us at the meeting, we had a really good discussion about a book that sort of surprised us all.
Lisa S. is a big fan of Wharton's so it was not a surprise that she enjoyed it but Ann (who was ready to put it down a ways into the book) and Nancy (who listened to the book on audio) found they just had to find out what was going to happen to our anti-heroine, Undine. Unlike so many characters you might dislike in a book but eventually find yourself caring about, none of us came to care what happened to Undine, other than to see what she had up her sleeve next. Of course, she wasn't the only unlikable character in the book!
We played a new game where each of us drew a character name and then had to use three words of phrases to see if the rest of the group could guess which character we had. It was a lot of fun and had us really thinking about the individual characters and how they interacted with the other characters. We'll definitely be playing this game again.
We also talked some about Wharton and her daring attacks on upper class society given that she was a part of it. We never did get a chance to talk about how she didn't seem to care much for her female characters and I wonder what those of you who read the book think about that?
Thanks for hosting, Ann!
Next up, Julia Alvarez' How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.
No comments:
Post a Comment