Happy May Birthday to Darby. For the first time, in a long time, we had the birthday Tiara. And, Darby took full advantage of the Red Chaise Lounge as her "throne." We have Laura to thank for the beautiful Jane Austen cake in Darby's honor & Janie provided several bottles of wine. One of the bottles was "Seven Sisters" and the quote on the bottle was quite appropriate for our group. "A unique blend of seven carefully chosen grapes crafted into a smooth and intriguing wine. Like you and your friends getting together. All different and yet so perfect together.
We also want to congratulate Lou on her anniversary of being cancer free!
Barb was our host and suggested a Vegan meal. It was all great, but one night without meat and we were all waxing nostalgic about it as if we'd never have it again. Besides the chocolate we also had key lime pie, enchiladas, wraps, salad, chips and dip.
While everyone was getting the food together and getting their drinks, I swore I heard Barb say that her panties were about to burst open. I quickly realized she was talking about the Peonies in her garden! However, the conversation veered completely off the rails after that. Seems last month's book, "How to be a Woman" was still with us. Let's just say that way too much information was shared and if I tried to write about it here - I'd have to give everyone a code word clearance!This month's book was a psychological thriller called "Before I got to Sleep" a debut novel by British author S. J. Watson. A woman wakes up one morning with no memory of her past. She is sleeping next to a man she doesn't recognize. Nor, does she recognize her own face in the mirror. The man, it turns out is her husband. He has placed pictures around the bathroom of them together. Everyday for years, it seems, that he has had to help her reconstruct her memory after an accident has left her with a kind of amnesia. During the day she puts the pieces together and every night when she goes to sleep she forgets it all. As the story progresses it is revealed that a doctor is working with her. Everyday he calls her and tells her to look in her closet for the journal she is keeping. Reading the journal brings her up to speed with life events. She has regular appointments with him and he takes her to previous places in her life to help her anchor her memories. He has some small successes with this treatment. It is certainly a frustrating life but the plot thickens when one day she reads in the diary, "Don't trust Ben", the husband. And then the race is on. Why should she not trust this man who says he is her husband? Why is he withholding important information? And will she find out in time?
As the book is told from the first person, who has had a brain injury and amnesia, we are looking at an unreliable narrator or poor historian. The author has a problem with trust in the people around her but can we, the audience, trust our narrator?
I'm going to leave it there for now as several of the girls did not finish and I don't want to spoil the ending. We had a great discussion. Everyone liked the story and it rated a 3.69 with two "I really, really liked it". The story is loosely based on an actual amnesiacs case. There will also be a movie coming out soon with Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth in the title roles.
Arnora will host in June. Any retreat is going to be put off until the fall and the next book will be the Pioneer Library's Big Read "Old School" by Tobias Wolfe.
