Monday 14 April 2014

"The Gallery of Vanished Husbands" by Natasha Solomons - February 2014

We won this title from the Reading Agency: http://readinggroups.org./

All agreed that the book was competent, engaging and easy to read. Juliet certainly posed as a cipher for the other characters in the book . But some found her unbelievable as a main character . The hyperbole she used for her role in the London gallery was alike to Valerie, Charles’s mother. This supported misgivings about her character.

The conflict between the woman that ran a London gallery and the traditional Jewish wife was interesting and threw some light on how difficult it was to be an Aguna following the war. The use of composition that describes the transition of thinking between the 50s and 60’s was thought to be brave and skilful. However the overall opinion also was that the author had possibly attempted too much. Given her authors’ note we didn’t believe that Rosie was done justice too.

Leonard, the son of her missing husband George summoned much more empathy to his character, some thought more could have been done with this and with the relationships with his dads’ other family. Frieda’s frustration too was very real and we could understand why a teenage girl who could not find her mother in so many portraits rebelled in the only way left to her.

There were mixed opinions about the many descriptive passages of the paintings . Some found the visualisations wonderful , others thought them superficial . There did seem to be some correlation between the many artists behind the very different paintings of one Juliet and the newspaper cutting of the different missing husbands (as summed up in the book title) but if this was intentional it served for many to make Juliet less real.

Most found Max a far more believable and moving character, one reader described the story of Max’s sketchbook and its loss , as a piece of gold in a box of imitation jewellery. His dramatic departure from Juliets’ life and the final painting found after his death , added more resonance to the gallery and to the novel.

All the members of Clapton group agreed they’d happily read more of the author's works. By Ann

It is written in an easy-to-read style, both in print and vocabulary choice. It moved along at a good pace, with enough detail to familiarise the reader to the characters, but not in a prolongued way. I enjoyed reading the story, and enjoyed the way chapters jumped back and forth in time. It was well-written and interesting, I would recommend this book to others. By Michelle

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