Hello
Book club no.29 was held at my flat on Saturday. Our text this time was “Washington Square” by well-known effete Anglo-American short story writer and novelist, Henry James.
This was one of the better-received texts we’ve read for book club, with many participants agreeing it deserved a place in the upper pantheon of the Book Club Hall of Fame (still under construction). However, Flemming was particularly vociferous in his distaste for the book, claiming its characters were worthless and unlikable. Specifically, our debate focused on the character of Catherine Sloper – was she a wet drip who remained a wet drip at the end of the book, or was she the story’s only honest character who lived and suffered by her own moral code (as Wakeling proposed)? There was a pronounced male-female split in the discussions, with some of the boys admiring Dr Sloper’s gruff exterior, while Wakeling and Mofo were more sympathetic to Catherine’s predicament.
Overall, though, the text stimulated some interesting debate on matters such as the story’s inherent theatricality, its use of silence, the metaphor of the square, and the varieties of sexuality on display. Pete also helpfully guided the discussion via his useful GCSE-level questions scrawled in the back of his copy of the book.
The baton for book club no.30 – surely deserving of some kind of celebration? – is handed over to Owain.
Pete
