Our Brussels Book Club often features books based in the home countries of some of the members. Earlier this year, I hosted the club, served sushi and cupcakes, and chaired the discussion of The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas.

The Slap is a novel set in Australian suburbia, told from many perspectives, including that of an immigrant grandfather, a beautiful heterosexual man, an adolescent gay boy, and a childfree female writer. I found the language quite shocking, ranging from extreme cursing including the c-word as well as the racist terms such as “wog” and “lebo”. Also, from the detailed descriptions of the physical appearances of the characters, the author gave the impression that every single inhabitant of Melbourne is stunningly beautiful.

During book club we debated the main theme of the novel – was it about class or was it about immigration? The book features a contrast between the “nouvelle riche” of the first-generation Australians like Harry and the aspirations of the poor “true” Australian battlers who have fallen on hard times like Rosie. There is also tension between the parents who immigrated and their children, often seen as having an easy life without having truly earned it (“These kids, they’re unbelievable. It’s like the world owes them everything. They’ve been spoilt by their parents and by their teachers and by the f**king media to believe that they have all these rights but no responsibilities so they have no decency, no moral values whatsoever”).

There were many strong contenders for the most-hated character of the book. Was it grandfather Manolis (“Manolis doubted that there had been a day in his forties and most of his fifties that did not pass without him regretting ever marrying, without him cursing the terrible burden of having a wife and family”)? Gary, Rosie’s alcoholic husband? Harry, an angry Greek-Australian with a successful business and a mistress on the side? One of the members pointed out that while Harry constantly had very aggressive and violent thoughts, he worked hard to control these and curb his behaviour. How do we judge a man – by his thoughts or by his actions?

Most of us felt that that the author worked a little too hard to make all the characters unlikeable. Even Aishia, the ‘perfect’ wife, mother and career-woman admitted “she couldn’t leave [her husband] because her love was bound up with his beauty. She loved being next to him, adored being the most attractive couple in the room, couldn’t let that go.” However, we found some hope in the narrative of the two teenagers Connie and Richie, their friendship and hopes for the future.

I did not enjoy reading this book, and would have abandoned it early on if I could. I did not relish following the characters in the book, and felt like it was a biased and narrow exploration of Australian culture.

I think that this was one of my favourite Harry Potter movies. The director, David Yates, managed to achieve a remarkable balance of suspense and humour, with the magic itself fading to the background. A lot of the film occurred away from all the gizmos and gadgets of the wizard world, and simply focused on the friendship and determination of Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

Harry: You’re brilliant, Hermione. Truly.
Hermione: Actually, I’m just highly logical which allows me to look past extraneous detail and perceive clearly that which others overlook.

Most of the time they made intelligent decisions that capitalised on their individual strengths, and displayed true compassion and bravery. Plus, it was fun to see how these three corageous wizards have grown up since we first met them many years ago. Now we just have to wait another eight months to see how this all ends.

A few months back we went to the Only 4 Senses Restaurant. The food was served by blind waiters and we sat in complete blackness in a basement near the Grand Place. We were taught to place our fingers inside our water glass to tell when it was full, and the chef asked us to guess what we were eating by taste alone. I had a casserole, which was relatively easy to manage, but poor Adrian found that cutting and scooping a vegetarian lasagna was a little more challenging. Our guide would ask us if we had finished eating or if we wanted some more to drink, because he had no other way to tell. He would constantly use our names so that we knew who he was talking to. We spoke to our waiter about his life in Brussels, and then after the dinner we met his guide dog.

I have also just finished reading Star Gazing by Linda Gillard, recommended to me by the robots at Amazon. It is a fascinating Scottish story, told from the perspective of 40 year old woman called Marianne, who has been blind from birth. Marianne describes her world with no visual clues, and gives great insight into the daily life and loves without vision. Dropping ones keys, for example, can be a potentially tragic event.

There is a great theme of music within the novel, and her sighted friends often use orchestral analogies to explain the world to Marianne. One of them takes her star-gazing, and explains the constellation Boötes:

‘If you look east one of the brightest starts you’ll see is Arcterus. It has a yellow orange glow… they’d sound like… flutes. No piccolos. Shrill. Arcturus looks warmer. A cello maybe… on second thoughts make that a viola’.

I was unfamiliar with most of the references to opera composers and classical music pieces. Much in the way that Marianne understood the images through her familiarity with music, I felt as if I gained an understanding of the music through my visualisation of the images. It would have been lovely to create a playlist of the main songs from the novel, and play these in the background as I immersed myself into the story.

Hopefully, I will never know what it is like to be blind, but through these small experiences I hope that I have gained a little more understanding of what it would be like to live without vision.

If I had never bought the kindle, I never would have thought to read Middlemarch, and I would have missed out on a truly majestic work. But because it was on the list of the 100 best books of all time and it was free, I transferred it to my kindle for a rainy day. I didn’t know anything about the book, but I liked the sound of the name. I started reading and I was instantly hooked. It wasn’t until about half way through that I learned that George Eliot was the psydonym of Mary Anne Evans, changing the voice I heard in my head from male to female. Written in 1871, nearly 140 years ago, the characters were vivid and fascinating. This book is set in the ficticious town of Middlemarch in England, and follows a dozen people through their lives from 1830 onwards. The prose was a pure delight, and it was so easy to highlight my favourite passages on the kindle without damaging her words.

When a modest and religious young woman fell in love with a man she did not know: “She filled up all blanks with unmanifested perfections, interpreting him as she interpreted the works of Providence, and accounting for seeming discords by her own deafness to the higher harmonies.”

One man’s opinion of a woman who asked too many questions: “She is a good creature—­that fine girl—­but a little too earnest,” he thought. “It is troublesome to talk to such women. They are always wanting reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of any question”

On the scientist and his method of “combining and constructing with the clearest eye for probabilities and the fullest obedience to knowledge; and then, in yet more energetic alliance with impartial Nature, standing aloof to invent tests by which to try its own work.”

On joy versus misery: “It is of no use to try and take care of all the world; that is being taken care of when you feel delight—­ in art or in anything else. Would you turn all the youth of the world into a tragic chorus, wailing and moralizing over misery? I suspect that you have some false belief in the virtues of misery, and want to make your life a martyrdom.”

On arguments between spouses: “There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.”

On enduring difficulties: “Oh, my dear, when you have a clergyman in your family you must accommodate your tastes: I did that very early. When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn’t have the end without them.”

On how to chastise a dog for misbehaving: She took his fore-paws in one hand, and lifted up the forefinger of the other, while the dog wrinkled his brows and looked embarrassed. “Fly, Fly, I am ashamed of you,” Mary was saying in a grave contralto. “This is not becoming in a sensible dog; anybody would think you were a silly young gentleman.”

On choosing a husband: “No, indeed. I don’t love him because he is a fine match.” “What for, then?” “Oh, dear, because I have always loved him. I should never like scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought of in a husband.”

My working week became a little bit brighter with a gift from my Secret Santa from the intertubes. Even though my Secret Santa posted this box to me in November from Canada, it only just arrived on my doorstep. It was lovely to find all these tokens from Quebec, especially as Montreal it was a candidate for our new home back in 2008. The package contained many regional bookmarks, a lovely card from Santa, as well as The Shadow of the Wind, Flashman, and a local cookbook with lots of interesting family recipes. Furthermore, some delicious maple sugar, coffee candy, and hot chocolate mix to keep me company when I am curled up with these new novels.

I started Flashman on my metro trip to work this morning, and by 29 pages in I agree with his self-assessment that he is “a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and oh yes, a toady.” I am looking forward to learning about military history from a very interesting perspective, as well as introducing some French-Canadian influences into my Australian-Belgian cooking repertoire.

Thank-you Santa, for sending me some exceptional literary and culinary delights.

“Who are all those people outside?”

Father tilted his head to the left, looking a little confused by the question. “Soldiers, Bruno, ” he said. “And secretaries. Staff workers. You’ve seen them all before, of course.”

“No, not them,” said Bruno. “The people I see from my window. In the huts, in the distance. They’re all dressed the same.”

“Ah, those people,” said Father, nodding his head and smiling slightly. “Those people… well, they’re not really people at all, Bruno.”

Marden is numb and unable to comprehend the personal and global tragedies of the war, his loss so great it was impossible for me to grasp. What really shook me were the descriptions of Belgium after just after the war. I have visited these cities, now so carefully reconstructed, and it is so difficult for me to imagine them destroyed. For me, these are sunlit towns filled with happy memories, so to read of their annihilation was like learning of the abusive childhood of a dear friend.

It was like having heard of heaven and hell, and finding out, in one revelatory moment, that this is what they consisted of – not magic zones of fire, not fleecy zones of clouds, but a vaguely undulating series of muddy fields that looked like a lumpy pudding.
“Voila“, Conner said, smiling ironically. “The Western Front”.
…
Back on the island he had has a friend named Andre Slater who had a farm and grew potatoes. It wasn’t a particularly big farm, not by western standards, and yet the battlefield he stared at could have fit inside with room to spare. In the end, it was this comparison that defeated him – thinking how many boys had tried trying to cross Andre Slater’s farm.

Photo from JaaQ