Heaven: 2021 June Book Discussion - The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
questioning
Shipmate
Our book discussion for June is The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. It's almost a cozy mystery - set in a retirement community. I think there could be some interesting scope for conversations about some ethical/moral questions as well as aging and attitudes toward elders.
I'll post some questions on June 20. Happy reading!
(@caroline444
@Rufus T Firefly
@Trudy )
I'll post some questions on June 20. Happy reading!
(@caroline444
@Rufus T Firefly
@Trudy )
Comments
I was just going to say "What? The sequel's not out till September!" but then realized this is prbably the difference between being in the UK and being in Canada.
At least you have given us another series to check out. I haven't heard of Iain Sansom's books. Hopefully you can join in another month.
It’s a gentle read so far, but enjoyable and enough to keep my interest.
I'm told Richard Osman is some sort of celebrity in UK. I'd never heard of him, and I'd guess our N American and African shipmates haven't either. I'm still enjoying the novel, however. And it is very British in tone (that I do get - I left in the 1970s and have visited regularly since).
I feel really dense. It took me almost a whole day to get the joke ...and I live in a part of the world where growing pulses is a major economic thing!
He is, he’s on the TV twice every evening. I like his game show “House of Games”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Osman's_House_of_Games
I could never understand why people thought "Fried Green Tomatoes" was a "gentle" film, either. It's about getting away with murder. And cannibalism.
And in mine.
My sister gave me a copy for Christmas and I enjoyed it; I probably ought to read it again so that I can join in properly.
I’m half way through and I still call it ‘gentle’.
No crazy car chases, no battering down doors, panting sex scenes etc etc. In between the bouts of (very sedate so far) action life is very quiet and every-day. I’m reminded of my Mum’s care home. Sharp minded people with fascinating stories alongside people whose minds are fading fast (also with amazing life stories but these are only accessed now through chatting to relatives).
I volunteer for a charity called re-engage. We chat on the phone to very elderly people who are alone. They are mines of great stories. Richard Osman should join us, he’ll have enough material for decades to come! 🙂
Why or how do the four club members become able to identify their relationship as friendship at the end of the novel when they were hesitant with that label at the start? Reflecting on Donna and Chris, as well as Bogdan and Stephen, how does Osman seem to understand friendship? What is the nature of friendship?
I think my favourite humorous passage is the one near the beginning when the Thursday Murder Club shatter Donna's assumptions of what a talk from a police officer to a group of elderly people should consist of. There were loads of other sly digs at the English middle classes, pretending things come from Waitrose rather Lidl and that screw top wine is now fine to serve to guests.
I liked the chapters from Joyce's point of view. She is someone that if you met her would think was a bit fluffy and traditional, but she is an intelligent and astute woman. I think it needed that the break up the omniscient narration, and give a closer view of what was happening. I also found her passage about the friends drinking canned gin and tonics on the way home from a good night out and not knowing when it would be the last time rather moving.
I'll come back to the other questions later, but I wonder did anyone else think that there was maybe one plot line too many.
That said, I have the strong impression it would do well as a tv adaptation.
I think it's difficult for white writers to get characters from other backgrounds right. There's always the risk of going the other way and creating stereotypes. Bogdan is an example of this. I have noticed that in British books and crime shows Eastern Europeans and Turkish characters are often stereotyped gangsters, much like Italian characters being Mafia types in earlier decades. I have also read that some T.V. shows are written with white characters in mind and then a more diverse cast is used without making adjustments to the scripts. In a country like Britain, many people of non-British backgrounds are third or fourth generation so may not live any differently from those of British ancestry. And lots of people are of mixed ancestry and often don't get depicted at all or are depicted as one ethnicity. It's a minefield to get right. I think publishers employ people of specific ethnic backgrounds to check if minority characters are 'authentic', but even then not every body would be happy with the results. The alternative argument is that white authors only write white characters, but that is also problematic in a multicultural society. And if you stretched the argument should authors only write about their own gender/people with their sexual preferences/people their age or younger? A greater diversity of authors and script writers being published/employed seems to be a better solution.
[*] The novel contains many humorous lines and passages. Which ones captured your attention, and why did they strike you as funny?
My Nanna moved into a similar type of retirement village last year and sometimes when I visit it reminds me of incidents in the book, and the village has many similarities to the one in the book, which I find humorous. I don't think she would like this book, but I am tempted to see if the village has a copy as I'm sure some of the other residents would get a kick out of it.
[*] Osman intersperses his omniscient narrator with passages from Joyce’s diary. Why do you think Osman does this? What, if anything, does it add to the novel?
I think it adds to the suspicion that Joyce might actually be the or one of the murderers. It was fun to read her parts seeing it both ways - is she who she is portraying herself as or is she enjoying recording the events around her crime/s without letting on she is really the murderer.
[*] Provide a question that you would like other readers to answer.
I found that suicide was promoted a bit too heavily as a way out of grief and facing punishment and would rather other solutions had been found. Possibly because I have had a couple of dark times in my life and am glad to still be here and also because in real life the suicide of someone you know, or even an attempt, is much more upsetting. Was anyone else uncomfortable with this aspect of the book?
I enjoyed the book and found the characters amusing but the whole thing a bit light and frothy. There were moments when I laughed out loud at the turns of phrase or the image conjured up. But now, a week or so later and after reading something else, I can't recall anything specific. More of the bitter-sweet themes than the funny passages.
I found the Joyce interspersions interesting as it gave a different view of the people concerned, slightly more as an outsider, as she was new to the group. I too wondered if there was going to be a bit of an unreliable narrator aspect or if Joyce was the murderer and that was going to be the denouement. As an aside, much to my irritation, there is no Marks and Spencer store at Charing Cross station to buy cans of gin and tonic. I went looking for it the other week, trying to find food my daughter could eat.
From Richard Osman's discussion at the back of the edition I read I took away from it that a big point of the book was that these people in retirement homes have had these fascinating lives and backgrounds that bear so little relationship to their lives now; he wrote it after visiting an old peoples' home or community and being inspired by the people he met. I got the impression that he felt that the older people were being underestimated.
Elizabeth is obviously written in as having a wide experience of dealing with complicated situations, so can deal with whatever is thrown at her. @Mili I also came away uncomfortable with the encouraging of suicide as a way of resolving the particular loose end. Nor was I that comfortable with the unresolved situation around Bogdan.
In answer to @Doublethink's point, I suspect that a retirement community in the south east of England, Kent from the sound of it, will be somewhat devoid of multi-coloured faces, so writing someone in feels artificial, however it is done. I'm north of the Thames, but I can't think of any coloured faces in any of the retirement communities in my locality (two homes, three groups of flats/houses). It is part of one of those built-in problems writing about rural England currently
Being semi-retired myself, (though not in a retirement village) I am well aware that many older people have backstories and skills that may not be apparent at first glance. As evidence I cite our Men's "shed" (community group) at which members are encouraged to talk about their experience, and sometimes to demonstrate some of their skills. Of the principal characters, I found Elizabeth's to be the most intriguing backstory, even if it was never fully revealed. One gathers that she had been some sort of intelligence operative in post-war Berlin perhaps as an interrogator for MI5 (?!), with many of her intelligence gathering gathering skills still intact. Red Ron I found to more of a caricature. I certainly was not surprised that the "ethnic" Ibrahim was the bookish one, as there are many "Indian" migrants to Britain (and indeed to Australia or the USA) who are qualified doctors of one sort or another. It was more surprising (in Britain) that he turned out to be middle-eastern rather than subcontinental. Joyce is more of a background type, amazed at what here friends can and do do, and thus a natural to be a narrator, like Dr Watson.
Even having recently read Girl, Woman, Other , I did not twig that Donna was black until it was stated explicitly, although that detail mattered less to the story than that she was a "refugee" from South London. Perhaps, as suggested upthread, it may make her easier to cast in a TV adaptation.
I too thought there were too many suicides (and too many murders), but Bernard's not being able to get past his wife's death and his deception about the ashes would was one of the areas that would have fitted well in a much more serious novel about aging.
Friendship is an important theme of the book, though it isn't one that I particularly noticed. It's the excuse Bogdan uses for his murder of Turkish Gianni after all. I liked the way Joyce (that I hadn't considered to be an unreliable narrator) was trying to woo Bernard with cake, and the way she became good friends with Elizabeth despite them having very different personalities.
2.
I loved the scene where Joyce tried to pass Elizabeth off as a nun to the desk sergeant.
3. Osman intersperses his omniscient narrator with passages from Joyce’s diary. Why do you think Osman does this? What, if anything, does it add to the novel?
Joyce was often reporting on events that had already happened from a different pov than the omniscient voice had. As it progressed I did wonder if Joyce was guilty or might have known who was guilty.
3. Almost every main character in the novel has either made a morally ambiguous choice in the past or is making one in the present. Which person’s choice most interested you? Why? What would you have done in that person’s place?
I liked the way that Elizabeth often made decisions that were not quite legal but ultimately lead to a better form of justice. This is most clear in her handling of John in the end.
4. Each of the members of the Thursday Murder Club has lived a rich life prior to arriving at Coopers Chase Retirement Village. How do their previous work and life experiences shape their responses to one another, to the murders that they are investigating, and to the younger people (e.g. Ian Ventham, Bogdan, Chris, Donna) they deal with? AND/OR Do the younger people underestimate the members of the Thursday Murder Club? Why do you think that? POSSIBLY FURTHER THOUGHT: Do you observe elders in your community being underestimated? Discuss.
Red Ron’s instinctual mistrust of authority, Ibrahim’s counselling skills, Elizabeth’s powers of observation as a spy and Joyce’s empathy as a nurse all meshed well in working to solve the cases. Of course the elderly get underestimated. I have been as guilty of it as the next. I often read obituaries of people I know and marvel at what I did not know about them and the full rich lives they had lived.
5. There is an ongoing theme of friendship throughout the novel. Early on, when Donna meets the Thursday Murder Club, she asks, “How did the four of you become friends?” Elizabeth, Ibrahim, and Ron all deny friendship, whereas Joyce says. “… we are friends, of course.” By the end of the novel, Elizabeth reflects, “What a fine friend Ron is.” Donna and Chris develop a friendship over the course of working together. Bogdan and Stephen become friends over a chessboard.
Why or how do the four club members become able to identify their relationship as friendship at the end of the novel when they were hesitant with that label at the start? Reflecting on Donna and Chris, as well as Bogdan and Stephen, how does Osman seem to understand friendship? What is the nature of friendship?
I think the four begin to define themselves as friends because they have forged that relationship through the quest which they undertook. As a chessplayer, I loved watching how Bogdan was able to reach Stephen and forge a relationship over the board with him. Friendship is hard to define but you know it when you are in one
Of course I loved the whole underlying idea of these retired people with such interesting lives, with their expertise and knowledge that often gets overlooked. It reminds me of my aunt who always said that once she got white hair she was going to rob a bank because nobody pays attention to little old ladies and nobody would be able to identify her after the robbery. (She is now 85, has white hair, and is certainly CAPABLE of robbing a bank but to my knowledge has not done so ... yet).
I enjoyed all the characters -- of course being a hardened old leftie I loved Ron. And I liked the intervals from Joyce's point of view -- agreed that there was a sense we were being possibly misled there, but was very relieved when she turned out not to be a killer. I found Elizabeth a bit harder to take simply because she is sort of -- ruthless, maybe? But it does fit with her mysterious past.
I'm curious what others thought of the actual resolution of the mystery? I enjoyed the ride so much but I wasn't sure the payoff was as satisfying as it could have been -- I didn't have that "Aha! Of course!" feeling that I like to have when I get the resolution of a mystery. It didn't seem quite plausible to me -- though, like the things I found funny, the specifics of why I felt that way are a bit murkier to me now than they were right after I finished reading it.
Elizabeth feels like she's fallen out of a LeCarre novel. I know from things Osman has said on Pointless that he is a big fan of LeCarre's work and I can imagine Elizabeth doing some very morally dubious things in the past. The fact she is drugging up her husband now, and from what we see of him we only have her word that she is trying to save him from The Willows.
I agree about Bogdan. It seemed to be taking the fact he murdered two people all rather lightly, even though the people might have 'deserved' it. In fact the whole taking justice into your own hands theme is all a bit dubious in real life, even if it makes for an entertaining read.
I think Osman could have written a very different, and arguably better novel about old age, and grief. Maybe sometime he'll do that.