November verse 7, 2024

My Book Group met this week to discuss Kairos, Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel set in East Berlin in the lead up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. I blogged about the book when I read it for my Book Club – link here – so I won’t repeat myself.

It was a terrific evening. Once we’d eaten we had a slide show of one chap’s recent trip to Germany. This led to a shared moment of reflection about what it must have meant for East Germans to be taken over by the West in ‘Unification’.

Having edged up on the book in that way, we then encountered what someone later on WhatsApp called a hurricane. The book has inspired one of us to unmitigated rage. It was an insult to older men, he said, hackneyed, mean spirited and at key moments completely implausible.

No one disagreed with his substantive points, though no one quite shared his rage. Some had been unable to finish the book. Some, me included, found the account of East–West relations in 1980s Germany interestingly nuanced, though oddly unrelated to the central story of a toxic sexual relationship.

Then we had birthday cake for the youngest man present.

It was, as someone said in WhatsApp later, a classic book club conversation. Which gave me my first line.

Verse 7: A classic book club conversation
A classic book club conversation –
classic chat, not classic book.
We're not averse to Tolstoy, Austen.
Nobel winners get a look,
but we choose trash as well as treasures,
low as well as highbrow pleasures.
We've read comics, Sci-Fi, crime,
and don't pick winners every time.
It’s our collaborative readings
makes the conversation soar.
A dozen lenses brought to bear
light up a text, set fire to endings.
We disagree but seldom fight,
and when there's heat there’s always light.