Monday 16 November 2015

State Of Wonder - Ann Patchett

This book prompted a lot of discussion about one of the main themes, that being the ability for women to have babies far into old age. We wondered if it's a good idea to have babies at advanced age, are women at that age thinking of themselves or of the baby? We also wondered if having babies at all is a right or a privilege?


We found that the book was quite slow going almost all the way through until you get to the very end of the book where it all feels as though it gets a bit rushed. We felt that some of the characters were a little bit flat apart from the main ones like Easter and Aneke.


There were a lot of questions we found to do with Marina. We wondered whether she had father issues as shown by her nightmares about her father leaving. She also seems to go for men who take control and who seem to be a little older than her. She did seem to let a lot of things happen to her rather than make decisions about what she was going to do next which we found a little annoying.


We found that a lot of the issues at the end were quite shocking, but one element we really disagreed on. This may sound a little faffy but I really don't want to give away the ending for anyone, but we wondered whether one particular elements was a happy ending or not. It felt that the author was trying to tidy up certain elements but in the process she made some book club members a little uncomfortable.


The final ending of the book was interesting as it felt that it tailed off a little, we don't know what happened to all the characters. But then again this is very much like real life, but it's not something that all the book club members liked.


Overall we gave this book 6 out of 10.

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