Next Book Group Meetings

08 May “The Yiddish Policemen's Union” by Michael Chabon

What if, as President Roosevelt proposed in 1939, a temporary settlement had been established in Alaska for Jews after World War II? Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon explores this premise as the context for a noir murder mystery focusing on washed up Detective Meyer Landsman and his attempt to unravel the killing of a local heroin-addicted chess fanatic.

10 July “Guernsey and Potato Peel Pie Literary Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

            This book is written as a series of letters.  World War II has just ended and Juliet Ashton, who is an author, is living in London when she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams who lives on Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands.  Dawsey has an old book that had belonged to Juliet at one time.  In his letter he mentions the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a sort of book club, that sprang up because of the German occupation of Guernsey during World War II.  This leads to a flurry of letters between Juliet and members of the Society.  Juliet decides there might be a book in the story of the lives of these people and decides to visit Guernsey.  Once there, she falls in love with the island and its people. This book is charming and delightful.  It will make you want to visit Guernsey and (perhaps?) miss the art of letter writing.

“Vanishing Point” by Morris West

            Morris West, Australia's gift to popular literature, has the enviable ability to thrust readers into a compelling story with very few wasted words. By page four of this exciting and moving thriller, we know that Carl Strassberger is an artist and art historian living in the South of France; that he has given up (by choice) his role as heir apparent to the leadership of a large New York banking firm in favour of his brilliant brother-in-law, Larry Lucas; and that just one phone call from his beloved father can send him running from his perfect life into a nightmare of madness and danger to himself and his family's business. West has always been fascinated with manic depression, and here he brings the condition to palpable life, making it a major character in a book full of colourful people and places.

“Roden Cutler VC” by Colleen McCullough

Roden Cutler's list of honours is long and impressive, but it is his sole decoration, the Victoria Cross, that marks him as a hero. Over 800,000 men and women served in the Australian armed forces during the Second World War, but only twenty were awarded the V.C. Colleen McCullough vividly shows us the life and times of the young soldier with the dashing good looks, the laconic humour and dislike of pretension who came back from the war determined to continue to support his mother, but, having lost a leg, with no idea how to do so. Yet by the age of 29 he was the Australian High Commissioner to New Zealand. His diplomatic career was to include stints to Ceylon, Egypt during the Suez crisis of 1956, Pakistan and New York. In 1966 he was appointed Governor of New South Wales; during his 15 years in that office he shared with Captain Arthur Phillip and Lachlan Macquarie, he earned his own niche among them as the `people's governor'. Much loved, still remembered as a man equally at home in the company of royalty or trade unionists. His story is embedded in Australian history, and part of it. But it is also the story of a man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to serve his country with courage and dignity in the face of all obstacles. In an age accustomed to public idols with feet of clay, Roden Cutler is the exception: a man whose integrity is as formidable as his humility is astonishing.