Folkestone and Hythe Reading Groups, H G Wells, and a Seaside Story

The two reading groups, affiliated to two libraries in the seaside towns of Folkestone and Hythe in the Shepway district of Kent, were set up by library staff who were keen to involve our customers in the promotion of books and reading in the area. Both groups meet at their respective libraries once a month to discuss a book chosen by members of the group. The books are ordered in by library staff who also provide advice and suggestions when inspiration has run dry.

Each group has a hardcore membership of seven or eight loyal participants who turn up through rain, wind and snow for their book chat (and of course tea and biscuits!). Numbers have recently been swelling with the growing popularity of reading groups and we often have to add names to waiting lists due to the constraints of space. 

The success of our reading groups depends very much on the dedication and enthusiasm of the members, and their willingness to try books that they would not normally read. Both groups have read fiction and non-fiction books, including biographies, and there is rarely a unanimous verdict on a book. Discussion is always lively, and often unpredictable, but the meetings are always great fun. The library staff have also held evening events for the groups, an Orange Prize party at Hythe a couple of years ago, and a Booker Prize party at Folkestone last year, where the groups discussed the shortlisted titles and voted for a winner. 

Books read in the past few months have included:

Folkestone

F Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
Jim Crace: Quarantine
Morag Joss: Half Broken Things
Ali Smith: The Accidental

Hythe

Nadine Gordimer: Jump and Other Stories
Mark Haddon: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Margaret Atwood: Alias Grace
Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

During September 2005, both groups read Kipps by H G Wells, which was then discussed in their October meetings. The reason behind this rather unusual choice was due to the 25th Folkestone Literary Festival.

The Folkestone Literary Festival is a highly significant event in the town’s cultural calendar, as it brings in acclaimed authors and celebrities from around the country to give talks and readings, as well as staging events for children, a festival debate and festival tours. Local bookshops and businesses are all involved in the Festival, which really puts Folkestone on the map for one week each September.

This year for the first time, the festival included a ‘Festival Read’ inspired by Penguin’s city wide read in Bristol. The idea is that over a period of time, the residents of the town are all encouraged to read the same book, in this case, Kipps by H G Wells. This particular book is very relevant to Folkestone and Hythe, as much of the story is based around this area, and H G Wells lived in Folkestone for a period of time. Also, it is the book’s centenary, and several events were held to celebrate this, including a walk based on the book (arranged by the Folkestone Library User Group) and a display in the library of photographs from Folkestone in 1905, which really helped to bring the book alive. Plentiful copies of the Penguin Classics centenary edition of the book were purchased by bookshops and the library, and the reading groups were asked to lead the way in reading and commenting on the book. 

The book was very successful as a ‘city wide read’ since it generated extremely mixed reactions among its readers, which made for good debate in the reading groups!

The main point of agreement was the local interest element - it is highly entertaining to read a novel set one hundred years ago in a place that you are very familiar with. Kipps grows up with his uncle and aunt in New Romney, on the windy Romney Marsh, where he plays with his friend Sid Pornick. There were glorious days of ‘mucking about’ along the beach, the siege of unresisting Martello towers, the incessant interest of the mystery and motion of windmills, the windy excursions with boarded feet over the yielding shingle to Dungeness lighthouse. Many of us who have lived in the area for all or most of our lives are able to feel the same nostalgia for childhood spent in this very way.

Kipps moves to Folkestone at the age of 14 to work at the Folkestone Drapery Bazaar as an apprentice, and can be found walking along Folkestone’s beautiful cliff top walk, The Leas, or along Tontine Street to the harbour. One reader commented that 'best of all I liked the fact that the Folkestone that I know was still absolutely recognisable - the Leas, Radnor Park Pond, Sandgate Road, Rendezvous Street and the local aspect was so well captured in the dialogue' - an opinion shared by the majority of the readers of this book.

The groups also commented that the book was an interesting social document of the time - the class element is especially interesting, and poor Kipps’ struggle with observing proper methods of behaviour and dress when he is ‘elevated’ in the eyes of society by his large inheritance provides us with much amusement.  One reader commented that his awkwardness in certain situations reminded her of the hapless Mr Bean, such as at the Royal Grand Hotel in London, where his terror of the dining room means that he goes without lunch.  However, we feel more sympathy for Kipps, as he is always eager to do the right thing.

Some readers, however, did not feel any sympathy for Kipps - they felt that the characters in the book were too simplistic, and that the author was a little patronising towards his characters. Certainly, the dialect could be a little grating at times, especially Kipps’ continuous dropping of his H’s, which Wells perhaps over-emphasised to illustrate his hero’s lowly beginnings in life.

Kipps’ friend Chitterlow proved to be a more popular individual - he is certainly more colourful than the other protagonists, and possibly more of a ‘Dickensian’ style character, with his quaint mannerisms and his love of ‘old Methuselah’ whisky.  We all felt that Wells was trying to mislead us where this character was concerned – Chitterlow frequently applies to Kipps for patronage of his various theatrical ventures and we grow to mistrust him and doubt his motives. However, he comes through for Kipps in the end, and the success of his play restores the wealth to Kipps that had been previously embezzled by his former fiancee’s brother, Walsingham. 

The story ends very happily, with Kipps living an idyllic and uncomplicated life in Hythe, married to his childhood sweetheart, Ann, and running a little bookshop as “something to do”.

The general consensus was that the lack of a very strong plot in the book was redeemed by the local interest element and also the humour.  Many readers were pleasantly surprised, expecting a plodding, dull read and instead finding the book “surprisingly readable”,  “a delightful story” and “warming to it as I read it”.

Karin Backlog
Customer Service Officer
Hythe Library