The club as a whole had a bifurcated experience tonight – apologies to all those who could not join in via Zoom. I won’t go on about the experience of being able to have a face-to-face book club after such an extended enforced zoomage. Suffice it to say that I believe that those five in attendance found Brew Dog Outpost Dublin a wonderfully liberating experience. The opportunity to engage in discussion without the enforced formality of distended remoteness was absolutely brilliant. I hope that we can all find the opportunity to be together in a similar fashion at the soonest opportunity.
As to the book – ye all hated it, and you have made me a sad bunny 😉
I honestly did hope that you might have enjoyed it, but unfortunately, I suspect I may well have either non-discerning or odd taste – seriously. I was surprised by the reception received, but that is the nature of a collection of short stories that ‘attempt’ magical realism. My only response and I brought this up during our session, is that MR is very personal and subject to the context in which you read and your own experience. For me, I suspended disbelief and let myself be carried away by the writing. I appreciated the context and spent a lot of time engineering backwards the authors’ brief, which gave me much enjoyment. However, this is not to excuse the editor or authors or counter the many well-justified criticisms raised.
Thanks to DK for your comments in advance, and I appreciate your points raised. I think many shared your opinion that the stories were far too constrained in their brief. Yet, in many cases, the editing seems to have been essentially non-existent and merely demonstrated in the Rod Serling’esque curation (RM).
There was a sense that there was little variety in the stories. This uniformity possibly speaks to the constrained but creative brief offering unrealised potential. However, the constraints only worked to the negative, and they may have helped raise the quality of the offered stories – failed as a collection.
JW in especial felt that it tended towards a universally negative take on what the brief may have been where there was a clear opportunity to have found much positive in the mythical bazaar. A bazaar which he rightly points out, was hardly tapped into at all as a device and thus a massive missed trick. I think most felt that the idea of embedding a series of stories around this imagined magical bazaar set in a historical period offered great jumping off opportunities for tales. Unfortunately, the authors missed or failed to take advantage of this – to the extent that readers felt in many cases that they were merely delivered in a rushed, sloppy or template-driven fashion. As a result, readers found the series boring, repetitive, and definitely not engaging. Readers complained of being drawn to skipping pages and, as DK mentioned, not being glad to have spent the time reading the stories.
There is an overwhelming sense that although some stories started well, there was no follow-through to make them tightly-woven or well-crafted.
Nonetheless, as with any collection, some found an occasional story – the mermaids, for example – well told and possibly engaging; most of the stories were graded subpar, and as DK shared B-movie storylines.
JOD related that he became increasingly aware of flaws in factual presentation, gaps in logic or narrative. Unfortunately, this led to him only more increasingly examining the prose for errors and becoming an angry reader – not a good state of affairs at all.
So, by and large, the stories failed to satisfy. Possible flaws in editing, authorship, an overly constrained brief to the authors, and a perceived mechanical approach to construction delivered an unsatisfactory experience for the group.
I will admit that I recommended the book because I had truly lost myself in the stories, despite occasional senses of an odd overly-feminist agenda, and truly enjoyed the bulk of the experience of reading it. Despite mixed experience with collections of short stories in the past, I enjoyed a mix of voices and approaches and was shocked when I read the first critical review. I reread it last night, and this didn’t alter my opinion. However, I truly appreciated the divergence of views expressed and was glad for its engendered discussion. I do apologise for forcing anyone to spend time with something that didn’t deliver them the joy it did me. Although I realise as the scores indicate that there was some appreciation of attempt and conception that deserved some credit and so hope some little entertainment was realised – if not in totality.
So to the tally:
J 5.5
BC 5.0
R 7.0
S 8.0
D 4.0
F 3
JOD 5.5
M NoScorePresented
Average: 5.43
So that’s my report, and I hope I caught the crucial aspects of the discussion. I didn’t take many notes as I was soaking up the opportunity for fine craft beers and some tasty grub – sorry again to those that could not attend. As said, I do hope we can all gather together again soon.
We had five suggestions for our Non-Fiction March read:
AA Gill – Far and Away (Joe)
Angela Nagle – Kill All Normies (Ruairi)
Masha Gessen – The Man Without a Face – The Unlikely Rise of V Putin (Mike)
Bob Percival – The Meat Paradox (Declan)
Adam Rutherford – Control: The History of Eugenics (Jim)
Our winner with 10 votes and read for meeting in April is Far and Away: The Essential AA Gill – look for the eventually report.