The Famous Five

Five Go Forth: The pleasures of a Reading Group

We call ourselves ‘The Famous Five’ because we like an adventure, we like a challenge – and our reading over the years has certainly supplied that!

We all me at University back in the late 80’s when we were studying part time for our BAs in Literary Studies. We were taught how to really read a book, how to savour every last word, how to visualise. Ultimately we learnt to love literature, to let language take us over and, best of all, five like-minded ladies of a certain age became very firm friends.

We started our group in 1998 before the current craze. For the past five years we’ve been meeting roughly once a month, usually at someone’s house, although from time to time we go on an outing. This is a double adventure and challenge in trying to co-ordinate an event when we all lead such busy other lives.

Our meetings are havens of peace, the calm in our otherwise frantic schedules and juggling of jobs and domesticity. There are others who might savour a night on the town, we savour a night in. It’s Ladies Only, however. The one token male occasionally allowed to join us at dinner, is Pat’s husband – and that’s because he pours such generous measures of drinks!

We’re a very democratic group. We have no leader or chairperson as such (or facilitator as our local librarian likes to call the staff who co-ordinate the borough’s reading groups. I know that because I’m one of them in my other life!) so we all just rub along together and make joint decisions. In alphabetical order then we’re Hilary, Joan, Millie, Nancy and Pat.

Hilary’s the bossy one. She can’t help it, she’s a teacher. Millie runs a medical practise for a consultant radiographer in-between coping with a disabled mother, a needy brother, a saxophone addicted husband and a sixteen year old daughter. Nancy, bless her, is our spiritual guru. She cares, she prays, she nurtures us all. Pat used to be a production assistant for BBC radio but left the rat race quite recently to take up a new career for the special needs pupils at a local college. She’s the one who’s leaving her husband to us in her will as we all love him to bits.

As for me, I’m the library lady. Every reading group needs one – it saves a fortune on buying books. I’m also the quiet one and for my sins I share a house with Hilary. We’re both sans husband at the moment and when I split up from mine I went to stay with Hilary for the weekend and I've been there ever since... but that's another story...

As far as the group goes we gel extremely well despite our disparate tastes. Where else could you read Steppenwolf one month and Heidi the next?

Our discussions are lively to say the least. Everyone has something to say – even if it’s negative. There are choices we have groaned at (Tuesdays with Morrie was not one of our favourites!) Lady Chatterley’s Lover was, not surprisingly, very provocative, but the mood lightened when I read extracts from Spike Milligan’s send up version. And oh boy – did we gorge on Chocolat both the film and the book.

We also like to dress up from time to time. What must the neighbours have thought when we all turned up in 1940’s costume complete with Millie doing a good stand in job for General Eisenhower? Another night we did a murder/mystery evening for a change and Hilary, every inch the 1920’s English fop, drank a little too much (to keep in character of course), fell asleep at the table but woke to recite her lines in the most perfect manner before relapsing once more into and alcohol induced stupor…

On a more normal evening each of us chooses a book in turn and the one who chooses also gets to cook dinner. As often as possible the food goes hand in hand with the book so for The Siege by Helen Dunmore and Piers Paul Read’s Alice in Exile we had blinies, caviar and Russian style stroganoff with noodles. Like Water for Chocolate meant a true Mexican night and for Miss Garnet’s Angel I got to show off my talent for risotto (even though I use Delia’s recipe rather than an authentic Italian one.) The piece de resistance to date however must go to the venison I served when Nancy chose Marjorie Kinnan Rawling’s The Yearling… I’ll never forget the look on her face when I lifted the lid on the casserole dish and made a speech about poor Flagg – she pronounce me wicked but the dinner was nearly cold by the time we’d all stopped laughing.

And that’s the essence of the group – laughter, fun, friendship. Yes, we take our reading seriously but not to the extent that we forget that love and mutual support in times of trouble override our passion for critical analysis.

The books are a joy but some are more sobering than others and the issues we discuss are mote far reaching than the content of the book. We started off with Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy, a very sobering look at the first world war and war seems to be a theme we return to again and again. Birdsong, Richard Hilary’s The Last Enemy, The Reader, Melvyn Bragg’s A Soldier’s Tale, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, The English Patient, and Fugitive Pieces are just a few we’ve covered so far.

It would be interesting to know if other groups have been as drawn to this subject as we have. Other books have made us sit up and take notice as well (and yet even here war impacted on the character’s lives) and perhaps none more so than Katherine Harrison’s The Binding Chair.

Now that the summer is here we’re planning a garden party for our next event. We’re all reading the enchanting Prince of the Clouds by Gianni Riotta at the minute and then we’ll don our floaty dresses, our big hats and sally forth onto the (imaginary) croquet lawn with out parasols.

Our champagne toast will be to the future. There have been teas as well as smiles on some occasions but the bonds we have forged and the love we have for each other makes us a very special set of quins. Long may reading groups go on and Penguin/Orange prosper.

Recent reading list:

Atonement, Ian McEwan
The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Siege, Helen Dunmore
Alice in Exile, Piers Paul Read
Temples of Delight, Barbara Trapido
Fugitive Pieces, Ann Michaels