Bookgroups and People I Just Dont Get

I went to bookgroup the other night. It was a bit lively, Peter Hoeg’s The Quiet Girl. Just a simple crime novel set in Copenhagen about a Clown looking for a girl who turns out to be his child from a love affair he had 10 years previously.

There was an older lady there that night, she said she was 70, which was on average 40 years older then the majority of the rest.

I felt I was a little rude to her, I laughed at her once, I feel into giggles about something that she said with the girl sitting next to me once, and I looked in confusion at her whilst she tried to explain to me/us what she thought of the book.

Her logic was this, she started with saying the book was written by a man in Copenhagen on the other side of the world, and here she was, a 70 year old woman in Sydney reading it, and she seemed quite in awe of this – she was disjointed and unorganised in how she said this, what I’ve said was a summary. I don’t know what her point was, or what she was trying to achieve by saying this, but there was a lot of emphatic gestering on her part, I really had to stop myself from screaming at her – why? its 2009 not 1979 – why are you amazed by this?

We all listened to her politely waiting for her to get to whatever point it was that she was trying to reach, as it’s a friendly group – we try to listen and give everybody a chance, but she seemed to get lost entirely on the journey and switched to this.

I’m Lutherthan, the majority of people in Copenhagen are Lutherhan, so this Peter Hoeg must be Lutherthan and therefore I should read it and like it and I am struggling to like it (she did not say struggling to like it, instead she slammed the book on the table, laid her hand on it in a sad way and shook her head, in the directors cut I’d imply this is struggling to like it).

The stunned silence this evoked seem slightly surreal, I could feel the others baiting me by silent chanting to respond, so I did. I said in my politest and hopefully best non-condescending voice, “Heres a recommendation, how about you go home tonight, try and forget about who wrote it and where he is from and just read a chapter of the book, if you like it on its own merit then continue reading it, if you don’t, stop.”

This lady was no shrinking violet, she had contributed loudly and quite forcefully, on occasion even interrupting people, to the conversation. If you have the balls to interrupt complete strangers talking about a book with some irrelevant thought, then you are not shy. But seriously I really though she needed a good shake.

Listening: Summerteeth (its my favourite of theirs, its been getting a good spin the last week - see last post)

Reading: The Sydney Film Festival Progamme

Viewing: I watched Lars and The Real Girl last night, what a charming little picture, I was impressed.