Pauline gives us a flavour of what we’ve been reading and chatting about so far this year, and chats to Aishwarya about Story Cafe…
Aishwarya Balasubramanian has been on a student placement at GWL since last September and she shared some of her reactions to Story Cafe with me. “It is a beautiful reading and listening experience… evoking lots of imagination and feelings, memories, wishes and dreams … listening to different, distinct and lovely speakers.”
Thank you Aishwarya for your comments. It is so good to hear that this event continues to give such pleasure to those attending.
January 2023
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
We gathered together as usual for a blether while the big brown teapot circulated. Wendy then welcomed everyone to the first Story Cafe of 2023 and we settled in anticipation of the readings as Wendy introduced Elif Shafak to the group.
Elif is an award winning Turkish/British writer banned from returning to Turkey as her writing is deemed to be anti-Turkish. She has written that she little knew when she last left Turkey that she would be unable to go back.
Her novel The Island of Missing Trees published in 2021, is a poignant love story across the Turkish/Greek divide. Set in Cyprus during the 1974 conflict, which separated lovers Defne and Kostos, and divided the island, the story tells of their reunion in Cyprus years later and their life in London. When they leave Cyprus for the last time, they take with them a cutting from the fig tree growing in the abandoned bar where they had met as teenagers. Planted in their English garden and cherished by botanist Kostos, the fig tree becomes a major character in the story. Wendy and I had our doubts about this plot device but we both agreed it worked brilliantly.
I read several fig tree sections while Wendy read of Kostos and Defne’s early meetings. In the breaks we talked about the role of trees in stories with The Giving Tree by Shel Silvestein, The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge, Still Life by Sarah Winman, The Fair Botanists by Sara Sheridan and the role of the Ents in The Lord of the Rings as examples. We heard about the importance of the carob tree in Maori culture and that the fig free has its very own wasp! In fact the chat was so interesting that we didn’t have time to read all the excerpts Wendy had selected. We did have time though for Wendy to read the poem My Father and the Fig Tree by one of her favourite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye
Other titles by Elif Shafak are also available from GWL including 10 minutes and 38 seconds in This Strange World and Three Daughters of Eve.
February 2023
This month’s Story Cafe featured two Pulitzer Prize winners, novelist Elizabeth Strout and poet Mary Oliver
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Retired teacher, Olive lives near the sea with her husband and son in small town Maine. She is known as a ‘difficult woman’ and Wendy quoted from a New York Times Review: “She didn’t like to be alone. Even more, she didn’t like to be with people”. Wendy explained that “as the stories continue, a more complicated portrait of her emerges…She has difficulty expressing her love for her husband and son… We also learn that she has a remarkable capacity for empathy.”
It is written as a series of short stories covering many years, some where Olive is the main character and others where she appears in the periphery of the action or is just spoken about.
Wendy and I read from two of the stories A Little Burst where we see Olive at her son’s first wedding and after a break for tea and chat, Security where Olive visits her son and his second wife in New York. There was a lively discussion following the readings which focused on our different interpretations of Olive’s character . We admired the quality of the writing – a spare, eloquent and loving depiction of a conflicted, unapologetic but caring woman.
Elizabeth Strout has written a sequel, Olive Again, a sequence of four Lucy Barton titles as well as stand alone novels.
Mary Oliver, who died in 2019 aged 83, published various books of poetry and our session ended with Aishwarya and Eleanor reading two poems “Self Portrait” and “I Worried”, poems where, as with Strout’s writing, Oliver can say so much in a just a few words.
Why not come along and join us on Thursday 16th March for our next Story Cafe, followed on Thursday 30 March with a Story Cafe Special, when Trisha Singh OBE will be reading from and talking about her new memoir A Silent Voice Speaks.
Book you tickets here:
We look forward to seeing you!
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