A Parisian Affair and Other Stories by Guy De Maupassant

a parisian affairAn extra read for the November book club, some short stories. Set in the Paris of society women, prostitutes and small-minded bourgeousie, and the isolated villages of rural Normandy that de Maupassant knew as a child, the thirty-three tales in this volume are among the most darkly humorous and brilliant short stories in nineteenth-century literature. They focus on the relationships between men and women, as in the poignant fantasy of ‘A Parisian Affair’, between brothers and sisters, and between masters and servants. Through these relationships, Maupassant explores the dualistic nature of the human character and his stories reveal both nobility, civility and generosity, and, in stories such as ‘At Sea’ and ‘Boule de Suif’, vanity, greed and hypocrisy. Maupassant’s stories repeatedly lay humanity bare with deft wit and devastating honesty.

Jane 7 Christine 5 June 6 Janine 7 Sally 7

Janine JTrude S
Score:

William Pitt the Younger by William Hague

william pitt

William Pitt The Younger was one of the most extraordinary figures in British history, who became Prime Minister in 1783 at the remarkable age of twenty-four. In this lively and authoritative biography, William Hague explains the dramatic events and exceptional abilities which allowed extreme youth to be combined with great power.

Pitt was derided as a ‘schoolboy’ when he took office. Yet within months he had outwitted his opponents, and he went on to dominate the political scene for twenty-two years (nineteen of them as Prime Minister). No British politician since has exercised such supremacy for so long.

Generally thought to be cold and aloof, Pitt was described by friends as the wittiest man they ever knew. William Hague succeeds in explaining Pitt’s actions and motives during a series of great national crises, including the trauma of the Napoleonic wars. He describes how a man dedicated to peace became Britain’s longest-serving war leader, how Pitt the liberal reformer became Pitt the author of repression, and how – though undisputed master of the nation’s finances – he died with vast personal debts.

With its rich cast of characters, and set against a backdrop of industrial revolution and global conflict, this is history at its most riveting.

Pauline 8

Christine 8

Trude 8

Elaine 5

Jane 3

Cai 3

Trude S
Score:

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

the glass room

Cool. Balanced. Modern. The precisions of science, the wild variance of lust, the catharsis of confession and the fear of failure – these are things that happen in the Glass Room.

High on a Czechoslovak hill, the Landauer House shines as a wonder of steel and glass and onyx built specially for newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer, a Jew married to a gentile. But the radiant honesty of 1930 that the house, with its unique Glass Room, seems to engender quickly tarnishes as the storm clouds of WW2 gather, and eventually the family must flee, accompanied by Viktor’s lover and her child.

But the house’s story is far from over, and as it passes from hand to hand, from Czech to Russian, both the best and the worst of the history of Eastern Europe becomes somehow embodied and perhaps emboldened within the beautiful and austere surfaces and planes so carefully designed, until events become full-circle.

Jane B 6
Pauline C 8
Elaine E 6
Rebecca H 7
Janet J 5
Janine J 6
Sally M  8
Cai M 8
Christine  8
Trude S 8
June T 7

Pauline C
Score: