It’s been a while since I’ve posted about our Book Club, but I’ll try to make it up to you by making a double post! First I will tell you about the kick off of our 3rd book club year and then I will share with you a review of the first book we read. Now just take a cup of coffee, a mug of tea or a glass of wine, sit down and enjoy this double post 🙂

KICK OFF YEAR 3

Our latest book club meeting took a bit longer than we are used to as we did not only discuss our final 2018 read (of which you can read the review here), but we also made our 2019 selection.

Once again we chose our books in a democratic way… by voting.  Everyone of us brought three books and then we all voted which of the three we would choose.

The selection of our 2019 reads

• ‘Lam’ by Hannelore Bedert (this is a Flemish novel and the title could be translated as ‘lamb’)
• ‘Behind her eyes’ by Sarah Pinborough
• ‘Tara Road’ by Maeve Binchy (this was the novel I put forward)
• ‘The woman in the window’ by A.J. Finn
• ‘Origin’ by Dan Brown
• ‘Wil’ by Jeroen Olyslaegers
• ‘A thousand splendid suns’ by Khaled Hosseini

To which book do I look forward to most to read?

To be honest? ‘Tara Road’… even though I have read it before and even though it’s my own book… But it’s been quite some time since I’ve read a Maeve Binchy and I am so anxious to find out what the other book club members will think of it as I didn’t give them much choice: the three books I put forward were all three by Maeve Binchy. The former 2 years, I always had a Binchy in my selection and it was never picked so this time I left my fellow readers no choice… sorry ladies 🙂

I am also looking forward to ‘A thousands splendid suns’ as I really loved reading another Hosseini novel a couple of years ago (‘and the mountains echoed’).

REVIEW: LAM – HANNELORE BEDERT

Lam – Summary

Below you can read the summary I could find on Goodreads (translated by yours truly):

‘Lucia is six when her mother enters a shop but doesn’t come out anymore. Nobody knows where she is and nobody answers any question.

The disappearance creates a deafening silence in Lucia’s house and the absence of her mother marks the lives of both Lucia and her father.  Lucia feels extremely lonely at school and at home, she misses a mother figure and her father lacks willpower. All of this make Lucia decide to leave her hometown as a young woman.

More than ten years later Lucia leads a chaotic life in the city. She seems to have forgotten the past until she gets a phone call: her father’s body has been found. Reluctantly, Lucia returns to the village she once turned her back on. She goes back to her parental home, where she ends up finding out her father’s best kept secret.’

Lam – My thoughts

I must say that I was a bit reluctant to start reading ‘Lam’. I don’t particularly like Flemish books and in the past I have read a few which I really disliked… but this one was so different!

Even though the setting is dark and gloomy, the story is really intens and captivating but never corny. I immediately had a connection with the main character Lucia. I really and truly felt for her as she had a difficult and very lonely youth. She didn’t have the pleasure of feeling loved, needed, she didn’t know affection and the few people which made her life worthwhile, left her for some reason.

The style of writing is straightforward and I like the way Bedert builds up the tension. The story consists of bits from the past and present, but it’s done in such a way that you never looe touch with the main story.

And the ending… well… let’s say that during our discussion there were 2 different opinions… I won’t say more as I don’t want to spoil it for those who want to read the book 🙂

Lam – Score

Personally I gave ‘Lam’ 8/10. The scores for this book were quite uniform. The overall score for this book was 7,85/10.

Next time

Next time I won’t be able to go to our meeting, but I will read the book anyway so I can still form my opinion and give it a score. We’ll read ‘Behind her eyes’ by Sarah Pinborough.

Love, Kathleen