Our discussion was a bit crazy this time. From what I can tell, everyone really enjoyed this book. ALMOST everyone liked the 2nd half better than the first. One person liked the first better, and the rest of us decided that the 2 halves together are what makes the book so fascinating.
Here's a recap of some of our main discussion topics:
- the death of the daughter (I won't say which, in case those who didn't read it still want to!)
- Leah's marriage to Anatole (Annette fell in love with him through the audio book!)
- Nathan's death, and the biblical story it reflected
- how Nathan's decisions affected the girls throughout their lives
- the concepts of "muntu" and "nommo" and how that relates to the "eyes in the trees"
- more explanation of The Apocrypha - what it is, which churches accept it, etc.
- the position of women in society - in many ways they were limited by the resources they could control (not many resources in most cases) and oblivious or perhaps deliberately not aware of the larger political/social/etc. situation around them (Orleanna is a great example of this)
- Rachel as a character (this caused much debate as one member tried to defend Rachel's opinions and another member tried to justify her actions and most of the other members disagreed with both of them), and her amusing misuse of language (gotta love her for that!)
- Adah before and after "losing her slant"
- how each daughter changed from the first half of the book
- how the author shows the Congo to be a woman, and a character of the book
- the difference between European colonization in America and in Africa
Our next meeting is set for June 8 at 2pm at Nicole's house. Bev chose our book, The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. Since there is a movie version, we MAY watch it at the meeting ... we'll decide as time gets closer.
As always, feel free to post any comments about the book, the discussion, or anything related to our club. Happy Reading!
