Firstly a warm welcome to Lindsay, Karen and Susanna who joined us for the first time, great to meet them all!
Our reactions to The Possessions of Doctor Kelly followed a similar pattern to last month – some really liked the book, a few dis-liked it, with everyone else somewhere in between. We generally liked the structure of the book, with the story being told by lots of different voices, mainly through diary entries or letters (although we did question whether so many people these days wrote either). We liked some of the descriptions, for example when Dr Forrest described the urge to “leave” someone, and also were intrigued by the fact that he was not redeemed at the end.
Several of us had found it hard at times to differentiate between Grey and Steve, although we did note that as the friends shared backgrounds and had been friends for so long maybe this was understandable. For some the language was too verbose and many readers struggled because they had no empathy with any of the characters.
A few of us are able to go and see the author, Richard T Kelly, speak about the book as part of the Durham Book Festival, and we will report back next month on what effect that’s had on our opinions of the book…!
We also talked about other Gothic books - Dorian Gray, Dr Faustus, Jekyll & Hyde and of course Dracula, plus the much more recent Shadow of the Wind, before moving on to wider topics.
Our next book, for our meeting on 9th November, is Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt. (This was originally proposed to link in with an event at the Free Thinking Festival at the Sage – that event is no longer happening, but we’re sticking with the book anyway.) At the November meeting we’ll also decide where to go for our Christmas meal which we’ll combine with the December meeting. Don’t worry if you can’t make the Nov meeting, I’ll email everyone who’s not there with the details.
See you in November
Cathy
