Book Loving Kiwis discussion

Please leave a comment below if you intend to read The Virgin and the Whale by Carl Nixon during February.

Also, use this thread to discuss the book.

Participating:
Angie
Ella's Gran

Read at an earlier date, but keen to contribute...
Kathleen

I'll be joining you Angie, but I don't think it will be until the latter half of the month if I've worked the reserves list at the library out right.

Looks like I got that working out wrong. I've just had notification from the library I have 4 reserves waiting to pick up and one of them is this title - along with The Larnarchs, The Little Coffee Shop in Kabul and the long awaited The Secret Life of Bees. Not sure if I should wish for rotten weather and have the garden get even more out of control, or just forgo sleeping!! :)

Ella's Gran wrote: "Looks like I got that working out wrong. I've just had notification from the library I have 4 reserves waiting to pick up and one of them is this title - along with The Larnarchs, The Little Coffee..."

You will be busy! I picked my copy up yesterday. I thought The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul was brilliant. Not perfect, but very interesting.

Well, I began this book late last night and have just finished it. For some reason I found it compelling reading. The book kept pulling me back each time I put it down to get on with chores. Okay, I'm not that in love with chores, but to have a book stop me in my tracks like this, and not really know why!

I have to go away and digest this.

Haven't gone far.
Questions In the beginning the author is at great pains to have the reader understand this is a story based on fact but with places and names disguised so you won't know who or where. However not too far in the disguise of where (which may well have been guessed by the reader) begins to become thinner with the use of actual well known street/suburb names of the area. This leads me to ask -
Was the story written for the reasons initially given by the author?
Was it really based on fact?
Was this just another of the author's storytelling ploys?
Is this a clue to all of the above given on page 183 "Like stories it's difficult to say how much is true and how much isn't."

I'm not sure this is a 'true' story as purported in the beginning, but yet another layer in a book of many story layers used to show how stories can be used to shape people and their lives.

Why was it compelling reading? I'm don't believe it was plot so much as very cleverly written and a nice, easy style of writing to read, and I'm not sure that I didn't detect just a wee bit of a twist in these stories borrowed from Me Before You and The Life of Pi.

I'm in love with this book! Approximately halfway through. The way the story is told is simply magical.

I really am hopeless at writing reviews. It's a time thing, I'm sure. I finished this book a few days ago and encourage more of you to give it a go. It is glorious. I loved the writing style and the storyline. I loved the story within the story within yet another story - or was it?
I completely agree with you, Lesley. I thought of both Me Before You and The Life of Pi as I was reading it.