We met at the Punchbowl pub on Wednesday 24th March. We had read, “Thursday Night Widows” by Claudia Pineiro. This was the third book in our selection of non-British Crime writers. Calling this a crime novel is perhaps slightly misleading – a mystery novel would probably describe it better.
Life in “The Heights”, a gated community, country club and golf course, just outside Buenos Aires, is totally artificial. The people who buy the select houses there have to be financially successful and wanting to lead a Hollywood style existence. Once they have purchased a property, any new arrivals gradually lose touch with their previous lives and even their families. They become almost oblivious to the problems and abject poverty of the world just outside their doors. Entrance into the heights is via electronic gates, or past armed security guards. Everything is artifice. Even the boundaries between the properties are hedges made to look as if they have been there for generations, and the demarcation between property gardens and the golf course is marked only by a change of grass type.
The book opens with a strange incident in which three men who frequently meet together on Thursday nights are found dead at the bottom of the pool belonging to “El Tano”. El Tano is a charismatic and powerful man who lives in one of the best houses in the community. Usually, while the men meet, their “Thursday Night Widows” also do things together – but not always and not on this occasion.
The book then moves back in time and describes the events leading up to the fateful night from the point of view of four wives – the three whose husbands have drowned and a fourth whose husband came home early from the gathering.
Pineiro describes the claustrophobic atmosphere within the community, exposing it for its shallowness, artifice and almost prison-like status. There has been a backlash in Argentina against such communities. A visiting Spanish architect, Jordi Borja who teaches urban planning at the University of Barcelona criticized gated communities calling them, “the negation of cities”. Claudia Pineiro is obviously among these critics, and shows, with this book, that the effect of such communities have on their members cannot necessarily be shaken off even when the inhabitants leave and return to “normal” life in the city outside.
Most members enjoyed this book more than “A Paris Enigma” except Maureen, who had enjoyed the tangled web and complexity of that one. It was an easy read and interesting, especially for those of us who knew little or nothing about these communities. We liked the characters, particularly the teenage children who are more or less ignored by their parents because of the “safety” of their environment. We would recommend it as a light, holiday read
Our next meeting is to be on Wednesday 21st April at 6.00pm at the Punchbowl. We are reading the prizewinning, “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel. Set in England in the 1520s, Henry VIII is on the throne but has no heir; Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor; Thomas Cromwell is Wolsey’s clerk. Cromwell is a briber and a bully, an expert at manipulating people and events, and his ruthless ambition will affect politics far and wide. ‘Mantel’s ability to pick out vivid scenes from sources and give them life within her fiction is quite exceptional’ (London Review Of Books). We are really looking forward to this one! (By the way, Frances will probably not be at the meeting, but is definitely reading the book).
