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anniekinowolf's review
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
A story of female friendships and how life changing they are.
The isolation of the Northern Territory is in start contrast to how the book club brings the women together and enriches their lives.
The isolation of the Northern Territory is in start contrast to how the book club brings the women together and enriches their lives.
bernou's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
samstillreading's review against another edition
4.0
Books set in Australia’s Northern Territory are few and far between, so I was really entranced by the premise of Sophie Green’s The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club. Not only is it set in the NT, but it’s set in the late 1970s/early 1980s which is a whole world away thanks to advances in technology. Back then, stations (aka ranches) were truly isolated – no internet, no satellite with only a party line phone (great for spreading intimate details about your family) and the mail. But in the wet (monsoon) season, you can be completely isolated from even that for months. Sybil is used to all that, as she’s lived on Fairvale station for years. But when her son Ben brings home a new English bride, it’s time for things to change. Sybil knows that Kate won’t be used to the isolation or weather, so decides to start a book club. To it, she invites old friend Rita (now working for the Royal Flying Doctor Service out of Alice Springs), station hand Della from America and housewife Sallyanne. All the women bring their own problems to the book club, but through friendship they can work through them all.
And boy, do a lot of things happen to the women in this book. None of them are spared heartache and major events! If anyone thought that living in the outback was boring, think again… It’s a harsh environment which Sophie Green clearly shows but the women have personal dramas to add on top of that. Kate has her own worries about falling pregnant and Sallyanne tries to hide an abusive husband – and that’s just what we find out at the start! Ever the matriarch, Sybil tries to help them all through it by enabling meetings, offers of work and support. And when she needs help herself, it’s the other members of the book club who help her out. The theme of friendship is exceptionally strong in this novel, particularly as the isolated setting is stressed. The Territory kind of feels like another main character is this novel, the one who decides on the fates of all the characters…
Speaking of the characters, I bet it’s not an accident that all the main characters are women, and strong ones at that. Sybil is clearly a strong character, but she helps the quieter women like Kate and Sallyanne find their inner strength to accept, speak up and move on. Most of the male characters are supporting, blending into the background somewhat. We see the full range of male characters, from supportive and modern (Ben and Joe, Kate and Sybil’s husbands) to downright sexist and piggish (Sallyanne’s husband). This is a novel that celebrates the strength of the female spirit…truly ‘womanning up’ as the hashtag says through thick and thin!
The plot of the novel is crammed with events, and nobody is spared. One subplot I would have liked to have explored a little more is why Sybil’s son Lachlan hated the rest of his family so much. What made him spurn his family and home? Why couldn’t he talk about it? I would have loved to know a little more about this enigma and why he chose to distance himself from his Territory life. I did enjoy the book club subplot and was pleasantly surprised to see that I’d read most of their book choices (especially as I wasn’t even born then). As happens with all good book clubs, there was less of a focus on the book as time went on which I did miss. I found the different takes on The Thorn Birds fascinating, so would have loved to have read more. But we can’t have everything and I need to seek out The Far Pavilions now.
Overall, The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club is a light, fascinating read with engaging characters and a non-stop plot. A great experience of women getting things done!
Thank you to Hachette for the copy of this book. My review is honest.
http://samstillreading.wordpress.com
And boy, do a lot of things happen to the women in this book. None of them are spared heartache and major events! If anyone thought that living in the outback was boring, think again… It’s a harsh environment which Sophie Green clearly shows but the women have personal dramas to add on top of that. Kate has her own worries about falling pregnant and Sallyanne tries to hide an abusive husband – and that’s just what we find out at the start! Ever the matriarch, Sybil tries to help them all through it by enabling meetings, offers of work and support. And when she needs help herself, it’s the other members of the book club who help her out. The theme of friendship is exceptionally strong in this novel, particularly as the isolated setting is stressed. The Territory kind of feels like another main character is this novel, the one who decides on the fates of all the characters…
Speaking of the characters, I bet it’s not an accident that all the main characters are women, and strong ones at that. Sybil is clearly a strong character, but she helps the quieter women like Kate and Sallyanne find their inner strength to accept, speak up and move on. Most of the male characters are supporting, blending into the background somewhat. We see the full range of male characters, from supportive and modern (Ben and Joe, Kate and Sybil’s husbands) to downright sexist and piggish (Sallyanne’s husband). This is a novel that celebrates the strength of the female spirit…truly ‘womanning up’ as the hashtag says through thick and thin!
The plot of the novel is crammed with events, and nobody is spared. One subplot I would have liked to have explored a little more is why Sybil’s son Lachlan hated the rest of his family so much. What made him spurn his family and home? Why couldn’t he talk about it? I would have loved to know a little more about this enigma and why he chose to distance himself from his Territory life. I did enjoy the book club subplot and was pleasantly surprised to see that I’d read most of their book choices (especially as I wasn’t even born then). As happens with all good book clubs, there was less of a focus on the book as time went on which I did miss. I found the different takes on The Thorn Birds fascinating, so would have loved to have read more. But we can’t have everything and I need to seek out The Far Pavilions now.
Overall, The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club is a light, fascinating read with engaging characters and a non-stop plot. A great experience of women getting things done!
Thank you to Hachette for the copy of this book. My review is honest.
http://samstillreading.wordpress.com
marusik_'s review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
crafalsk264's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
In 1970s Australia, five very different women band together as friends and family. Sybil has turned to books as a comforter and companion for many years. When her best friend moves to Alice Springs and her oldest son leaves the territory permanently, she is more dependent on books to lighten her days than ever before. She comes up with the idea of linking up with other women to form the “Fairvale Ladies Book Club”. Her oldest friend, Rita, her new daughter-in-law Kate, Sallyanne, a troubled mother of three with a difficult husband, and Della a recent Texas transplant round out the Club. These five women reach across years, distance, and different lives to bond with friendship, laughter, tears, books and love. They fight weather, distance, complicated domestic situations and isolation to become a family.
This story profiles five remarkable women. I enjoy books set in Australia and this debut by a talented Australian writer was a perfect way to explore a unique place and time. The characters are well developed , likable, and memorable. This book takes its place in the ranks of books about women’s friendships, found family and adventure. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend to readers who enjoy historical fiction, romance, books about books and Australia.
jo_bookworm's review against another edition
4.0
In this book I was transported to Australia, to the Northern Territory, to the end of the Seventies and the early Eighties where I got to meet a group of women who knew little of each other initially but grew from a small book club to a community to a close-knit family.
Sybil lives out on Fairvale Station, she moved their from Sydney to be with her husband and subsequently has two sons Lachlan who has chosen a very different path in life and Ben who finds Fairvale the place he wants to be.
Kate is Ben's wife and thousands of miles away from her home in London. She is struggling to deal with defining moments of the wet and dry season.
Della is also thousands of miles away from her Texan home but the station and the land whilst similar to that of her ranch at home gives her more opportunities. She meets Stan and she thinks she may have found what she has been running away from.
Sallyanne is struggling, three children, a drunken husband and isolation from everything all she has is her dreams and they are slowly being turned into nightmares.
Rita is Sybil's oldest friend and is a nurse in the Flying Doctors service and lives the furthest from her friend.
These women are brought together by the book club that was started by Sybil for Kate to meet some other people. It was clear that this book was more about their lives and their friendships then it was about the books. Although of course the books they choose to read are important and can give you a further reading list if you needed one. The books gave them a chance to escape their world as any book can do.
All of these women were faced with differing problems and the book dealt with, death, life, abuse, racism, sexism, depression and loneliness without actually having to wave a big flag saying this is what we are dealing with. These are the best books, the ones that deal with issues which are still so relevant today, even though the books setting is around forty years previously. Aimed at women readers there is something within these pages that most women will relate to. And if you perhaps don't then put yourself in their shoes, int heir lives and think about how you would deal with the events as they play out in the book.
This is a thoughtfully written book, which whilst dealing with emotive subjects does a wonderful job is showing what life is like on a cattle station in Australia, when it takes days to cross the land and muster the cattle, where you can't pop to the shops when you run out of milk without taking a two-hour drive and when it rains you are trapped with only radio as your means of communication with the outside world. For me fascinating stuff.
I enjoyed this book and would recommend it for anyone wanting a change from perhaps the normal run of the mill commercial women's fiction - this book has a story to tell in itself.
Sybil lives out on Fairvale Station, she moved their from Sydney to be with her husband and subsequently has two sons Lachlan who has chosen a very different path in life and Ben who finds Fairvale the place he wants to be.
Kate is Ben's wife and thousands of miles away from her home in London. She is struggling to deal with defining moments of the wet and dry season.
Della is also thousands of miles away from her Texan home but the station and the land whilst similar to that of her ranch at home gives her more opportunities. She meets Stan and she thinks she may have found what she has been running away from.
Sallyanne is struggling, three children, a drunken husband and isolation from everything all she has is her dreams and they are slowly being turned into nightmares.
Rita is Sybil's oldest friend and is a nurse in the Flying Doctors service and lives the furthest from her friend.
These women are brought together by the book club that was started by Sybil for Kate to meet some other people. It was clear that this book was more about their lives and their friendships then it was about the books. Although of course the books they choose to read are important and can give you a further reading list if you needed one. The books gave them a chance to escape their world as any book can do.
All of these women were faced with differing problems and the book dealt with, death, life, abuse, racism, sexism, depression and loneliness without actually having to wave a big flag saying this is what we are dealing with. These are the best books, the ones that deal with issues which are still so relevant today, even though the books setting is around forty years previously. Aimed at women readers there is something within these pages that most women will relate to. And if you perhaps don't then put yourself in their shoes, int heir lives and think about how you would deal with the events as they play out in the book.
This is a thoughtfully written book, which whilst dealing with emotive subjects does a wonderful job is showing what life is like on a cattle station in Australia, when it takes days to cross the land and muster the cattle, where you can't pop to the shops when you run out of milk without taking a two-hour drive and when it rains you are trapped with only radio as your means of communication with the outside world. For me fascinating stuff.
I enjoyed this book and would recommend it for anyone wanting a change from perhaps the normal run of the mill commercial women's fiction - this book has a story to tell in itself.
missmary98's review against another edition
5.0
That was a lovely lovely story. I thoroughly enjoyed all the different perspectives and the incredible descriptions of the setting.
shanipatel's review against another edition
4.0
sophie green writes a great book about friendship, vividly rooted in its space + time … but why mention political events and topics in passing and then make your characters likeable apolitical yt women?? still ~ 8/10
sere_rev's review against another edition
2.0
I really wish at least one of the two women who started out determinedly single could've stayed that way. These women had the potential to be such interesting characters in their own right, but I felt that reducing so much of their character to their romantic relationships made them flatter than they should've been.
portybelle's review against another edition
5.0
I can never resist books which are set in bookshops or libraries or feature book groups - in other words, any books about people who love reading. I knew that The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club would be just my kind of book and I was right. I absolutely loved it.
The Book Club consists of five women who live in the harsh Northern Territory of Australia. The Territory being what it is, they're not exactly next door neighbours but live large distances from each other. Their book club only take place when it's the Dry Season as when it's The Wet, much of the area is cut off by rain-swollen creeks and flooded roads. Much of the travelling takes place by plane, such as the large distances involved. I thought the author described her setting perfectly, giving me a real sense of the vastness of the outback, the vivid colours of the earth, sky and plants and the difficulty of surviving in such an unforgiving landscape.
The women were at the heart of the story and from their different viewpoints we come to understand all their joys, sorrows, hopes and disappointments. Sybil, who I think was my favourite charactre, could be described as the matriarch of the group. Along with her husband, Jim, she runs the vast Fairvale Station. She has a new daughter-in-law, Kate, the English girl her son Ben met and married while on a trip to the UK and who is struggling to adapt to a very different life. Sybil's oldest friend Rita is someone she has known from her nursing days, who now lives in Alice Springs and works for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Della is a Texan who works on a nearby cattle ranch, a most unusual profession for a women in the 1970s when the story is set. Finally, there is Sallyanne who lives in town with her increasingly belligerent husband and their three young children and dreams of escaping her dull life. These very different women bring different experiences and different voices to the story. Yet for all their differences, they are brought together through their love of books. Through their book club meetings, they form strong bonds of friendship and become a support system for each other throughout everything that happens. Since the book is set in the 70s, expectations of a woman's role was rather different from today and it was interesting to read how the five friends either kicked against convention, were happy to accept it or quietly created their own ways of dealing with those expectations. With a list of significant world events at the beginning of different sections of the book, events which often then featured in the story to one extent or another, the author gave her book a firm sense of the times as well as jogging a few memories for me.
I thought the books the women chose to read were rather appropriate for the story. Their first book was the classic Australian saga The Thorn Birds and another was A Woman of Substance. Both these books, like this one, were sweeping sagas with strong women at their heart. Some of the things the women said about their book choices summed up this book too I felt. In particular when Rita talks about The Harp in the South, she describes it as being a book "about hardship and love and surviving both," while Sybil describes A Woman of Substance as being "a sweeping saga of a woman....... going onto glory, despite challenges and dangers and whatever else you can imagine." The ladies of the Fairvale Book Club certainly experience all kinds of hardship and challenges, danger and love and more than survive them all.
The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club was one of those books I was completely caught up in. I became immersed in the lives of these women while I was reading and I really didn't want to have to bid them farewell when the book ended. Like several of the books the ladies chose to read, it's a glorious epic of a book, beautifully written and one I highly recommend. If you happen to be in a book group, the author has helpfully included details of the book mentioned in the story along with suggested book group discussion questions.
The Book Club consists of five women who live in the harsh Northern Territory of Australia. The Territory being what it is, they're not exactly next door neighbours but live large distances from each other. Their book club only take place when it's the Dry Season as when it's The Wet, much of the area is cut off by rain-swollen creeks and flooded roads. Much of the travelling takes place by plane, such as the large distances involved. I thought the author described her setting perfectly, giving me a real sense of the vastness of the outback, the vivid colours of the earth, sky and plants and the difficulty of surviving in such an unforgiving landscape.
The women were at the heart of the story and from their different viewpoints we come to understand all their joys, sorrows, hopes and disappointments. Sybil, who I think was my favourite charactre, could be described as the matriarch of the group. Along with her husband, Jim, she runs the vast Fairvale Station. She has a new daughter-in-law, Kate, the English girl her son Ben met and married while on a trip to the UK and who is struggling to adapt to a very different life. Sybil's oldest friend Rita is someone she has known from her nursing days, who now lives in Alice Springs and works for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Della is a Texan who works on a nearby cattle ranch, a most unusual profession for a women in the 1970s when the story is set. Finally, there is Sallyanne who lives in town with her increasingly belligerent husband and their three young children and dreams of escaping her dull life. These very different women bring different experiences and different voices to the story. Yet for all their differences, they are brought together through their love of books. Through their book club meetings, they form strong bonds of friendship and become a support system for each other throughout everything that happens. Since the book is set in the 70s, expectations of a woman's role was rather different from today and it was interesting to read how the five friends either kicked against convention, were happy to accept it or quietly created their own ways of dealing with those expectations. With a list of significant world events at the beginning of different sections of the book, events which often then featured in the story to one extent or another, the author gave her book a firm sense of the times as well as jogging a few memories for me.
I thought the books the women chose to read were rather appropriate for the story. Their first book was the classic Australian saga The Thorn Birds and another was A Woman of Substance. Both these books, like this one, were sweeping sagas with strong women at their heart. Some of the things the women said about their book choices summed up this book too I felt. In particular when Rita talks about The Harp in the South, she describes it as being a book "about hardship and love and surviving both," while Sybil describes A Woman of Substance as being "a sweeping saga of a woman....... going onto glory, despite challenges and dangers and whatever else you can imagine." The ladies of the Fairvale Book Club certainly experience all kinds of hardship and challenges, danger and love and more than survive them all.
The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club was one of those books I was completely caught up in. I became immersed in the lives of these women while I was reading and I really didn't want to have to bid them farewell when the book ended. Like several of the books the ladies chose to read, it's a glorious epic of a book, beautifully written and one I highly recommend. If you happen to be in a book group, the author has helpfully included details of the book mentioned in the story along with suggested book group discussion questions.