The Time we Have Taken apparently was time wasted?

Well Steven Carroll's Miles Franklin Award winning The Time we have taken did not seem to impress our members. Descriptors like 'slow', 'boring', 'dull' seemed to be in the majority. Many folks were quite dismayed when they realised that it was the third book in a trilogy and were quite relieved that at least they had only had to read one and not three books in a similar vein.

Folks agreed that the author had certainly captured the monotony of life in the suburbs well but they had difficulty finding any sympathy or empathy for the characters and therefore found it difficult to connect with the book.  Discussion on the novel was a bit restricted in that everyone seemed to be on the same page and in agreement which doesn't lead to that impassioned debate stimulated by one's desire for one's opinions to be seriously considered by the rest of the group.

I often find that if I have not enjoyed a book, listening to those who have gives me another perspective which encourages me to re-read it with a more positive attitude. As we did not have this variance of opinion in our group, I have included a copy of what the Miles Franklin judging panel had to say about the novel, as they were certainly impressed by it!



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2008 Winner - The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll

Commenting on the winner’s novel, the Judging Panel wrote:
“In the spare, episodic style of the two earlier novels (The Art of the Engine Driver and The Gift of Speed) in this trilogy, Steven Carroll undertakes a parallel task of representation as his cast of characters reconsider their lives in and beyond the suburb that has been their crucible. Michael, son of the engine driver, moves to the city and falls in love with a girl beyond his reach – or so, poignantly, he believes. Vic, the father, has long since travelled north to a life of abstracted retirement. The mother, Rita, too well turned out to quite fit into the street, sells the house which has been her refuge, and makes an unlikely alliance with the widow of the industrial entrepreneur they called ‘Webster the Factory’. At night they drive together across the thistle-landscape in a sleek black car that is both comet and hearse.
What do they all make of their lives? Do they hear ‘the music of the years’? Or are they deaf, missing the wonder of it? Carroll’s novel is a poised, philosophically profound exploration of the question, a stand-alone work that is moving and indelible in its evocation of the extraordinary in ordinary lives.”


We are delving into the world of non-fiction with the memoir The Rules of Inheritance: a Memoir by Claire Bidwell Smith.

 

 



I'll include more information about this book in a later blog but I'll let you get started on your own views before I give you more to ruminate on.

Keep those pages turning and the grey cells firing!