Page Turners – December/January

The Page Turners met in December to discuss ‘The Thursday Murder Club‘ by Richard Osman which we hoped would be a little more lightweight than last month’s exciting but disturbing read. Unfortunately, thanks to Covid, we were low in numbers but members not present sent in their thoughts to add to the discussion.

This was a first novel by someone who has a large fan base for his work in entertainment and it may be assumed that this is what drove high sales initially. We were interested to discuss whether we felt it deserved its popularity.

Some members very much enjoyed the book. They found it funny, warm and entertaining. They liked the setting of a retirement village and found the characters to be well observed and engaging. It is unusual to have such a cast of older characters and we dared to wonder if we felt more in tune with them because we were closer to them in age than the characters in some of the books that we read.

Other members were not so keen on the book. They felt it was sparsely written with insufficient ‘meat’ to really engage them with the characters or the story. This led to them being confused by the large cast of people. They were disappointed with the final chapters and felt that the resolutions for several characters were unsatisfactory. The ending seemed to be focussed on setting up the next book, although that did not lead to these members wishing to read it.

For next month we will be reading ‘Golden Hill‘ by Francis Spufford. At the next meeting we will also be making our selections for future months from recommendations made by members.