We are a small home group of 7 to 8 members who have been meeting for a number of years. A few people have come and gone, but the core group has been very stable. We meet at Jackie's home on the third Tuesday of the month at lunchtime and bring a sandwich and a book! It's all very friendly.
We all contribute to the choice of books we read and the range is wide - from fiction to history, biographies to diaries. As well as our book of the month, we share news on other books that members have been reading. Jackie takes notes and produces a monthly resume of our discussion on our current book, and of the other reading that we have done. We will be posting some of those resumes here from time to time. Another member maintains a list of our reading, so that we can look back on more than 12 years of books that we have read.
Notes from book group meeting 16.09.2025
Present: Karen, Irene, Jane, Tony, Carol, Jackie, Steve
Book of the month: Into The Blue by Robert Goddard
Into the Blue is part one of a trilogy featuring the protagonist Harry Barnett. Harry is a shabby, middle-aged failure who cannot take himself seriously. At the opening of the novel he has spent the past 8 years caretaking a villa in Rhodes that belongs to successful politician Alan Dysart. Alan has been part of Harry’s life for many years for reasons that are opaque, though his friendship seems very genuine.
The novel revolves around the mysterious disappearance of Heather Mallinson, a young woman who comes to stay at the villa as a guest of Alan’s. She and Harry become friends, despite the age gap and, in her company, Harry begins to emerge from his long emotional slumber.
Initially suspected of being behind Heather’s dramatic disappearance, as he was the last person to see her, Harry feels a responsibility to find out what has happened to Heather. He uses a reel of photos of different places that she left behind, to guide him in a dogged quest, which takes him initially back to England, and eventually to Rhodes again.
Heather’s disappearance isn’t the only fishy thing that’s happened. Heather had a sister who worked as personal assistant to Allan Dysart and was recently blown sky high by IRA terrorists aboard Alan’s boat.
Harry comes home to England, to his crabby mother, his moth-eaten home and his unsavoury, undistinguished past. He’s been swindled, made a fool of, more than once, and people greet him familiarly as both a boozer and a buffoon. However, bit by bit, he grows and discovers within himself resources of intelligence, shrewdness and capability. Harry has an inner core of integrity and strength which eventually enables him to unravel the complex knot of relationships and past events that underpin the mystery of Heather’s disappearance. Finally we learn also why Alan has shown such loyalty to Harry, in a satisfying plot twist that ties together earlier strands.
This is a clever, complex novel that reveals itself to be something more than the conventional mystery story that it first presents as. Not only does the central actor, Harry, evolve during the course of events, but Goddard weaves in a strong social and political commentary on contemporary Britain during the mid to late 20th century. Working people’s lives lived with ‘no meaning or control’ { to quote Jarvis Cocker in Common People} are contrasted with the privileged existence gifted to an Oxford elite that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Bullingdon Club.
Perhaps Goddard subscribes to ideas of social determinism, whereby accidents of birth can shape futures. Having no advantageous social connections, wealth, or brute confidence, Harry is relegated to an also-ran. The novel’s lack of positive relationships mirrors the bleak inner world of this depressed man of few expectations.
There were implausibilities:- Heather’s sister, Claire’s, pregnancy after a one night stand with a gay man; the student criminologist couldn’t have discovered the secret of Alan’s birth – information available only to the adopted child by strict data protection protocols; Jack Cornelius’s conversion from IRA hitman and murderer of Alan’s enemies to morally-haunted protector of Heather really didn’t ring true. And furthermore, how likely was it that Harry’s erstwhile crooked business partner should be in Birmingham at the exact time and in the exact place when Alan comes to seek out the grave of his dead namesake; and that he should then turn up as a timeshare salesman in Greece just when Harry pops up there, so that he can give Harry a vital clue about Alan’s origins?
But unfeasibilities aside, it was a novel that exuded class in its plotting, its pacing and its characters. Written in the age before artificial intelligence came into our lives, it developed at a stately pace. Unlike more modern works, there were no hyperactive time leaps or ruptures of the fourth wal,l and the narrative world which the author had created moved forward steadily, almost slowly by modern standards, to its conclusion,
A richly satisfying read, and some of us have already decide to sample another Robert Goddard book.
Books We Have Read
Karen
The Confession by John Grisham. A good read.
Jane
The Fury by Alex Michaelides. A murder whodunnit set on an island. Enjoyable but not fantastic.
Irene
James by Perceval Everitt. The story of Jim the runaway slave from Huckleberry Finn. Very good.
A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville. The true story of Elizabeth McCarthy, a woman famous in Australian history. The book deals with the life of the early English convict settlers.
Ann Tyler A Spool of Blue Thread.
Beneath by Maureen Miller
Harold Fry & The Angel of The North by Rachel Joyce
Carol
I’ll Keep You Safe by Peter May. One of his Scotland-set novels.
The Safekeep by Yael van der Woodan. Set in 1960s Amsterdam and relates back to the holocaust.
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith
Tony
Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves. His magnificent biography, detailing his first world war experiences
Steve
Slough House by Mick Herron. Darkly funny spy novel, first of the series that has been televised as Slow Horses on Apple TV to great acclaim.
Jackie
With A Little Help From My Friends by Stuart McConachie. A chronicle of the Beatles rise to fame via the recollections of people who were part of their story. Enjoyable in its own right, but particularly for any Beatles fan.
Tories: The End of an Error by Russell Jones. Truly shocking to confront the corruption, sleaze, mendacity and incompetence of the 14 years of Tory rule, when gathered together in this book.
+ 2 that I gave up on:-
The Silver Wolf by J C Hervey. Set during the 30 Years War in Europe in the 17th Century, The immediate cause of which was a resistance to Ferdinand II's attempts to impose Catholicism and a revolt against his authority as king of Bohemia. Historically interesting but a boring story.
Poseidon’s Gold by Lindsay Davies, about an intelligencer for Emperor Augustus in ancient Rome.
Date of Next Meeting 21.10.2025
Book of the Month The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor.
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