October 2014- Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Cold comfort farm, published in 1932.

'Cold comfort farm' is a parody of the doom and gloom romantic rural novels of the time. 

The book’s protagonist Flora decides to stay with an extended family of unknown relatives in the fictional village of Howling. What she finds is a group of misfit bumpkins, to which she shows no fear, all with their own set of emotional problems and some looming wrong done to her father, which they all think she has come to right. We never find out what the wrong is. 

Flora manages to use her modern ways to sort the family out and bring them all back to the land of the living. The book is a comedy and most in the group found it so.

Anna        7 

Annette    6

Cheryl      4

Deb          8

Kristy       7    

Megan     8  

Average 6.6

September 2014- Eugenia by Mark Tedeschi

Written by Mark Tedeschi QC is the story of the Eugenia Falleni and the criminal trail for the charge of murdering her wife, in Sydney 1920.

Eugenia lived her life as a man under the name of Harry Crawford, gave birth to a daughter, and married twice as a man. The story begins with the Italian migrant family in New Zealand and follows Eugenia to Australia now known as Harry, and the marriage to his first wife Annie. Harry remarries after her disappearance but the remains of her body are found two years later in bushland in Chatswood. Harry is arrested under suspicion of murder and his true sex is revealed. The trial at the time caused a sensation, with much interest as to how her true sexual identity was kept from both wives and ‘the article’ that was used to maintain the marriages. 

Mark Tedeschi traces the Falleni family, Eugenia’s contemporaries, the witnesses, the Crown prosecutors and defendants, the newspaper accounts and dissects the court proceedings with a critical view to the justice and prejudices of the time. This was a fascinating read, written for the uneducated in legal speak to understand.

Anna             8

Annette         6.5

Cheryl           8     

Genevieve    7       

Megan          7

Phil               7

Average 7.25

August 2014- Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

This is a sad book as the fate of Agnes is well known to most from the start. The real Agnes Magnúsdóttir was the last woman to be executed in Iceland, in 1830, the novel describes the possible circumstances surrounding her life and last days.

Agnes, a servant in northern Iceland was charged with the murder of her employer in 1829. She is sent to live with a farming family in a region she was familiar with in her youth, while waiting for her execution, and to receive spiritual guidance from a young priest.

Hannah Kent’s debut novel.

  

Anna            4

Annette        6

Cheryl          8

Deb              5

Genevieve    8

Kristy            8  

Megan          8

Phil               8

Average 6.8