Hey baby it was cold outside!
Well it was cold outside but very warm and inviting and Kathy's lovely home. The table was set with festive decorations, the wine was chilled and the appetizers were being consumed and it didn't take us very long to get into discussing the first book Nightingale.
We all agreed that these were remarkable women, and discussed how two people from the same family could turn out so differently. Many thought that the younger sister would have made the same sacrifices if she had been a mother with children and that she would have left them behind to continue doing what she did for the war resistance. We all agreed that the author did a really good job of making us feel as if we were living in this little town, and experiencing what it must've been like to be under occupation, and going through what these people were experiencing on a day today basis.
We wanted to find humanity in the German soldier that stayed with the older sister and her daughter, and could understand after she witnessed him having all that food in his office and everyone else in the town was starving, that it might have made it easier for her to kill him to protect her sister, even though she did have feelings for him. The topic about how he was a victim of the war in some regards as the people he was there to take over was also discussed. The fact that he was married, had children and obviously wanted to be back home with them, as well as the protection he was trying to offer the older sister and her daughter, made him more somewhat sympathetic to us as readers. Interesting though we did not discuss how the other German that stayed with the older sister, did we also see him as a victim of the war, since obviously there was no humanity in this man at all, and was so despicable?
We talked about this book for a considerably long amount of time and so many issues were brought up about the war, injustice, how it also correlates to things that are happening today. It got a rating of four stars.
Well , A gentleman in Moscow sums up the book in these sentences; Lyn loved it, thought it was one of the best books she's read, and Nancy wanted her nine hours back from her life and hated it, and the rest of us were somewhere in between the ratings. We talked about how count Rostov, had attributes that were particular to that time period, his wealth and privilege and how the lives of these two young girls affected him in ways that would never have happened had he not had them in his life. We were all surprised by the way this book ended, and that he did not leave Russia and stay with Sophia. Several Of us liked that this book was historical fiction and thought it was interesting to read about the Bolsheviks and that time in history. It got a rating of three stars.
Next up: January 28 - hosted by Lyn.
Books to discuss: Amsterdam by Ian McEwan and Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
Book selections by Nancy
