August Meeting by Deborah Rogers
Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s Waking Lions certainly had an impact on our Book Club readers. Lots of members, including some new faces, turned up at our August meeting to share their thoughts and feelings about the Israeli thriller. The setting for the novel is present-day Israel, and the writer is a journalist, so there was the potential for lots of politics and focus on issues. We felt Gundar-Goshen managed to avoid preaching to her audience though; rather she wove some current social problems tightly into the storyline, so you couldn’t help but see them as real. The drama of the novel hinges on the repercussions from a single traumatic event in the life of frustrated neurosurgeon Eitan. We haven’t known him long before his life is turned upside down, and most readers agreed he was a hard character to sympathize with. Eitan’s situation sees his fate wrapped up with that of Sirkit, an Eritrean illegal-immigrant. They live geographically so close, yet their worlds couldn’t be further apart. Gundar-Goshen is especially effective as she contrasts the abject poverty and desperation of the migrant world with the air-conditioned sterility of Eitan’s city life. She is very careful to show that all the characters are flawed in their own ways, and that life in Israel is all about survival, whichever side you are on. There was lots of moral dilemma, making Waking Lions an especially successful book for group discussion. Several of the group said they found the subject unsettling, and many commented that they hadn’t found it enjoyable reading, but that they were glad to have read it in spite of that. Endings are hard, and not everyone agreed that this book’s was very satisfying. The reader was left with a feeling that these lives were unresolved, and that the people depicted would probably go on striving and struggling. If that makes it sounds a bit gloomy then perhaps the underlying message is, yet the novel isn’t: there is enough pacing in the action to keep the pages turning. The sense of place captured in Gundar-Goshen’s writing is incredible. Even if the characters and their actions weren’t always believable, you could almost touch the dust in their hair and feel the sweat on their brows. Thank you to everyone who came along to share their views or listen to the discussion. Our next meeting will take place on September 12 from 6:30 to 8 p.m., upstairs at the Shoal Centre. We will be discussing The Mountain Story by Lori Lansens. Visit www.seasidemagazine.ca/book-club for more information and to sign up! september 2018 | seasidemagazine.ca 77