Geraldine Brooks

Are there other Geraldine Brooks fans out there. Ever since her interview on Enough Rope I have really admired her. This very unassuming women as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East is really inspiring. I first read Nine Parts of Desire, or was it Year of Wonders first, anyway they are both great!
Have just finished March, another great one. Of course the Americans have claimed her as their own!

I only own Nine parts of desire, which I found intriguing, as it portrays Muslim women in a new way (politician in Iran, soldiers in Eritrea and one of the Gulf Emirates, etc.). It's definitely a keeper for me!

Year of Wonders is one of my favourite books - aside from what I consider an odd ending. It just didn't seem 'in character' to me. Read March earlier this year and enjoyed it, but not nearly as much.

I enjoyed Year of Wonders, and I even liked the ending! Although I do see how it wasn't in keeping with the rest of the book, but it was a fascinating story nonetheless.

I read March a little while ago, and found the main character rather annoying. (I gave it to my Mum for her birthday, and she loved it however, so it was a good choice!)

I didn't realise she'd been on Enough Rope! Damn, I always miss the good stuff.

I've been to Eyam in England, where Year of Wonders is set, and can't wait to get into it!

I love the section of March that is written through the eyes of "Marmee". She is very honest about her husband's shortcomings and selfish self-importance. It somehow makes it easier to tolerate his character when you consider the social confines of the time.
I had one very strong feminist friend who could not finish the book because Mr March annoyed her so much. I consider myself a feminist too, however, I think it is important to know about the historical place of women and the views of the men they lived with. It helps me realize that I should not take my 21st century freedoms for granted.

I preferred Year of Wonders, which I adored, to March which I found disappointing. Mr March annoyed the hell out of me. I still love Little Women and for that matter What Katy Did etc. Happy memories from childhood perhaps more than an appreciation for fine literature! I regularly re-read The Wind in the Willow and just bought a collection of the Milly Molly Mandy books. What a girl I am!

There's a good article on March in the first Australian Literary Review, which was included in Wednesday's Australian. The reviewer is not quite as enthusiastic as some people, however. Worth a look if you happened to pick it up at the newsagents.

I enjoyedYear of Wonders and found Geraldine Brooks fascinating on the Andrew Denton interview. So, I raced out and bought March, read about one quarter of it and was bored, bored, bored. I couldn't believe it won the Pultizer Prize. Anyhow, after reading these good reports, I shall try again.

I haven't read any of her books yet, but did hear a great deal of Year of Wonders on bookreading on radio national. I was enthralled. Will get around to her stuff some day I expect.

I found Year of Wonders to be a really memorable book and I'm sorry that I missed the Andrew Denton interview with Geraldine Brooks. I haven't yet come across the other two books that have been mentioned
but Nine Parts of Desire sounds very interesting.

I read Year of Wonders first which I loved except, that I also felt, that the ending did not quite fit . I struggled with March as well, it took me a long time to warm up to it. Looking forward to finding a copy of Nine Parts of Desire.

Nine Parts of Desire is truly a great read. Published in 1995, it predates much of the highly rhetorical posturing of Western politics. Nevertheless, it tells an understandable story. Brooks lived in the Middle East for six years working as a foreign correspondent. The interview with Andrew Denton is unfortunately no longer available online.

A friend lent me her copy of Year Of Wonders and I'm reading it now. Excuse the obvious pun, but so far it truly is 'wondrous'. mstuckings, please share your experiences of Eyam with us!

By the way, hello! I'm Lauren from Adelaide, I'm new to Australian LibraryThingers. :)

Welcome to LT, Lauren. Hope you will enjoy it as much as we all do!

Hi Lauren, I'm from Sydney. Good to have another Aussie around.

I adored Year of Wonders and i had no idea Geraldine Brooks was an Aussie author :)

I read and quite enjoyed Nine Parts of Desire, having first heard about this collection of essays in So Many Books, So Little Time: a year of passionate reading. As others have mentioned, it's benefited by the fact that Brooks wrote it before the Islamic world and Islamic fundamentalism had become such hot button issues, and looks at the often neglected impact on the women who inhabit such societies. Brooks takes a really nice honest approach in the book too, and shares some insights into her personal history. I found it interesting that she grew up going to Catholic school in NSW then went on to marry an American and convert to Judaism. I missed her on Enough Rope, which is a bummer, Denton gives a good interview!
Also listened to March on audiobook. I liked it. I can see why so many of you find March so annoying, but he becomes so self-aware of his faults and shakes off all naivety by the end of the novel, that I forgave him any irritation he caused earlier on.
Have yet to read Year of Wonders but am keen to do so, plot sounds appealing..

I first started reading Geraldine Brooks when I was lent a copy of a little book she had written about her school penfriends - she found her old letters in a clean up (I think after a parent died) and then set out on a search overseas to find them. It was an interesting read. Unfortunately, I can't remember the title, but after reading it I read Year of Wonders and bought March as soon as it was released. I enjoyed both of them- my mum wouldn't even read March after the first 20 pages because she holds Little Women close to her heart and she didn't want to spoil the innocence of that story. I also loved Little Women as I was growing up but can appreciate the different perspective of life that the father has.

I loved Year of wonders, I havnt yet read March, but I already think Geraldine is a brilliant writer!

Just finished reading March two seconds ago, and only started reading Geraldine Brooks earlier this year with Nine parts of desire. I cant believe I actually had been resisting reading her work, placing her in the same category as Margaret Atwood, who's work I haven't as yet found any enthusiam for.
I really enjoy the angle that Geraldine takes with these two, very different works.
Year of Wonders is the next tbr on my wish list, and I cant wait to read more of her work.

Kim, I have both Nine parts of desire and Year of Wonders, but have not read them yet. The main problem is that my TBR piles are way too high!!!!

Paola
Please read Nine parts of desire asap!
I dont think you'll regret it.

Cherio
Kim

Year of Wonders is very captivating. I didn't find March quite as paced (although it won the Pulitzer Prize). I still lent it to all the women in my family who grew up with Little Women. I found Nine Parts of Desire almost as captivating as her fiction - I especially like the spiel at the end where she makes the analogy that if a whole race was subjugated the way women are in the world, there would be outrage.

mstuckings, please share your experiences of Eyam with us!

I'm not mstuckings, but I had the opportunity to visit Eyam on my last trip to England. It's a charming village and seeing the places mentioned in the book was a delight to me. My husband loved the tale of the plague village - but he'll never read the book. (Not his style.)

We walked all over town, up and down the hills. We didn't go out to Mompesson's Well due to it getting late in the day, but we did hike up to the Hancock Graves. These are the graves of the Hancock family (I believe they're given another name in the book, it's been a while since I read it) -- the matriarch buried her husband and several children who died of the plague, while she alone survived.

The church still stands - and has a display about the plague year. In that one sequestered year, over 3/4 of the villagers died. We enjoyed the exhibted and strolling through the church graveyard looking at the old tombstones. The Eyam Museum (which was closed when we were there) has a weathervane - but instead of the traditional rooster or rabbit, it's a rat. I found that rather amusing.

I picked up a small booklet at the church which tells the story of Eyam and the Plague Year. It was a nice complement to the fictionalised account told in Year of Wonders. Somewhere I have photos of the village and the places referenced in the book.

#27

Facinating. Even keener to read Year of Wonders now, and now one day visit Eyam.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Her new book, to be published in January 2008, is called People of the Book. It's the story of a young Australian book conservator analyzing the 600-year-old Sarajevo Haggadah.

About a year on from the previous post and I have just begun Geraldine Brooks's People of the Book. I am having trouble getting into it, as I don't find the Australian book conservator a very convincing character. Has anyone here read the book? Do you think it is worth my persevering?

I gave up People of the Book after four chapters, so I can't advise whether to persevere. I did love Year of Wonders .

The People of the Book was a good read. The writing was smooth and ranged over a number of eras: the present and World War 2 being the best handled. It presented a picture of tolerance as Muslims and Christians as well as Jews took risks to keep the Sarajevo Haggadah safe. Don't give up after four chapters - the threads come together well.

"People of the book" is a must for those who love books - a portrait of the heroic efforts that a dedicated restorer will go to discover the previous lives of a rare and intriguing book, meanwhile writing more chapters in her own life.

Geraldine Brooks writes well, I particularly liked her stuff on women in Islam, but ...

'People of the Book' is wonderful if you can filter out the protagonist, who is so self-consciously Australian it hurts. I mean for example, that line when the flight attendant calls her 'Doctor; and she says something like "In Australia, only prats flaunt their PhDs". It may fit the Aussie stereotype, but not the reality, even remotely.

In my part of Australia, the PhDs are continually being flaunting in letters to the paper or what have you. The best parts of "People of the Book" are the bits set in the past - and they are great.

As for 'Year of Wonders' - again a good plot - but sadly Geraldine knows no English history beyond a few facts so that the entire feel is wrong for the period.

Cheers

Mick

I recently read People of the Book but found all the alternate narrative voices quite unconvincing. I felt that each time it got away from the book conservator's voice it sagged, so I ended up skipping the other narrators. (I acknowledge that other posters have found this character to be stereotyped, but she worked for me.) I have enjoyed others of hers much more, particularly Nine parts of desire.

Disclosure: I was Gerry's neighbour while we were both students at Sydney University (me English and she Fine Arts, I think). She was a great cook and was always bringing me things to eat. Our apartments were in the back of an old terrace house in Glebe, and were quite close, so she used to hear a lot of the music I played. This is usually an unpleasant experience, but Gerry must have enjoyed it (at least some of the time) because she actually wrote a piece about it in the Sydney Morning Herald some years later.

Greetings to all

Guy

Ah, Feurmann..... If Glebe could talk what tales it could tell (I lived there in the 1970s). I'm sure Brooks is a fine journalist, but I won't be reading any more of her novels, her kindness as your neighbour notwithstanding.