The latest gathering of The Book Circle was held on Wednesday 12 August and a variety of books were shared. Fiction The Missing Mother - Mali Cornish A suspense thriller by a talented Australian author. The novel is set in Geelong. Elspeth returns home after 20 years in New York, when she receives notification that her mother has mysteriously disappeared and cannot be found. The family’s troubled past quickly surfaces, and much will be revealed. People Like Us - Sally Piper Tina Lamb loses her four-bedroom family home in a bitter divorce, and finds herself living in a run-down caravan on the city’s fringes. Having cared for her family and not held a paid job for many years, Tina has no real employment skills. She finds work caring for a wealthy elderly woman, an intelligent person with a sharp tongue and a grasping, neglectful family. The two women form an unlikely friendship, and they each soon learn that financial security is not just about having money. The Silent Patient - Alex Michaelides This is a fast-paced psychological thriller centred on Alicia Berenson, a painter who shoots her husband five times and then refuses to speak ever again, and Theo Faber, the psychotherapist obsessed with unlocking her silence. The story is mainly told through the reflections of Theo Faber. Theo is obsessed with helping Alicia and can see similarities between Alicia’s life and his own. He feels her pain as though it is his own. Throughout the book it is assumed by Theo and his colleagues that he is experiencing countertransference. This results in Theo making contact with Alicia’s family and friends outside of the facility where Alicia is a patient and he has recently taken up the role of psychotherapist. Such action is frowned upon and forbidden by his supervisor and the facility management. Countertransference is when a therapist shifts their own personal feelings, past memories, or hidden biases onto a client. A common example is a therapist feeling overly protective of a client because the client reminds them of their own childhood, causing the therapist to give unwanted personal advice instead of staying neutral. However, is Theo experiencing countertransference or is something else happening? This is a short book (340 pages) that is a page turner and easy to read. I read it in one sitting on the Wangaratta to Melbourne train. Starting From Now - Fleur McDonald A suspenseful novel of rural life and real country issues. When twenty-five year old journalist, Zara Ellison receives her mother’s ominous text message, ‘Call me when you can’ , Zara knows it's not good news. Two weeks later, Zara has left her much loved city life in New York to relocate to Barker, the sleepy country town in which she grew up. For Zara ,family comes first. But she needs to work too, and the town’s police force is a rural journalist's best source of information. Meeting detective Dave Burrows and Dave's second in charge, senior constable Jack Higgins, is a priority. Amid her family's troubles, and reporting on farming accidents and violently clashing activists, Zara is shocked to witness Constable Jack Higgins in a role she'd never have believed. How could he possibly justify this? And what was she going to do about it? Wrapped in the love of family, friendship, crime and mystery, 'Starting From Now' is another compelling novel from Fleur McDonald. Non-fiction Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle - Ben McIntyre This is a true account of events as one of the greatest war stories in history unfolds. It gives a detailed description of the forbidding Nazi prison, perched on a hillside in Germany, and the many brave and ingenious attempts by Allied POWs to escape. They were incarcerated there for four years, and as the war was ending, they became concerned about their fate at the hands of the vengeful Nazis. Proto - Laura Spinney A detailed account of how the Indo-European family of languages came to exist. The author traces the movement of people and their language, reconstructing links by comparing the languages that developed from Proto-Indo-European, and explains how trade, new discoveries and exploration led to the need for words to describe new experiences. Smithing brought new specialisations: metallurgy, casting, mining, etc, and all had to be named. With travellers, the words they shared went with them around the world. Roads, and the development of the wheel, sped up the process. Recommended.
