This young adult novel tells of 17 year old Lee who has just been incarcerated in a Young Offenders Institution for robbery and assault.  We found it a stark and vivid account of the brutal nature of such an environment.  It describes the games played by “the cons” in their moral, emotional and physical manipulation of each other, and the games played by “the screws” who seem to exist in a different dimension, hardly aware of, and ill-equipped to cope with the grim reality of what is going on around them.  Anyone who has read a good book about prison life (or indeed, been “inside” themselves) will know, for instance, that prisoners become highly ingenious at constructing banned items out of anything they have either smuggled into jail or extorted out of other inmates.  Lee enters as an innocent in terms of prison life and is soon sucked in, unable to tell the truth to a well-meaning “screw” about whether he is or is not being bullied or abused.  Only after a horrific sequence of events do we see any kind of breakthrough, into a resolution to live a different life “outside”….not a “scummy grey little life”, not a “manky, clanging-in-my-ears sort of life”, but “a life full of colours.”

Some members of the group found certain aspects of the plot slightly confusing, and felt concerned about the behaviour and choices of different characters, such as Lee’s mum and girlfriend, and Errol’s mum, but generally opinion of this book was high. 3 of us gave it 9/10, one gave it 8/10 and another gave it 7/10.

The next meeting will be on Tuesday 20^th April at 4.15 – 5.15pm and we have chosen “At the Firefly Gate” by Linda Newberry.                              Report by Sheila Robinson

‘Inside’  by Julia Jarman P/B £5.99 Andersen         

                       ’At The Firefly Gate’ by Linda Newbery  P/B £7.99 Orion                                                             

World Book Day celebrations will go on all week at Abbotsford School in Kenilworth.

March 4th is World Book Day 2010. This year Kenilworth Books are collaborating with Abbotsford School who are holding a week long book festival, from Monday March 1st until Friday March 5th. On the Monday, groups of children are coming to the shop to look at the children’s area and talk about the books with their teachers and us. On Tuesday March 2nd , author Linda Newberry will be visiting the school to talk about her new book, “Lob” as well as other books she has written, and on Friday 5th more children will be coming into the shop with their teachers. We hope that in future we will be able to organise more such visits to encourage children to discover the magic of books and to enjoy browsing the bookshop shelves

Meeting held 24th February at “The Punch Bowl” in Warwick

                                                      We have been reading, “The Paris Enigma” by Pablo de Santis, a journalist and comic book writer who lives in Buenos Aires.

 This title was selected as part of a themed series where we are reading non-English crime novels. This particular book shows the influence of both Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins. Set in 1888-9, the story moves from Buenos Aires to Paris for the opening of the International Exhibition. The narrator, Sigmudo Salvatorio is the son of a cobbler and has always dreamed of being a detective. He avidly reads a weekly journal, which describes the cases of famous detectives from around the world. There is a group of twelve particularly famous ones, each from a different country. This loose alliance was started by Craig, the detective from Buenos Aires. Craig suddenly decides to seek younger helpers after proclaiming for years that he can only work alone. Sigmundo finds himself working for Craig as his “acolyte” and is sent to Paris where, for the first time ever, the twelve detectives are to meet and set up an exhibition to demonstrate their “art”. Through illness, Craig is unable to make the journey from South America, so Sigmundo finds himself in the slightly ambivalent position of both assistant and representative.

 This book has had very mixed reviews, but on the whole our group felt that it was not a very satisfactory read. There was a large cast of characters, each of whom was sketched very lightly. One member of the group went as far as creating a list of characters to help her follow the plot. The fact that the author writes graphic novels was perhaps a clue to the two dimensional aspect of many of them. We found the descriptions of the building of the Eiffel Tower, the political shenanigans surrounding it, and the launching of the Paris Exhibition very interesting and the most satisfying part of the book, but the answer to the question, “Would you recommend this book to a friend?” was a resounding,”NO!”

 Hopefully the next book we have chosen should be more popular. Our next meeting is to be on Wednesday 24th March at 6.0pm at “The Punch Bowl” again. We are reading “Thursday Night Widows” by Claudia Pineiro. This one is set in Argentina in 2001 and concerns the inhabitants of a “gated” community who live an “ideal home” kind of life, cut off from the reality and poverty that surrounds them.

We’ll be sponsoring six great events at Warwick Words this year, which will be even bigger and better. Keep up to date with all the news at   http://www.warwickwords.co.uk/

Blitzcat by Robert Westall

This was a book that everyone enjoyed but no one raved about! It got scores in the 7-9/10 range and I think we were all agreed that it was very well written, as you might expect from such a long-standing, award-winning writer. Some of you reading this will remember Westall’s brilliant classic ‘The Machine Gunners’. ‘Blitzcat’ was not such an immediately appealing read as that – it lacked the cast of endearing, varied and strong children and the sympathetic portrayal of the injured German airman, Rudi – but it is still a very good book. I think we all struggled to some extent with the central character being an aloof cat. The book is picaresque in style, tracking the cat’s journey to find her owner and relating her adventures on the way. She meets a range of different characters, some of whom we warmed to and some of whom we didn’t like at all. In each case, she has a transformational effect so in one sense, it was a bit like reading a fairy story but set against the devastating backdrop of WW2, a backdrop so convincingly drawn that some of us felt we learned a lot and others had difficulty comprehending aspects such as the jargon used. We enjoyed it – but it did feel a bit more like a series of short stories than a novel – and some of us felt the lack of a central, unifying character with whom we could really engage. It was hard to engage with an aloof cat who didn’t seem to care about the people whose lives she transformed – quite right too – she was, after all, a cat – but it did make it a slightly remote read. Afterwards we wondered if the cat had had nine brushes with death and survived – that would have been a clever structure, we thought – but we couldn’t be bothered to check which says quite a lot really! However, it is a very accomplished book and it you want to read a very powerful and moving description of the Coventry blitz, then get it just for that. It is quite heart-breaking.

Our next meeting will be on Feb 23rd at 4.15 – 5.15 pm and our choice of book is ‘Inside’ by Julia Jarman. It is quite a hard-hitting read so it’s a good time for teenagers to join us!

Thanks, Meg Harper