Author talk

On Wednesday evening, had a busy time with first a meeting of the Reading Group I belong to, dicussing Audrey Niffenegger's The Time traveller's wife, which, once I and a couple of other group members had got over the challenge to the imagination at the beginning of the story, found fairly enjoyable as the story of a relationship. It did more or less hang together. However two members couldn't get on with it at all, and really struggled; one of them didn't finish it, as she disliked it so much. I have to say that I tried to read it about a year or so ago and didn't really get over the challenge at the beginning, so gave up on it, but I did persevere when it was suggested as a read for the group.
This briefer than usual meeting was followed by a talk about her first published novel , Three Mothers, by Sonia Lambert. She gave a brief outline of how she came to write it and mentioned that it was strongly autobiographical - she had done a little bit of research into her family background, and although she was brought up in Southampton ( the talk was held in Shirley Library in Southampton) she set the book in Brighton. It was pleasant to meet the author of a book we had all read as a group, as she was fairly clear eyed as to why she wrote - it certainly wasn't to get rich, but to tell a story as well as she could. The talk was organised by the City Library service, following a suggestion by the novelist's mother, an avid user of Southampton's public libraries. I was impressed by the way Sonia Lambert describes the emotions felt by the characters in her novel so intensely.